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NO NATIONAL GREATNESS WITHOUT MORALITY. 57

perished. And now the mighty Napoleon who had resolved on universal dominion, he too is summoned to answer for the violation of that ancient law, "Thou shalt not covet anything which is thy neighbor's." And how is the mighty fallen! He, beneath whose proud footstep Europe trembled, he is now an exile at Elba, and now, finally, a prisoner on the rock of St. Helena, and there, on a barren island, in an unfrequented sea, in the crater of an extinguished volcano, there is the death-bed of the mighty conqueror. All his annexations have come to that! His last hour has now come, and he, the man of destiny, he who had rocked the world as with the throes of an earthquake, is now powerless, still-even as the beggar, so he died. On the wings of a tempest, that raged with unwonted fury, up to the throne of the only power that controlled him while he lived, went the fiery soul of that wonderful warrior, another witness to the existence of that eternal decree, that they who do not rule in righteousness, shall perish from the earth. He has found "room" at last and France, she too has found "room." Her "eagles" now no longer scream along the banks of the Danube, the Po, and the Borysthenes. They have returned to their old eyry between the Alps, the Rhine, and the Pyrenees; so shall it be with yours. You may carry them to the loftiest peaks of the Cordilleras, they may wave with insolent triumph in the halls of the Montezumas, the armed men of Mexico may quail before them, but the weakest hand in Mexico, uplifted in prayer to the God of Justice, may call down against you a power, in the presence of which, the iron hearts of riors shall be turned into ashes.

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XXXVI.-NO NATIONAL GREATNESS WITHOUT MORALITY.

W. E. CHANNING.

WHEN We look forward to the probable growth of this country; when we think of the millions of human beings who are to spread over our present territory; of the career of improvement and glory open to this new people; of the impulse which free institutions, if prosperous, may be expected to give to philosophy, religion, science, literature, and arts; of the vast field in which the experiment is to be

made, of what the unfettered powers of man may achieve; of the bright page of history which our fathers have filled, and of the advantages under which their toils and virtues have placed us for carrying on their work; when we think of all this, can we help, for a moment, surrendering ourselves to bright visions of our country's glory, before which all the glories of the past are to fade away? Is it presumption to say, that, if just to ourselves and all nations, we shall be felt through this whole continent, that we shall spread our language, institutions, and civilization, through a wider space than any nation has yet filled with a like beneficent influence? And are we prepared to barter these hopes, this sublime moral empire, for conquests by force? Are we prepared to sink to the level of unprincipled nations, to content ourselves with a vulgar, guilty greatness, to adopt in our youth maxims and ends which must brand our future with sordidness, oppression and shame? This country cannot without peculiar infamy run the common race of national rapacity. Our origin, institutions, and position are peculiar, and all favor an upright, honorable course. We have not the apologies of nations hemmed in by narrow bounds, or threatened by the overshadowing power of ambitious neighbors. If we surrender ourselves to a selfish policy, we shall sin almost without temptation, and forfeit opportunities of greatness vouchsafed to no other people, for a prize below contempt.

I have alluded to the want of wisdom with which we have been accustomed to speak of our destiny as a people. We are destined (that is the word) to overspread North America; and, intoxicated with the idea, it matters little to us how we accomplish our fate. To spread, to supplant others, to cover a boundless space, this seems our ambition, no matter what influence we spread with us. Why cannot we rise to noble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel, that our work as a nation is, to carry freedom, religion, science, and a nobler form of human nature over this continent? and why do we not remember, that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders; and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this new world? I am not prophet enough to read our fate. I believe, indeed, that we are to make our futurity for ourselves. I believe, that a nation's destiny lies in its character, in the principles which

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govern its policy, and bear rule in the hearts of its citizens. I take my stand on God's moral and eternal law. A nation, renouncing and defying this, cannot be free, cannot be great.

XXXVII.-TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS.

CHARLES SUNER.

CASTING our eyes over the history of nations, with horror we discern the succession of murderous slaughters, by which their progress has been marked. Even as the hunter traces the wild beast, when pursued to his lair, by the drops of blood on the earth, so we follow man, weary, staggering with wounds, through the black forest of the past, which he has reddened with his gore. O, let it not be in the future ages, as in those which we now contemplate! Let the grandeur of man be discerned, not in bloody victories, or in ravenous conquests, but in the blessings which he has secured; in the good he has accomplished; in the triumphs of benevolence and justice; in the establishment of perpetual peace.

As the ocean washes every shore, and, with all embracing arms, clasps every land, while, on its heaving bosom, it bears the products of various climes; so peace surrounds, protects, and upholds all other blessings. Without it, commerce is vain, the ardor of industry is restrained, justice is arrested, happiness is blasted, virtue sickens and dies.

And peace has its own peculiar victories, in comparison with which Marathon and Bannockburn and Bunker Hill, fields held sacred in the history of human freedom, shall lose their lustre. Our own Washington rises to a truly heavenly stature, not when we follow him over the ice of the Delaware to the capture of Trenton,-not when we behold him victorious over Cornwallis at Yorktown,-but when we regard him in noble deference to justice, refusing the kingly crown which a faithless soldiery proffered, and, at a later day, upholding the peaceful neutrality of the country, while he received unmoved the clamor of the people wickedly crying for war.

XXXVIII.-VICISSITUDES OF 1849.

HORACE GREELEY.

THIS fatal year, '49-will it never have done with its desolations? Pestilence has stalked, and still stalks, with desolating tread over the broad earth, defacing its green sod to make room for innumerable graves-graves not alone of the weak and the wretched, but also of the mighty, the glorious, the gentle, the lovely, the widely and keenly deplored. And that darker scourge, despotism, the dominion of brute force and blind selfishness-the lordship of the few for their own luxury and aggrandizement over the many whom they scorn, and sweat, and starve-when before has a year been so fruitful as now, of triumphs to the realm of night? Sicily betrayed and ruined-Lombardy's chains riveted-Sardinia crushed-Rome, generous, brave, ill-fated Rome, too!—she lies beneath the feet of her perfidious, perjured foes, and in her fall has dragged down the republicans of France, adjudged guilty of the crime of daring to resist the assassination of a sister republic. But this is not all, nor half. Germany, through her vast extent, has passed over to the camp of absolutism-her people still think, but dare not speak, for the bayonet is at their throats, and democracy is once more treason, since its regal enemies have recovered from their terror, and found their military tools as brainless and as heartless as ever. At last Hungary mounts the funeral pyre of freedom and the sacrifice is complete, for Venice must trail her flag directly on the tidings of Gōrgey's victory. She has stood out nobly, for a noble, a priceless cause-so has Hungary struggled nobly and nobly fallen. For the present, all is over, save that a few desperate, heroic patriots will yet sell their lives in fruitless casual conflicts with the minions of despotism. Nothing now remains but that the wolves should divide and devour their prey.

XXXIX.-ACQUISITION OF TERRITORY.

DANIEL S. DICKINSON.

It would be well for these antagonisms who fear that all newly acquired territory may be preoccupied and monopolized, either by free labor on the one hand, or by slave labor on the

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other, as the case may be, unless their favorite ideas are indulged, to remember that there are other dangers, either real or imaginary, to which it may be exposed if left to the free government of its own people. Our institutions invite the children of every clime to sit down under the wide-spreading branches of the tree of liberty, and we have no prohibitory, or even protective impost duties upon social manners and customs, political opinions or religious rites. It may be that the rugged Russian, allured by the gentle breezes of Mexico, may fall down from his hyperborean regions with his serfdom and his military rule, or the Turk choose to regale himself there with his pipes and mocha, his Georgian Houris-sensual delights and Mohammedan divinity; or, what is equally probable, as our Pacific possessions place us in direct communication with Asia, that the plains may be desecrated by the trundling of the car of Juggernaut, or the subjects of the celestial Emperor-the brother of the sun and moon-may hurry thither, and ruin all agricultural interests by converting it into an extensive field of hyson.

But let those who entertain them, dismiss all idle and selfish fears, regard others as wise, and as virtuous, and as capable of their own government as themselves, and all will be well. The spirit of freedom will enlarge her own boundaries and people the area, in obedience to laws stronger than the laws of Congress. The rich heritage we enjoy was won by the common blood and treasure of the North and South, the East and the West, and was defended and vindicated by the same, in the second war of independence; and in the present war with a reckless and semi-barbarous foe, the brave sons of every section of the Union have fought and fallen side by side; the parched sands of Mexico have drunk together the best blood of New York and South Carolina. These recollections should renew and strengthen the ties which unite the members of the confederacy, and cause them to spurn all attempts at provoking sectional jealousies and irritations, calculated to disturb the harmony and shake the stability of the Union. In the language of Mr. Jefferson, they who indulge "this treason against human hope will signalize their epoch in future history as the counterpart of the model of their predecessors.'

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