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when compared with the permanent calamities of arbitrary power. The one is a sweeping deluge, an awful tornado, which quickly passes away; but the other is a volcano, continually ejecting rivers of lava-an earthquake burying whole countries in ruin. The alleged inaptitude of man for liberty is the effect of the oppressions which he has suffered; and until a free government can shed its propitious influence over time-until perhaps, a new generation has risen up un der the new order of things, with new habits and new prin ciples, society will be in a state of agitation and mutation; fction will be the lord of the ascendant, and frenzy and fury, denunciation and proscription, will be the order of the day. The dilemma is inevitable. Either the happiness of the many or the predominance of the few must be sacrificed. The flame of liberty and the light of knowledge emanate from the same sacred fire, and subsist on the same element; and the seeds of instruction widely disseminated will, like the serpent's teeth, in the pagan mythology, that were sown into the earth, rise up against oppression in the shape of the iron men of Cadmus. In such a case who can hesitate to make an election? The factions and convulsions of free governments are not so sanguinary in character, or terrific in effects, as the animosities and intestine wars of monarchies about the succession, the insurrectious of the military, the proscriptions of the priesthood, and the cruelties of the administration. The spirit of a Republic is the friend, and the genius of a monarchy is the enemy of peace. The potentates of the earth have, for centuries back, maintained large standing armies, and, on the most frivolous pretexts, have created havoc and desolation. And when we compare the world as it is under arbitrary power, with the world as it was under free republics, what an awful contrast does it exhibit! What a solemu lesson does it inculcate! The ministers of famine and pestilence, of death and destruction, have formed the van and brought up the rear of despotic authority. The monuments of the arts, the fabrics of genius and skill, and the sublime erections of piety and science, have been prostrated in the dust; the places where Demosthenes and Cicero spoke, where Homer and Virgil sang, and where Plato and Aristotle taught, are now exhibited as mementoes of the perishable nature of human glory. The forum of Rome is converted into a market for cattle; the sacred fountain of Castalia is surrounded, not by the muses and graces, but by the semi-barbarous girls of Albania;

the laurel groves, and the deified heights of Parnassus, are the asylum of banditti; Babylon can only be traced by its bricks; the sands of the desert have overwhelmed the splendid city of Palmyra, and are daily encroaching on the fertile territories of the Nile; and the malaria has driven man from the fairest portions of Italy, and pursued him to the very gates of the Eternal City.

XLIII.-RESISTANCE TO OPPRESSION.

J. MANCY.

WE are called upon as citizens and as men, by the highest motives of duty, interest and happiness, to resist the innovations attempted on our government; to cultivate in ourselves and others the genuine sentiments of liberty, patriotism and virtue. After a long series of peace, prosperity and happiness, you are threatened with all the horrors and cruelties of war. The tempest thickens around you, and the thunder already begins to roar. A nation hardened in the science of human butchery; accustomed to victory and plunder; exonerated from all those restraints by which civilized nations are governed, lifts over your heads the iron sceptre of despotic power. To terrify you into an unmanly submission, she holds up to your view Venice, shorn of her glory; Holland, robbed, degraded and debased; Switzerland, with her desolated fields, smoking villages and lofty cliffs, reeking in blood amidst the clouds. In the full prospect of this mighty group, this thickening battalion of horrors, call up all your courage; fly back to the consecrated altar of your liberty, and while your souls kindle at the hallowed fire, invigorate your attachment to the birth-day of your independence; to the government of your choice; feel with additional weight the necessity of united wisdom, councils and exertions, and vow to the God of your fathers, that your lives and fortunes; that everything you esteem sacred and dear; that all your energies and resources, both of body and mind, are indissolubly bound to your sovereignty and freedom. On all sides you now behold the most energetic measures of defence. All is full of life, and ardor, and zeal. The brave youth, the flower and strength of our country, rush into the field, and

the eye of immortal WASHINGTON lightens along their embattled ranks. Approach these hallowed shores, ye butchers, who have slaughtered half Europe-you will find every defile a THERMOPYLE, and every p.ain a MARATHON! We already behold our fleet whitening the clouds with its canvass, and sweeping the ocean with its thunder. The Gallic flag drops to American valor, and our intrepid sailors sing victory in the midst of the tempest. Fellow-citizens, it is not by tribute, it is not by submission-it is by resolution, it is by courage, that we are to save our country. Let our efforts and our wisdom concentrate in the common cause, and show to the world, that we are worthy that freedom which was won by the valor and blood of our fathers. Let our government, our religion and our liberty, fostered by our care, and protected by our exertions, descend through the long range of succeeding ages, till all the pride and presumption of human arrangements, shall bow to the empire of universal love, and the glory of all sublunary grandeur be forever extinguished.

XLIV. DEMOCRACY.

DEMOCRATIC REVIEW.

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DEMOCRACY must finally triumph in human reason, cause its foundations are deep in the human heart. great mass, whose souls are bound by a strong fraternal sympathy, once relieved from ancient prejudices, will stand forth as its moveless champions. It fastens the affections of men, as the shield of their present liberties and the ground of their future hopes. They perceive in it a saving faith, a redeeming truth, a regulating power. It is the only creed which does justice to man, or that can bind the entire race in chains of brotherhood and love. Nothing sinks so deep into the hearts of the multitude, for nothing else is so identified with their moral and social good. Though the high and mighty of the earth may deride its simple truths, these are willing to die in their defence. Those truths are blended too closely with all for which it is worthy to live and glorious to perish, to be relinquished without a struggle or a pang. They are too firmly allied to the imperishable hopes, the deathless

aspirations, the onward triumphant march of humanity, ever to be deserted. The fortunes of individuals may changeempires be born and blotted out-kings rise and fall—wealth, honor, distinction, fade as the dying pageant of a dream—but Democracy must live. While man lasts, it must live. Its origin is among the necessary relations of things, and it can only cease to be when eternal truth is no more.

Democracy, in its true sense, is the last best revelation of human thought-I speak, of course, of that true and genuine Democracy which breathes the air and lives in the light of Christianity-whose essence is justice, and whose object is human progress. I have no sympathy with much that usurps the name, like that fierce and turbulent spirit of ancient Greece, which was only the monstrous misgrowth of faction and fraud, or that Democracy whose only distinction is the slave-like observance of party usages-the dumb repetition of party creeds; and still less for that wild, reckless spirit of mobism which triumphs with remorseless and fiendish exultation, over all lawful authority, all constituted restraint. The object of our worship is far different from these; the offering is made to a spirit which asserts a virtuous freedom of act and thought-which insists on the rights of men- -demands the equal diffusion of every social advantage, asks the impartial participation of every gift of God— sympathises with the down-trodden-rejoices in their elevation-and proclaims to the world the sovereignty, not of the people barely, but of immutable justice and truth.

No other doctrine exerts a mightier power over the weal or woe of the whole human race. In times which are gone, it has been the moving spring of revolutions—has aroused the ferocious energies of oppressed nations-has sounded into the ears of despots and dynasties the fearful moanings of coming storms-has crimsoned fields of blood--has numbered troops of martyrs-has accelerated the downfall of emperors —has moved the foundations of mighty thrones. Even now millions of imprisoned spirits await its march with anxious solicitude and hope. It must go forth, like a bright angel of God, to unbar the prison door, to succor the needy, heal the sick, relieve the distressed, and pour a flood of light and Love into the darkened intellects and dreary hearts of the sons of

men.

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XLV. OBLIGATION OF TREATIES.

FISHER AMES.

WILL any man affirm, the American nation is engaged by good faith to the British nation; but this engagement is nothing to this House! Such a man is not to be reasoned with-such a doctrine is a coat of mail, that would turn the edge of all the weapons of argument, if they were sharper than a sword. Will it be imagined the King of Great Britain and the President are mutually bound by the treaty ; but the two nations are free?

This, sir, is a cause that would be dishonored and betrayed if I contented myself with appealing only to the understanding. It is too cold, and its processes are too slow for the occasion. I desire to thank God, that, since he has given me an intellect so fallible, he has impressed upon me an instinct that is sure. On a question of shame and honor, reasoning is sometimes useless, and vain. I feel the decision in my pulse if it throws no light upon the brain, it kindles a fire at the heart. It is not easy to deny, it is impossible to doubt, that a treaty imposes an obligation on the American nation. It would be childish to consider the President and Senate obliged, and the nation and House free. What is the obligation? perfect or imperfect? If perfect, the debate is brought to a conclusion. If imperfect, how large a part of our faith is pawned ? Is half our honor put at risk, and is that half too cheap to be redeemed? How long has this hair-splitting subdivision of good faith been discovered, and why has it escaped the researches of writers on the law of nations? Should we add a new chapter to that law; or insert this doctrine as a supplement to, or more properly a repeal of the ten commandments?

It is painful, I hope it is superfluous, to make even the supposition, that America should furnish the occasion of this opprobrium. No, let me not even imagine, that a Republican government, sprung, as our own is, from a people enlightened and uncorrupted, a government whose origin is right, and whose daily discipline is duty, can, upon solemn debate, make its option to be faithless; can dare to act what despots dare not avow, what our own example evinces the States of Barbary are unsuspected of. No, let me rather make the supposition, that Great Britain refuses to execute the treaty,