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powers never intended to be conferred on them. As great as these objections are, they become insignificant in the provisions of a bill, which, by a single blow, by treating the states as a mere lawless mass of individuals, prostrates all the barriers of the constitution. It proceeds on the ground that the entire sovereignty of this country belongs to the American people, as forming one great community, and regards the states as mere fractions or counties, and not as an integral part of the Union; having no more right to resist the encroachments of the government than a county has to resist the authority of a state; and treating such resistance as the lawless acts of so many individuals, without possessing sovereignty or political rights.

It has been said that the bill declares war against South Carolina. No! It decrees a massacre of her citizens! War has something ennobling about it, and, with all its horrors, brings into action the highest qualities, intellectual and moral. It was, perhaps, in the order of Providence, that it should be permitted for that very purpose. But this bill declares no war, except, indeed, it be that which savages wage; a war, not against the community, but the citizens of whom that community is composed. But I regard it as worse than savage warfare. - as an attempt to take away life, under the color of law, without the trial by jury, or any other safeguard which the constitution has thrown around the life of the citizen! It authorizes the president, or even his deputies, when they may suppose the law to be violated, without the intervention of a court or jury, to kill without mercy or discrimination.

It has been said by the senator from Tennessee to be a measure of peace! Yes, such peace as the wolf gives to the lamb the kite to the dove! Such peace as Russia gives to Poland, or death to its victim! A peace by extinguishing the political existence of the state, by awing her into an abandonment of the exercise of every power which constitutes her a sovereign community! It is to South Carolina a question of self-preservation; and I proclaim it, that, should this bill pass, and an attempt be made to enforce it, it will be resisted, at every hazard -even that of death itself! Death is not the greatest calamity; there are others, still more terrible to the free and brave, and among them may be placed the loss of liberty and honor. There are thousands of her brave sons who, if need be, are prepared cheerfully to lay down their lives in defence of the state, and the great principles of constitutional liberty for which she is contending. God forbid that this should become necessary! It never can be, unless this

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PROSE DECLAMATIONS

government is resolved to bring the question to extremity; when her gallant sons will stand prepared to perform the last duty to die nobly!

EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH DELIVERED IN NEW YORK.

C. M. CLAY.

I MAY be an enthusiast; but I cannot but give utterance to the conceptions of my own mind. When I look upon the special developments of European civilization; when I contemplate the growing freedom of the cities, and the middle class which had sprung up between the pretenders to Divine rule on the one hand, and the abject serf on the other; when I consider the Reformation, and the invention of the press, and see, on the southern shore of the continent, an humble individual, amidst untold difficulties and repeated defeats, pursuing the mysterious suggestions which the mighty deep poured unceasingly upon his troubled spirit, till at last, with great and irrepressible energy of soul, he discovered that there lay in the far western ocean a continent open for the infusion of those elementary principles of liberty which were dwarfed in European soil, I have conceived that the hand of destiny was there!

When I saw the immigration of the pilgrims from the chalky shores of England-in the night fleeing from their native home so dramatically and ably pictured by Mr. Webster in his celebrated oration when father, mother, brother, wife, sister, lover, were all lost, by those melancholy wanderers "stifling," in the language of one who is immortal in the conception, "the mighty hunger of the heart," and landing amidst cold, and poverty, and death, upon the rude rocks of Plymouth — I have ventured to think the will of Deity was there!

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When I have remembered the revolution of "76 years' war three millions of men in arms against the most powerful nation in history, and vindicating their independence

I have thought that their sufferings and death were not in vain! When I have gone and seen the forsaken hearth-stone -looked in upon the battle-field, upon the dying and the dead-heard the agonizing cry, "water, for the sake of God!

will not deem all these in vain! I cannot regard this great continent, reaching from the Atlantic to the far Pacific, and from the St. Johns to the Rio del Norte, a barbarian people of third rate civilization.

Like the Roman who looked back upon the glory of his ancestors, in woe exclaiming,

"Great Scipio's ghost complains that we are slow,

And Pompey's shade walks unavenged among us,"

the great dead hover around me, -Lawrence, "Don't give up the ship!"-Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Adams, "Survive or perish, I am for the declaration!"— Allen, "In the name of the living God, I come!"

Come, then, thou Eternal! who dwellest not in temples made with hands, but who, in the city's crowd or by the far forest stream, revealest thyself to the earnest seeker after the true and right; inspire my heart - give me undying courage to pursue the promptings of my spirit; and whether I shall be called in the shades of life to look upon as sweet, and kind, and lovely faces as now, or, shut in by sorrow and night, horrid visages shall gloom upon me in my dying hour-OH! MY COUNTRY, MAYEST THOU YET BE FREE!

CRIME ITS OWN DETECTER.

D. WEBSTER.

AGAINST the prisoner at the bar, as an individual, I cannot have the slightest prejudice. I would not do him the smallest injury or injustice. But I do not affect to be indifferent to the discovery and the punishment of this deep guilt. I cheerfully share in the opprobrium, how much soever it may be, which is cast on those who feel and manifest an anxious concern that all who had a part in planning, or a hand in executing, this deed of midnight assassination, may be brought to answer for their enormous crime at the bar of public justice. Gentlemen, this is a most extraordinary case. In some respects it has hardly a precedent anywhere— certainly none in our New England history. An aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butchery murder, for mere pay. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man to whom sleep was sweet the first sound slumbers of the night hold him in their soft but strong embrace.

The assassin enters through the window, already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment; with noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges; and he enters and beholds his victim before him. The room was uncommonly light. The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from the murderer; and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, showed him where to strike. The fatal blow is given, and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work; and he yet plies the dagger, though it was obvious that life had been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and replaces it again over the wounds of the poignard! To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! he feels it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished! the deed is done! He retreats retraces his steps to the window, passes through as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder; no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him; the secret is his own, and he is safe!

Such a

Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner, where the guilty can bestow it and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds everything as in the splendor of noon,—such secrets of guilt are never safe ; " murder will out." True it is that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of heaven, by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes

turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intently dwell on the scene; shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself. or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself-it labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant; it finds itself preyed on by a torment which it dares not acknowledge to

God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it asks no sympathy or assistance either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him; and like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master; it betrays his discretion; it breaks down his courage; it conquers his prudence. When suspicions, from without, begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed; it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but in suicide, and suicide is confession.

IN BEHALF OF GREECE.

H. CLAY.

MR. CHAIRMAN, It has been admitted by all that there is impending over this country a threatening storm, which is likely to call into action all our vigor, courage, and resources. Is it a wise way of preparing for this awful event, to talk to this nation of its incompetency to resist European aggression, to lower its spirit, to weaken its moral force, and do what we can to prepare it for base submission and easy conquest? If, sir, there be any reality in this menacing danger, I would rather adjure the nation to remember, that it contains a million of freemen capable of bearing arms, and ready to exhaust their last drop of blood, and their last cent, in defending their country, its institutions, and its liberty. Sir, are these to be conquered, by all Europe united? No, sir,no united nation can be, that has the spirit to resolve not to be conquered; such a nation is ever invincible. And, sir, has it come to this? Are we so humbled, so low, so despicable, that we dare not express our sympathy for suffering Greece, lest, peradventure, we might offend some one or more of their imperial and royal majesties? If gentlemen are afraid to act rashly on such a subject, suppose, Mr. Chairman, that we draw an humble petition addressed to their majesties, asking them that of their condescension they would allow us to express something on the subject.

How, sir, shall it begin? "We, the representatives of the free people of the United States of America, humbly ap

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