of all possible forms-a pure despotism. But a separa. tion of departments, so far as practicable, and the preservation of clear lines of division between them, is the fundamental idea in the creation of all our constitutions; and doubtless the continuance of regulated liberty depends on maintaining these boundaries.

THE STRUGGLE OF LIBERTY.

The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of Executive power. Whoever has engaged in her sacred cause, from the days of the downfall of those great aristocracies, which had stood between the king and the people, to the time of our own independence has struggled for the accomplishment of that single object. On the long list of champions of human freedom, there is not one name damned by the reproach of advo. cating the extension of executive authority; on the con trary, the uniform and steady purpose of all such champions has been, to limit and restrain it. To this end the spirit of liberty, growing more and more enlightened, and more and more vigorous from age to age, has been battering for centuries against the solid buttments of the feudal system. To this end all that could be gained from the imprudence, snatched from the weakness or wrung from the necessities of crowned heads, has been carefully gathered up, secured, and hoarded, as the rich treasures, the very jewels of liberty. To this end, po. pular and representative right has kept up its warfare against prerogative with various success; sometimes writing the history of a whole age in blood, sometimes witnessing the martyrdoms of Sydneys and Russels; often baffled and repulsed, but still gaining, on the whole,

and holding what it gained with a grasp which nothing but the complete extinction of its own being could compel it to relinquish. At length the great conquest over executive power in the leading western States of Europe, has been accomplished. The feudal system, like other stupendous fabrics of past ages, is known only by the rubbish it has left behind it. Crowned heads have been compelled to submit to the restraints of law; and the PEOPLE, with that intelligence and that spirit which make their voice resistless, have been able to say to prerogative, "thus far shalt thou come, and no farther." I need hardly say, that into the full enjoyment of all which Europe has reached only through such slow and painful steps, we sprang at once, by the declaration of independence and by the establishment of free representative government; governments, borrowing more or less from the models of other free States, but strengthened, secured, improved in their symmetry, and deepened in their foundation, by those great men of our own country, whose names will be as familiar to future times as if they were written on the arch of the sky.

MASSACHUSETTS.

I shall enter on no encomium of Massachusetts-she needs none. There she is behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history. The world has it by heart. The past at least is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain for ever. The bones of her sons, fallen in the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every State from New-England to Georgia; and there they will lie for ever. And, sir,

where American Liberty raised its first voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it; if party strife and blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it; if folly and madness, if uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraint, shall succeed to separate it from that union by which alone its existence is made sure; in the end, by the side of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked, it will stretch forth its arm with whatever of vigor it may still retain over the friends who gather round it; and it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin.

CHARACTER OF FRIENDS.

When, sir, were the Society of Friends found to be political agitators, ambitious partisans or panic makers? When have they disturbed the community with false cries of public danger, or joined in any clamor against just, and wise, and constitutional government? Sir, if there be any political fault fairly imputable to the Friends, I think it is rather, if they will allow me to say so, that they are sometimes a little too indifferent about the exercise of their political rights; a little too ready to leave all matters respecting government in the hands of others. Not ambitious, usually, of honor or office, but peaceable and industrious, they desire only the safety of liberty, civil and religious, the security of property, and the protection of honest labor. All they ask of government is, that it be wisely and safely adinin. istered. They are not desirous to interfere in its admin.

istration. Yet, sir, a crisis can move them, and they think a crisis now exists. They bow down to nothing human, which raises its head higher than the constitution, or above the laws.

RELIGIOUS FEELING.

On the general question of Slavery, a great portion of the community is already strongly excited. The subject has not only attracted attention as a question of politics, but it has struck a far deeper-toned chord. It has ar rested the religious feeling of the country; it has taken strong hold on the consciences of men. He is a rash man indeed, and little conversant with human nature, and especially has he a very erroneous estimate of the character of the people of this country, who supposes that a feeling of this kind is to be trifled with or despised. It will assuredly cause itself to be respected. It may be reasoned with, it may be made willing, I believe it is entirely willing, to fulfil all existing engagements and all existing duties, to uphold and defend the constitution as it is established with whatever regrets about some provi. sions which it does actually contain. But to coerce it into silence-to endeavor to restrain its free expression, to seek to compress and confine it, warm as it is, and more heated as such endeavors would inevitably render it should all this be attempted? I know nothing, even in the Constitution or in the Union itself, which would not be endangered by the explosion which might follow.

THE SOUTH.

Sir, does the honorable gentleman suppose it in his power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce

envy in my bosom? No, sir; increased gratification and delight rather. Sir, I thank God if I am gifted with little of that spirit which is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, I trust, of that other spirit which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, here in my place in the senate, or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because it happened to spring up beyond the little limits of my own state or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country; or if I see an uncommon endowment of heaven-if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the southand if, moved by local prejudice or gangrened by state jealousy, I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame; may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth! Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections-let me indulge in refreshing remembrance of the past-let me remind you, that in early times no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and of feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that harmony might again return. Shoulder to shoulder they went through the revolution; hand in hand they stood round the administration of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind feeling, if it exist, alienation and distrust, are the growth unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are weeds, the seeds of which, that great arm never scattered.

THE POOR AND THE RICH.

I know that under the shade of the roofs of the Capi