OUR COUNTRY IS ONE GRAND POEM. SIR, I dare not trust myself to speak of my country with the rapture which I habitually feel when I contemplate her marvellous history. But this I will say,-that, on my return to it, after an absence of only four years, I was filled with wonder at all I saw and all I heard. What is to be compared with it? I found New York grown up to almost double its former size, with the air of a great capital, instead of a mere flourishing commercial town, as I had known it. I listened to accounts of voyages of a thousand miles, in magnificent steamboats, on the waters of those great lakes, which, but the other day, I left sleeping in the primeval silence of nature, in the recesses of a vast wilderness; and I felt that there is a grandeur and a majesty in this irresistible onward march of a race, created, as I believe, and elected, to possess and people a continent, which belong to few other objects, either of the moral or material world. We may become so accustomed to such things that they shall make as little impression upon our minds as the glories of the heavens above us; but, looking on them, lately, as with the eye of the stranger, I felt, what a recent English traveller is said to have remarked, that, far from being without poetry, as some have vainly alleged, our whole country is one great poem. Sir, it is so; and if there be a man who can think of what is doing, in all parts of this most blessed of all lands, to embellish and advance it,-who can contemplate that living mass of intelligence, activity, and improvement as it rolls on, in its sure and steady progress, to the uttermost extremities of the West, —who can see scenes of savage desolation transformed, almost with the suddenness of enchantment, into those of fruitfulness and beauty, crowned with flourishing cities, filled with the noblest of all populations,-if there be a man, I say, that can witness all this, passing under his very eyes, without feeling his heart beat high, and his imagination warmed and transported by it, be sure that the raptures of song exist not for him. HUGH SWINTON LEGARÉ. VAST TERRITORY NO BAR TO UNION. EXTENT of country, in my conception, ought to be no bar to the adoption of a good government. No extent on earth seems to me too great, provided the laws be wisely made and executed. The principles of representation and responsibility may pervade a large as well as a small territory, and tyranny is as easily introduced into a small as into a large district. Union is the rock of our salvation. Our safety, our political happiness, our existence, depend on the union of these States. Without union, the people of this and the other States will undergo the unspeakable calamities which discord, faction, turbulence, war, and bloodshed, have continually produced in other countries. Without union, we throw away all those blessings for which we have so earnestly fought! Without union, there is no peace in the land! The American spirit ought to be mixed with American pride, -pride to see the Union magnificently triumphant. Let that glorious pride which once defied the British thunder, reanimate you again. Let it not be recorded of Americans, that, after having performed the most gallant exploits, after having overcome the most astonishing difficulties, and after having gained the admiration of the world, by their incomparable valor and policy, they lost their acquired reputation, lost their national consequence and happiness, by their own indiscretion. Let no future historian inform posterity, that Americans wanted wisdom and virtue to concur in any regular, efficient government. Catch the present moment! Seize it with avidity! It may be lost, never to be regained; and if the Union be lost now, it will remain so forever. JOHN RANDOLPH. INTERNAL IMPROVEMENT A BOND OF UNION. On this subject of national power, what can be more important than a perfect unity in every part, in feelings and sentiments? And what can tend more powerfully to produce it than overcoming the effects of distance? No country enjoying free dom ever occupied anything like as great an extent of territory as this republic. One hundred years ago the most profound philosophers did not believe it to be even possible. They did not suppose it possible that a pure republic could exist on as great a scale even as the island of Great Britain. What then was considered as chimerical, we have now the felicity to enjoy; and, what is more remarkable, such is the happy mould of our government, so well are the State and general powers blended, that much of our political happiness draws its origin from the extent of our republic. It has exempted us from most of the causes which distracted the small republics of antiquity. Let it not, however, be forgotten, let it be forever kept in mind, that it exposes us to the greatest of all calamities, next to the loss of liberty,—even to disunion itself. We are great, and rapidly, I was about to say fearfully, growing. This is our pride and our danger, our weakness and our strength. Little does he deserve to be intrusted with the liberties of this people who does not raise his mind to these truths. We are under the most imperious obligations to counteract every tendency to disunion. The strongest of all cement is, undoubtedly, the wisdom, justice, and, above all, the moderation of this House; yet the great subject on which we are now deliberating, in this respect, deserves the most serious consideration. Whatever impedes the intercourse of the extremes with this, the centre of the republic, weakens the Union. The more enlarged the sphere of commercial circulation, the more extended that of social intercourse; the more strongly we are bound together, the more inseparable are our destinies. Those who understand the human heart best know how powerfully distance tends to break the sympathies of our nature. Nothing, not even dissimilarity of language, tends more to estrange man from man. Let us, then, bind the republic together with a perfect system of roads and canals. Let us conquer space. It is thus, the most distant part of the republic will be brought within a few days' travel of the centre; it is thus, that a citizen of the West will read the news of Boston, still moist from the press. JOHN CALDWELL CALHOUN. THE SHIP OF STATE. BREAK up the Union of these States because there are acknowledged evils in our system? Is it so easy a matter, then, to make everything in the actual world conform exactly to the ideal pattern we have conceived, in our minds, of absolute right? Suppose the fatal blow were struck, and the bonds which fasten together these States were severed, would the evils and mis chiefs that would be experienced by those who are actually members of this vast republican community be all that would ensue? Certainly not. We are connected with the several nations and races of the world as no other people has ever been connected. We have opened our doors and invited emigration to our soil from all lands. Our invitation has been accepted. Thousands have come at our bidding. Thousands more are on the way. Other thousands still are standing a-tiptoe on the shores of the Old World, eager to find a passage to the land where bread may be had for labor, and where man is treated as man. In our political family almost all nations are represented. The several varieties of the race are here subjected to a social fusion, out of which Providence designs to form ፡ a new man." We are in this way teaching the world a great lesson,namely, that men of different languages, habits, manners, and creeds can live together, and vote together, and, if not pray and worship together, yet in near vicinity, and do all in peace, and be, for certain purposes at least, one people. And is not this lesson of some value to the world, especially if we can teach it not by theory merely, but through a successful example? Has not this lesson, thus conveyed, some connection with the world's progress towards that far-off period to which the human mind looks for the fulfilment of its vision of a perfect social state? It may safely be asserted that this Union could not be dissolved without disarranging and convulsing every part of the globe. Not in the indulgence of a vain confidence did our fathers build the ship of State and launch it upon the waters. We will exclaim, in the noble words of one of our poets,—* * Longfellow. "Thou too, sail on, O ship of State! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee! Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Are all with thee,-are all with thee!" WILLIAM PARSONS LUNT. THE SOUTH IN THE REVOLUTION. If there be one State in the Union, and I say it not in a boastful spirit, that may challenge comparisons with any other, for an uniform, zealous, ardent, and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that State is South Carolina. From the very commencement 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 ceased at the sound; every man became at |