credit. Under its benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proof of its utility and its blessings, and although our country has stretched out wider and wider, and our population stretched farther and farther, they have not overturned its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness.

I have not allowed myself to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion, to see whether, in my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and destroyed.

While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states

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dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto, no such miserable interrogatory as, "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first, and union afterwards,”—but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment dear to every true American heart-"Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"

THE SOUTH AND THE UNION

ROBERT Y. HAYNE

This extract is taken from Hayne's reply to Webster in the famous debate on 66 Foote's Resolution," between Webster and Hayne in the United States Senate. Webster attacked Hayne's views concerning "states' rights," in a speech delivered January 20, 1830. On January 21st, Hayne made a vigorous reply, from which the following extract is taken.

If there be one state in the Union that may challenge comparison with any other for a uniform, zealous, ardent, and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that state is South Carolina. From the very commence

ment of the Revolution up to this hour, there is no sacrifice, however great, she has not cheerfully made; no service she has ever hesitated to perform. She has adhered to you in your prosperity, but in your adversity she has clung to you with more than filial affection. No matter what was the condition of her domestic affairs, though deprived of her resources, divided by parties, or surrounded by difficulties, the call of the country has been to her as the voice of God. Domestic discord has ceased at the sound: every man became at once reconciled to his brethren, and the sons of Carolina were all seen crowding together to the temple, bringing their gifts to the altar of their common country.

What was the conduct of the South during the Revolution? I honor New England for her conduct in that glorious struggle; but great as is the praise which belongs to her, I think at least equal honor is due to the South. They espoused the cause of their brethren with generous zeal which did not suffer them to stop to calculate their interest in the dispute. Favorites of the mother country, possessed of neither ships nor seamen to create commercial rivalship, they might have found in their situation a guaranty that their trade would be forever fostered and protected by Great Britain. But trampling on all considerations, either of interest or of safety, they rushed into the conflict, and, fighting for principle, periled all in the sacred cause of freedom.

Never were there exhibited, in the history of the world, higher examples of noble daring, dreadful suf

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fering, and heroic endurance, than by the Whigs of Carolina during that Revolution. The whole state, from the mountains to the sea, was overrun by an overwhelming force of the enemy. The fruits of industry perished on the spot where they were produced, or were consumed by the foe. The "plains of Carolina " drank up the most precious blood of her citizens; black and smoking ruins marked the places which had been the habitations of her children. They were driven from their homes into the gloomy and almost impenetrable swamps; even there the spirit of liberty survived, and South Carolina, sustained by the example of her Sumters and her Marions, proved by her conduct that though her soil might be overrun, the spirit of her people was invincible.

THE ADMISSION OF CALIFORNIA

WILLIAM H. SEWARD

Mr.Seward's famous speech on the admission of California was delivered in the United States Senate, March 11, 1850.

Four years ago, California, a Mexican province, scarcely inhabited and quite unexplored, was unknown even to our usually immoderate desires, except by a harbor capacious and tranquil, which only statesmen then foresaw would be useful in the Oriental commerce of a far distant, if not merely chimerical, future.

A year ago, California was a mere military dependency of our own, and we were celebrating, with

unanimity and enthusiasm, its acquisition, with its newly discovered, but yet untold and untouched mineral wealth, as the most auspicious of many and unparalleled achievements.

To-day, California is a state more populous than the least, and richer than several of the greatest of our thirty states. This same California, thus rich and populous, is here asking admission into the Union, and finds us debating the dissolution of the Union itself.

No wonder if we are perplexed with ever-changing embarrassments! No wonder if we are appalled by ever-increasing responsibilities! No wonder if we are bewildered by the ever-augmenting magnitude and rapidity of national vicissitudes!

Shall California be received? For myself, upon my individual judgment and conscience, I answer, yes. For myself, as an instructed representative of one of the states of that one even of the states which is soonest and longest to be pressed in commercial and political rivalry by the new commonwealth - I answer, yes; let California come in. Every new state, whether she come from the East or from the West— every new state, coming from whatever part of the continent she may-is always welcome. But California, that comes from the clime where the West dies away into the rising East; California, which bounds. at once the empire and the continent; California, the youthful queen of the Pacific, in her robes of freedom, gorgeously inlaid with gold, is doubly welcome.