It has consigned the strange phantasm of nullification to the limbo of vanity. It has contributed, by its effect on the public mind, to secure the perpetuity of our national union. We cannot but feel, that if Mr. Webster had passed over in few words the other topics brought forward by his adversary, and had simply vindicated the constitution against the doctrine of nullification, the speech would have been surely no less worthy than it now is, to be transmitted to posterity as a memorial of its author.

Were we writing as mere critics, we might enter into a rhetorical examination of these speeches. The latter particularly, is well worthy of such an examination. It is well worth the while to point out all the little faults of a production so powerful and so splendid. To criticise the orations of Cicero is certainly a much better service than to throw deserved ridicule on the effusions of Counsellor Philips. Much service might be rendered to the cause of sound literature, if the really valuable productions of the press could uniformly undergo a strict and impartial critical analysis; for the surest way to raise the character of our literature in every department, is to promote the purity and correctness of the public taste. Such an examination of Mr. Webster's speech might perhaps, subject to censure the introductory flourish about 'the mariner, tossed for many days, in thick weather, and on unknown seas.' We know not what rule of the rhetoricians, or what feeling of good taste, could vindicate the introduction of a comparison, so trite, and yet so ambitiously set forth, in the first sentence of a grave speech among the "conscript fathers" of the nation. It might also be suggested, that the first five pages contain too much personal talk about himself and his adversary, too many professions of an undisturbed equanimity, too much about having 'slept soundly' on the two several speeches of the honorable member,' in a word, too minute a reply to the rather unmanly intimations with which Mr. Hayne had opened the preceding discourse. Some things on those pages are indeed well said, and are just what ought to have been said; but it may be questioned, whether there is not too much of that little preparatory skirmishing, to be entirely dignified. We know that such things are much the fashion in Congress, and much relished by the public; but such a man as Daniel Webster ought to despise fashion, when it is at war with the strictest propriety; and the example of such a man's eloquence ought to correct instead of humoring the public taste. But criticism of this sort is not our vocation.

We know nothing in our profession as christian journalists, which should hinder us from sitting in judgment on the proceedings of congress, or on the published speeches of any political man, whenever we please. Every citizen has a perfect right to discuss all sorts of public affairs; and though it is the policy of the day to raise

the cry of "church and state," whenever christians dare to use their privileges as freemen, we claim,—and we appeal to the constitution, and to the common sense of the nation in support of the claim, that we are not disfranchised, that we have every right and every privilege which we could have if we were infidels. Yet we should not have been drawn into the preceding remarks, we should not have noticed this pamphlet at all, had not Mr. Hayne, by the strain of invective in which he has indulged himself, put his speech under our more special jurisdiction. The senator from South Carolina has not only gone into a violent defense of slavery, but has seen fit to make an equally violent attack on all the benevolent enterprises of the christian world. He has shot madly from his sphere,' to cross and trouble the orbit in which we move as the friends and advocates of philanthropic enterpise.

Mr. Hayne professes his readiness to defend "the influence of slavery on individual and national character-on the prosperity and greatness either of the United States, or of particular states." As for the intrinsic justice and reasonableness of such a constitution of society, he has nothing to say. No; that inquiry would be too abstract; and he "deals in no abstractions." He "will not consent to look at slavery in the abstract." And yet he more than half intimates that if he should "stop to inquire whether the black man, as some philosophers have contended, is of an inferior race," or "whether his color and condition are the effects of a curse inflicted for the offenses of his ancestors," some vindication might be set up for slavery even "in the abstract." Yes, the same vindication which is always set up for despotism-the claim of a "divine right;" the claim that kings and lords are made of better clay than their slaves whom they govern; the claim that the blood of the noble is a purer and more etherial fluid than the blood of his vassal; the claim that God, by a stern decree of irreversible fate, has consigned the "inferior" orders of mankind, to no higher destiny than absolute bondage; that claim can be set up by slaveholders throughout the world, with just the same degree of reason with which it is set up by the emperor of Austria. Such suggestions thrown out by the orator, serve only to betray the conscious weakness of his cause. No "philosopher," since the abolition of the slave trade, has doubted that the negro is a man; and no orator in the Senate of the United States, dares to question the self-evident truth, that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And as for that strange application of the theological dogma of imputed sin, which would at once account for the complexion of the African, and establish the justice of enslaving him, by supposing him the victim of a curse inflicted for the offenses of his ancestors,-we would only ask, what answer VOL. II.

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would Jesus give to the interrogation, Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born black?

But Mr. Hayne goes on, and after reminding the people of the north, that their fathers participated in the slave trade, he says,

If slavery, as it now exists in this country, be an evil, we of the present day, found it ready made to our hands. Finding our lot cast among a people, whom God had manifestly committed to our care, we did not sit down to speculate on abstract questions of theoretical liberty. We met it as a practical question of obligation and duty. We resolved to make the best of the situation in which Providence had placed us, and to fulfil the high trust which had devolved upon us as the owners of slaves, in the only way in which such a trust could be fulfilled, without spreading misery and ruin throughout the land. We found that we had to deal with a people whose physical, moral and intellectual habits and character, totally disqualified them from the enjoyment of the blessings of freedom. p. 24.

This approximates to what we ourselves have said in another article. We have only to ask,-and we would put the question directly to the honorable senator,-if slavery is indeed an evil,—and with all your carefulness to avoid admitting this truth, you do not deny it if slavery is indeed an unnatural and unwholesome constitution of society, have you done all in your power to remedy the evil, and to transmit to other generations a better inheritance. Or shall other generations say in their turn, we found this evil ready made to our hands? You' found that you had to deal with a people whose physical,- intellectual and moral habits and character totally disqualified them from [for] the enjoyment of the blessings of freedom.' This is true beyond all controversy; for you found them the subjects of the most absolute bondage, and being so abject in condition, they are of course unfit to be citizens in a republic. But what have you done-what single thing do you propose to do --for the improvement of the character and habits, physical, moral and intellectual, which at the present time totally disqualify for freedom, more than half the population of a high minded republic.

Next the orator attempts to contrast "the wisdom, justice and humanity" of slaveholders, with the example of "certain benevolent associations and charitable individuals elsewhere," who, he says, "set themselves systematically to work to seduce," "by means of missionaries and political tracts," "the slaves of the south from their masters." He says, that by such measures, "thousands of these deluded victims of fanaticism were seduced into the enjoyment of freedom in our northern cities." In reply to this, we call for proof. We challenge the honorable senator to adduce one particle of evidence to confirm or countenance his assertion, that by means of missionaries and political tracts sent forth by associations or by individuals, thousands of slaves have been seduced from their masters, and have found refuge in the northern cities. We presume to believe that we know something respecting the

associations at the north, which operate by means of missionaries and tracts; for several years, we have watched, with interest, every effort which seemed to have any bearing on the condition of the people of color; yet we have never been informed of any such efforts as Mr. Hayne describes, or of any such result as he says has been produced. Let Mr. Hayne, let any man give us the information, with evidence; and we shall know something which we never knew before.

Nor are the assertions of the orator unexceptionable as he proceeds to describe the condition of the free blacks at the north. In regard to this subject, we have ourselves used strong language on a preceding page; language which some of our readers who have not examined all the wretchedness that lies around them, may be disposed to question. But Mr. Hayne goes much farther. His language is, "There does not exist, on the face of the whole earth, a population so poor, so wretched, so vile, so loathsome, so utterly destitute of all the comforts, conveniences, and decencies of life, as the unfortunate blacks of Philadelphia, New-York and Boston." He speaks of having "seen this unhappy race, naked and houseless, almost starving in the streets, and abandoned by all the world." He furthermore declares that he has "seen in the neighborhood of one of the most moral, religious, and refined cities of the north, a family of free blacks, driven to the caves of the rocks, and there obtaining a precarious subsistence from charity and plunder." In all this there is much that is true, and something which is not the exact and simple verity. The truth is, that the free Africans in our cities are wretched; but wretched as they are, there are multitudes of human beings on the face of the earth,' whose condition is far more abject. If speeches of southern gentlemen in Congress, are testimony, the condition of our free blacks is an enviable one, when compared with the condition of the great body of the Cherokee nation. Certainly there is no misery in the cities of the north to be compared with the misery of the Indians who have been "seduced" beyond the Mississippi. We have not learned, that even among the African population of these cities, there is any such want or wretchedness as impels them to cast the living infant into the same grave with its dead mother.* Mr. Hayne alludes to his tour through the northern cities a few months ago, as if he had "taken the guage and dimensions" of all the misery in this quarter of the union. "Optics sharp it needs" to see all that he seems to have observed. We

* Such facts were stated in the House of Representatives, last winter, to illustrate the starving condition of the tribes removed to the land of promise beyond the Mississippi. The advocates of that measure, did not-if we are rightly informed-deny the fact, but sneered at the foolish sensibility and false philanthropy that condescended to care for the misery of Indians.

have never seen a "naked" negro, old or young; though we have heard that something very much like that, may be seen in the West Indies, and perhaps in some parts of the United States. Any northern negro, who finds himself "houseless and almost starving in the streets," has a home, with every thing essential to his physical comfort, in the almshouse. As for this class of people being "abandoned by all the world,"-nothing can be more erroneous than to say so. We doubt whether a city can be found north of Philadelphia, which has not its "Clarkson Society," or its "African Improvement Society," or some such association, aiming to promote the comfort and improvement of this wretched population. And the case of the old black woman, near New-Haven, whom the senator describes as "driven to the caves of the rocks," illustrates the subject just as fairly, as the case of the greybeard hermit who lived and died a few years ago in a similar dwelling not two miles from the same spot, illustrates the condition of the white citizens of Connecticut. "Old Eunice" never dreamed that her supposed outcast misery was to wind up a paragraph in the Senate of the United States; and would be as much surprised to find her picture drawn so pathetically by a South Carolina senator, as a horde of runaway slaves in a southern swamp, "obtaining a precarious subsistence" by theft and robbery, would be to find themselves immortalized in a novel by Sir Walter Scott.

The next topic is the connection of slavery with the wealth and strength of the country. Here one fallacy runs through all his statements and vitiates all his reasonings. He confounds the value of southern produce,-cotton, rice, and tobacco,-with the value of slavery; and his argument is, that if these productions of the southern soil add any thing to the wealth and strength of the nation, slavery is good economy. He says, "the power of a country is compounded of its population and its wealth," and "it may well be doubted whether the slaveholding states by reason of" [their slavery?-no; by reason of]" the superior value of their productions, are not able to maintain a number of troops in the field, fully equal to what could be supported by states with a larger white population, but not possessed of equal resources." "The difficulty," ," he says, again, "is not to procure men, but to provide the means of maintaining them, and in this view of the subject, it may be asked, whether the southern states are not a source of strength and power, and not of weakness to the country?" Unquestionably, the productions of the southern states are a source of vast wealth to the country; and if power is compounded of no other elements than wealth and population, they are a source of power. The only question relates to the system by which the cotton and rice of the south are cultivated. The question is, whether that system is good economy, and wise policy;--whether if the place