shocked high heaven; at the ferocious deeds of a savage and infuriated soldiery, stimulated and urged on by the clergy of a fanatical and inimical religion, and rioting in all the excesses of blood and butchery, at the mere details of which the heart sickens and recoils?

But, sir, it is not for Greece alone that I desire to see the measure adopted. It will give her but little support, and that purely of a moral kind. It is principally for America, for the credit and character of our common country, for our own unsullied name, that I hope to see it pass. What appearance, Mr. Chairman, on the page of history, would a record like this exhibit? "In the month of January, in the year of our Lord and Savior 1824, while all European Christendom beheld with cold and unfeeling indifference, the unexampled wrongs and inexpressible misery of Christian Greece, a proposition was made in the congress of the United States, almost the sole, the last, the greatest depository of human hope and freedom, the representatives of a gallant nation, containing a million of freemen ready to fly to arms, while the people of that nation were spontaneously expressing its deep-toned feeling, and the whole continent, by one simultaneous emotion, was rising and solemnly and anxiously supplicating and invoking high heaven to spare and succor Greece, and to invigorate her arms, in her glorious cause, while temples and senate-houses were alike resounding with one burst of generous and holy sympathy,—in the year of our Lord and Savior, that Savior of Greece and of us—a proposition was offered in the American congress to send a messenger to Greece, to inquire into her state and condition, with a kind expression of our good wishes and our sympathies-and it was rejected!" Go home, if you can; go home, if you dare, to your constituents, and tell them that you voted it down. Meet, if you can, the appalling countenance of those who sent you here, and tell them that you shrunk from the declaration of your own sentiments :-that you cannot tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefinable danger, drove you from your purpose:-that the spectres of scimitars, and crowns, and crescents, gleamed before you, and alarmed you:-and that you suppressed all the noble feel ings prompted by religion, by liberty, by national independence, and by humanity. I cannot, sir, bring myself to believe that such will be the feelings of a majority of this committee. But, for myself, though every friend of the cause should desert it, and I be left to stand alone with the gentleman from Massachusetts, I will give to his resolution the poor sanction of my unqualified approbation.

62. THE CRIMINALITY OF DUELING.-Nott.

Hamilton yielded to the force of an imperious custom. And yielding, he sacrificed a life in which all had an interest—and he is lost-lost to his country-lost to his family-lost to us. For this...... act, because he disclaimed it, and was penitent, I forgive him. But there are those whom I cannot forgive. I mean not his antagonist-over whose erring steps, if there be tears in heaven, a pious mother looks down and weeps. If he be capable of feeling, he suffers already all that humanity can suffer. Suffers, and wherever he may fly will suffer, with the poignant recollection of having taken the life of one who was too magnanimous in return to attempt his own. Had he have known this, it must have paralyzed his arm while he pointed, at so incorruptible a bosom, the instrument of death. Does he know this now, his heart, if it be not adamant, must soften-if it be not ice, it must melt......But on this article I forbear Stained with blood as he is, if he be penitent, I forgive himand if he be not, before these altars, where all of us appear as suppliants, I wish not to excite your vengeance, but rather, in behalf of an object rendered wretched and pitiable by crime, to wake your prayers.

But I have said, and I repeat it, there are those whom I cannot forgive.

I cannot forgive that minister at the altar, who has hitherto forborne to remonstrate on this subject. I cannot forgive that public prosecutor, who, entrusted with the duty of avenging his country's wrongs, has seen these wrongs, and taken no measures to avenge them. I cannot forgive that judge upon the bench, or that governor in the chair of state, who has lightly passed over such offences. I cannot forgive the public in whose opinion the duelist finds a sanctuary. I cannot forgive you, my brethren, who till this late hour have been silent, whilst successive murders were committed. No; I cannot forgive you, that you have not in common with the freemen of his state, raised your voice to the powers that be, and loudly and explicitly demanded an execution of your laws. Demanded this in a manner, which, if it did not reach the ear of government, would at least have reached the heavens, and have pleaded your excuse before the God that filleth them: in whose presence as I stand, I should not feel myself innocent of the blood which crieth against us, had I been silent. But I have not been silent. Many of you who hear me are my witnesses-the walls of yonder temple, where I have heretofore addressed you, are my

witnesses, how freely I have animadverted on this subject, in the presence both of those who have violated the laws, and of those whose indispensable duty it is to see the laws executed on those who violate them.

I enjoy another opportunity; and would to God, I might be permitted to approach for once the last scene of death. Would to God, I could there assemble on the one side the disconsolate mother with her seven fatherless children-and on the other those who administer the justice of my country. Could I do this, I would point them to these sad objects. I would entreat them, by the agonies of bereaved fondness, to listen to the widow's heartfelt groans; to mark the orphan's sighs and tears -and having done this, I would uncover the breathless corpse of Hamilton-I would lift from his gaping wound his bloody mantle-I would hold it up to heaven before them, and I would ask, in the name of God, I would ask, whether at the sight of it they felt no compunction. Ye who have hearts of pity-ye who have experienced the anguish of dissolving friendshipwho have wept, and still weep over the moldering ruins of departed kindred, ye can enter into this reflection.

O thou disconsolate widow! robbed, so cruelly robbed, and in so short a time, both of a husband and a son! what must be the plenitude of thy sufferings! Could we approach thee, gladly would we drop the tear of sympathy, and pour into thy bleeding bosom the balm of consolation. But how could we comfort her whom God hath not comforted! To his throne, let us lift up our voice and weep. O God! if thou art still the widow's husband, and the father of the fatherless-if, in the fullness of thy goodness, there be yet mercies in store for miserable mortals, pity, O pity this afflicted mother, and grant that her hapless orphans may find a friend, a benefactor, a father in Thee!

63.

AGAINST THE INVASION OF CANADA.-Gaston.

Mr. Chairman,―There is something in the character of a war made upon the people of a country, to force them to abandon a government which they cherish, and to become the subjects or the associates of the invaders, which necessarily involves calamities beyond those incident to ordinary wars.Among us some remain who remember the horrors of the invasion of the revolution, "and others of us have hung with reverence on the lips of narrative old age, as it related the interesting tale." Such a war is not a contest between those only

who seek for renown in military achievements, or the more humble mercenaries "whose business 'tis to die." It breaks in upon all the charities of domestic life, and interrupts all the pursuits of industry. The peasant quits his plough, and the mechanic is hurried from his shop, to commence without apprenticeship, the exercise of the trade of death. The irregularity of the resistance which is opposed to the invader, its occasional obstinacy, and occasional intermission, provoking every bad passion of his soldiery, is the excuse for plunder, lust, and cruelty. These atrocities exasperate the sufferers to revenge; and every weapon which anger can supply, and every device which ingenious hatred can conceive, is used to inflict vengeance on the detested foe.

But there is yet a more horrible war than this. As there is no anger so deadly as the anger of a friend, there is no war so ferocious as that which is waged between men of the same blood and formerly connected by the closest ties of affection. The pen of the historian confesses its inability to describe, the fervid fancy of the poet cannot realize, the horrors of a civil war. The invasion of Canada involves the miseries of both these species of war. You carry fire and sword among a people who are "united against you to a man ;" among a people who are happy in themselves, and satisfied with their condition; who view you not as coming to emancipate them from thraldom, but to reduce them to a foreign yoke. A people long and intimately connected with the bordering inhabitants of our country by commercial intercourse, by the ties of hospitality, and by the bonds of affinity and blood-a people, as to every social and individual relation, long identified with your own. It must be that such a war will rouse the spirit of sanguinary ferocity, that will overleap every holy barrier of nature and venerable usage of civilization. Already has "the bayonet of the brother been actually opposed to the breast of the brother." Merciful heaven! that those who have been rocked in the same cradle, by the same maternal hand-who have imbibed the first genial nourishment of infant existence from the same blessed source should be forced to contend in impious strife for the destruction of that being derived from their common parents. Every feeling of our nature cries aloud against it.

Before we enter, Mr. Chairman, upon this career of coldblooded massacre, it behooves us, by every obligation which we owe to God, to our fellow-men, and to ourselves, to be certain that the right is with us, or that the duty is imperative. Think for a moment, sir, on the consequences. True courage shuts not its eyes upon danger or its result. It views them

steadily and calmly. Already this Canadian war has a char acter sufficiently cruel. Your part of it may, perhaps, be ably sustained-your way through the Canadas may be traced afar off by the smoke of their burning villages-your path may be marked by the blood of their furious peasantry-you may render your course audible by the frantic shrieks of their women and children. But your own sacred soil will also be the scene of this drama of fiends. Your exposed and defenseless seaboard, the seaboard of the south, will invite a terrible vengeance. An intestine foe, too, may be roused to assassination and brutality. Yes, sir, a foe that will be found every where, in our fields, in our kitchens, and in our chambers; a foe, ignorant, degraded, by habits of servitude, uncurbed by moral restraints; a foe, whom no recollections of former kindness will soften, and whom the remembrance of severity will goad to frenzy; a foe, from whom nor age, nor infancy, nor beauty, will find reverence or pity. Yes, such a foe may be added to fill up the measure of our calamities.

Reflect, then, well, I conjure you, before reflection is too late; let not passion or prejudice dictate the decision; if erroneous, its reversal may be decreed by a nation's miseries, and by the world's abhorrence.

64.

THE UNITED STATES NAVY, FRANCE, AND GREAT BRITAIN.

-Lloyd.

If we are going to war with Great Britain, let it be a real, effectual, vigorous war. Give us a naval force; this is the sensitive chord you can touch, and which would have more effect on her than ten armies. Give us thirty swift sailing, wellappointed frigates-they are better than seventy-fours; two thirty-six gun frigates can be built and maintained for the same expense as one seventy-four, and for the purpose of annoyance, for which we want them, they are better than two seventyfours: they are managed easier, ought to sail faster, and can be navigated in shoaler water-we do not want seventy-fours -courage being equal, in line of battle ships, skill and experience will always ensure success-we are not ripe for them— but butt-bolt the side of an American to that of a British frigate, and though we should lose sometimes, we should win as often as we should lose. The whole revolutionary war, when we met at sea on equal terms, would bear testimony in favor of this opinion. Give us, then, this little fleet well appointed