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your choice. It depends upon your election whether you will be a free, happy and united people at home, or the light of your executive majesty shall beam across the ocean in one general blaze of the public liberty.

Ex. CXV.-JUSTICE DEMANDED FOR THE SOLDIERS OF THE

REVOLUTION.

P. SPRAGUE.

SIR: the present relief for the soldiers of the Revolution is not sufficient. The act should have embraced all, without any discrimination, except of services. But that act, partly by subsequent laws, and partly by illiberal rules of construction, has been narrowed far within its original scope. I am constrained to say, that, in the practical execution of these laws, the whole beneficent spirit of our institutions seems to have been reversed. Instead of presuming every man to be upright and true, until the contrary appears, every applicant seems to be presupposed to be false and perjured. Instead of bestowing these hard-earned rewards with alacrity, they appear to have been refused, or yielded with reluctance; and to send away the war-worn veteran, bowed down with the infirmities of age, empty from your door, seems to have been deemed an act of merit.

So rigid has been the construction and application of the existing law, that cases most strictly within its provisions of meritorious service and abject poverty, have been excluded from its benefits. Yet gentlemen tell us, that this law, so administered, is too liberal; that it goes too far, and they would repeal it. They would take back even the little which they have given! And is this possible? Look abroad upon this wide-extended land, upon its wealth, its happiness, its hopes; and then turn to the aged soldier, who gave you all, and see him descend in neglect and poverty to the tomb!! The time is short.

A few years, and these remnants of a former age will no longer be seen. Then we shall indulge in unavailing regrets for our present apathy; for how can the ingenuous mind look upon the grave of an injured benefactor? How poignant the reflection, that the time for reparation and atonement has

PENSIONERS' MUSTER.

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gone forever! In what bitterness of soul shall we look back upon the infatuation which shall have cast aside an opportunity which can never return, to give peace to our consciences!

We shall then endeavor to stifle our convictions, by empty honors to their bones. We shall raise high the monument, and trumpet loud their deeds, but it will be all in vain. It can not warm the hearts which shall have sunk cold and comfortless to the earth. This is no illusion. How often do we see in our public gazettes a pompous display of honors to the memory of some veteran patriot, who was suffered to linger out his latter days in unregarded penury!

"How proud we can press to the funeral array

Of him whom we shunned in his sickness and sorrow;
And bailiffs may seize his last blanket to-day,

Whose pall shall be borne up by heroes to-morrow.”

We are profuse in our expressions of gratitude to the soldiers of the revolution. We can speak long and loud in their praise, but when asked to bestow something substantial upon them, we hesitate and palter. To them we owe everything, even the soil which we tread, and the air of freedom which we breathe. Let us not turn them houseless from habitations which they erected, and refuse them even a pittance from the exuberant fruits of their own labors.

Ex. CXVI. PENSIONERS' MUSTER, AUG. 3, 1807.

THEY once marched in glory-their banners were streaming, With the glance of the sunbeam their armor was gleaming; Then hope swelled their bosoms; then firm was their treadAnd round them the garlands of victory were spread.

Then little they dreamed that the country they saved-
That the country for whom every danger they braved,
Would forget their desert when old age should come on,
And leave them forsaken-their comforts all gone.

They now march in glory-still memory sheds
The brightest of halos around their gray heads;
Though faltering the footstep, though rayless the eye,
Remembrance still dwells on the days long gone by.

Yes; saviours and sires! though the pittance be small
Which your country awards, and that pittance your all;
Though the cold hand of poverty press on your frames,
Yet your children shall bless you, and boast of your names.

And when life with its toil and afflictions shall cease,
Oh! then may you hail the bright angel of peace;
Then freemen shall weep o'er the veteran's grave,
And around it the laurel and cypress shall wave.

Ex. CXVII.-REMONSTRANCE AGAINST THE WAR OF 1812–15.

Speech in Congress, Dec. 10, 1811.

JOHN RANDOLPH.

I KNOW not how gentlemen calling themselves republicans can advocate such a war. What was their doctrine in 1798 and '9, when the command of the army-that highest of all possible trusts in any government, be the form what it may, was reposed in the bosom of the father of his country; in the sanctuary of a nation's love; the only hope that never came in vain! Republicans were then unwilling to trust a standing army even to his hands, who had given proof that he was above all human temptation. Where now is the revolutionary hero to whom you are about to confide this sacred trust? To whom will you confide the charge of leading the flower of our youth to the heights of Abraham? When Washington himself was at the head, did you show such reluctance, feel such scruples; and are you now nothing loth, fearless of every consequence?

Imputations of British influence have been uttered against the opponents of the war. Against whom are these charges brought? Against men who, in the war of the Revolution, were in the councils of the nation, or fighting the battles of your country! Strange that we should have no objection to any other people or government, civilized or savage, in the whole world, than the British! The great autocrat of all the Russias receives the homage of our high consideration. The dey of Algiers and his divan of pirates are very civil, good sort of people, with whom we find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of peace and amity. "Turks,

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Jews and Infidels," barbarians and savages of every clime and color, are welcome to our arms. With chiefs of banditti, negro or mulatto, we can treat and can trade. Name, however, but England, and all our antipathies are up in arms against her.

Against whom? Against those whose blood runs in our veins; in common with whom we claim Shakspeare, and Newton, and Chatham for our countrymen; whose form of government is the freest on earth, our own only excepted; from whom every valuable principle in our own institutions has been borrowed-representation, jury trial, voting the supplies, writ of habeas corpus, our whole civil and criminal jurisprudence; against our fellow Protestants, identical in blood, in language, in religion with ourselves. In what school did the worthies of our land, the Washingtons, Henrys, Hancocks, Franklins, Rutledges of America learn those principles of civil liberty which were so nobly asserted by their wisdom and valor? American resistance to British usurpation has not been more warmly cherished by these great men and their compatriots, than by Chatham and his illustrious associates in the British Parliament. I acknowledge the influence of a Shakspeare and a Milton upon_my imagination, of a Locke upon my understanding, of a Sydney upon my political principles, of a Chatham upon qualities which I would to God I possessed in common with that illustrious man! of a Tillotson, a Sherlock, a Porteus, upon my religion. This is a British influence which I can never shake off.

Before this miserable force of ten thousand men is raised to take Canada, I beg gentlemen to look at the state of defence at home; to count the cost of the enterprise before it is set on foot, not when it may be too late-when the best blood of the country may be spilt, and nought but empty coffers left to defray the expense. Once more, I beseech gentlemen, before they run their heads against this post, Quebec, to count the cost.

Ex. CXVIII.-REASONS FOR PROSECUTING THE WAR.

Speech in Congress, Dec. 12, 1811.

JOHN C. CALHOUN.*

MR. SPEAKER: There are many reasons why this country should never resort to war but for causes the most urgent and necessary. It is sufficient that, under a government like ours, none but such will justify it in the eye of the nation; and were I not satisfied that such is our present cause, I certainly would be no advocate of the proposition now before the house.

Sir, I consider the war, should it ensue, justifiable and necessary by facts undoubted and universally admitted. The extent, duration, and character of the injuries received; the failure of those peaceful means hitherto resorted to for the redress of our wrongs, is my proof that it is necessary. Why should I mention the impressment of our seamen; depredation on every branch of our commerce, including the direct export trade, continued for years, and made under laws which professedly undertake to regulate our trade with other nations; negotiation resorted to, time after time, till it has become hopeless; the restrictive system persisted in, to avoid war, and in the vain expectation of returning justice? The evil still grows, and in each succeeding year swells in extent and pretension beyond the preceding. The question, even in the opinion and admission of our opponents in this House, is reduced to this single point: which shall we do, abandon or defend our own commercial and maritime rights, and the personal liberties of our citizens employed in exerting them? Sir, which alternative this House ought to embrace, it is not for me to say. I hope the decision is made already by a higher authority than the voice of any man. It

*Mr. Calhoun had taken his seat in the House of Representatives for the first time about a month previous to the date of this speech, and had thus but just entered upon that long and influential public career which terminated only with his death, in March, 1850. His début was made at a critical period in our history, when the crisis was just approaching which was to decide the question of a war with Great Britain or submission to her power; he warmly espoused the war policy, and soon acquired that commanding position in political life which he ever afterwards retained. In after years his pernicious doctrine of "State Rights was destined to work great injury to his country, and finally to plunge the Southern States into rebellion against the Federal government. Few men have left their mark more decidedly on the history of this country.

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