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and when the obsolete and exploded customs and ideas of the dead past are apidly passing away. The hour and the man are not yet come; but hey are at hand. False Conservatism may, indeed, sit like the grim giant in the Allegory, and fret, and fume, and champ its chains, and gnash its teeth at the progress and reform which it cannot arrest; or like the owl, its fit emblem, may it within the shadow and darkness of the dead past, and stare in blindness with ts gray and vacant eyes, and hoot at the light which is breaking in upon its soludes. But its sceptre is about to depart, and its kingdom to be taken from it. Yet let us not mistake. * Several years ago, some workmen ligging in one of the principal streets of New York, turned up an ancient milestone, on which, in antique and half-obliterated letters, was the inscription, "One nile to New York." A right curious relic of the past, the dead past, sir, was this old mile-stone. Once its inscription was true. Once it was one mile to New York. But a century had elapsed; all around had changed. By little and little the city had extended, nearer and nearer, and yet nearer to it, and beyond it, till at last, sinking into the earth, and buried beneath buildings and improvements, it is forgotten; and when, at length, after the lapse of a hundred years, it is turned up again to broad day, in the very heart of the city, it still exclaims, with the spirit and in the very tone of the false conservatism, "One mile to New York." * But while we eschew a dead conservatism, we must yet ever bear in mind that all change is not reform, and that we owe a decent respect" to the opinions, customs, practices, and institutions of those who have gone before us. It is not every kind of progress which is desirable. There is a progress backwards as well as forwards; and a progress, now and then, which leads to defeat and ruin. Nature sometimes interposes impregnable barriers; circumstances often oppose; and progress then rebounds discomfited, and falls hopelessly into the arms of the false conservatism; or, if successful, ends only in destruction. This is not the advancement which we want or advocate. The car of Juggernaut is progressive; but its progress is marked every furlong by the crushed and mangled bodies of human victims. It is the highest of political wisdom accurately to distinguish between the true progress and the false; between that which is fitting and practicable, and that which ends only in mischief and disaster.

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THE COMPROMISE MEASURES OF 1850.

These Resolutions were reported by Mr. VALLANDIGHAM, from a committee, and unanimously adopted, at a large public meeting, held, without distinction of party, at Dayton, Ohio, October 26, 1850. He supported them in a speech not reported. He had also spoken at a meeting a few days before, called to denounce the Compromise Measures. Of that speech one paper (Whig) said: "It was ingenious and eloquent. His objection to the course proposed by the resolutions was, that it would lead to further agitation, and tend to endanger the Union."

Another said: "His remarks were earnest, dignified, and appropriate. He strongly deprecated every new attempt to inflame the public mind, while he enforced, in strains of lofty and impassioned eloquence, the duty of every good citizen to observe and maintain the sanction of law, as the only way to secure the peace, order, and happiness of society anywhere."

1. That we are for the Union as it is, and the Constitution as it is, and that we will preserve, maintain, and defend both at every hazard, observing, with scrupulous and uncalculating fidelity, every article, requirement, and compromise of the Constitutional compact between these States, to the letter, and in its utmost spirit,

and recognizing no "higher law," between which and the Constitution we know of any conflict.

2. That the Constitution was "the result of a spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable;" that by amity, conciliation, and compromise alone, can it, and the Union which it established, be preserved; and that it is. the duty of all good citizens to frown indignantly upon every attempt, wheresoever or by whomsoever made, to array one section of the Union against the other; to foment jealousies and heart-burnings between them, by systematic and organized misrepresentation, denunciation and calumny, and thereby to render them, in feeling and affection, the inheritors of so noble a common patrimony, purchased by our fathers at so great expense of blood and treasure.

3. That as the friends of peace and concord-as lovers of the Union, and foes, sworn upon the horns of the altar of our common country, to all who seek, and all that tends to its dissolution, we have viewed with anxiety and alarm the perilous crisis brought upon us by years of ceaseless and persevering agitation of the slavery question, in its various forms; and that the Executive and Congress of the United States have deserved well of the Republic, for their patriotic efforts so to compromise and adjust this vexed question, as to leave no good cause for clamor or offence by any portion of the Union.

4. That a strict adherence, in all its parts, to the compromise thus deliberately and solemnly effected, is essential to the restoration and maintenance of peace, harmony, and fraternal affection between the different sections of the Union, and thereby to the preservation of the Union itself; and that good faith imperatively demands that adherence at the hands of all good citizens, whether of the North or of the South.

5. That, believing this compromise the very best which, in view of the circumstances and temper of the times, could have been attained, we are for it as it is, and opposed to all agitation, looking to a repeal or essential modification of any of its parts, and that we will lend no aid or comfort to those who, for any purpose, seek further to agitate and embroil the country upon these questions.

6. That "all obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of the fundamental principle of our institutions, and of fatal tendency"; that all such efforts, wherever made, or by whomsoever advised, find no answering sympathy in our breast-nothing but loathing and contempt; and that we hereby pledge ourselves to the country, that, so far as in us lies, THE UNION, THE CONSTITUTION, AND THE LAWS, must and shall be maintained.

MONEYED AND MUNICIPAL CORPORATIONS.

Extract from Argument for the plaintiff in error, in the Supreme Court of Ohio, in The City of Dayton vs. Pease, December Term, 1854.

I Do not propose to enter into any elaborate criticism of these decisions. But allow me, nevertheless, with great respect to the memory of the late Supreme Court, to suggest that they are part of the footsteps of your predecessors wherein, I trust, this Court, as now constituted, has no inclination to tread. I admit, cordially, and now mournfully, the genius and the eloquence of the late lamented Judge Read- intellectual meteor, which shot its splendid coruscations of light for a

little while, across the heavens, and then went out in utter darkness, upon the distant horizon of the Pacific. Yet I cannot but believe that in the judgment which he gave in Fifteenth Ohio Reports, he was not a little influenced by the peculiar political notions which prevailed then upon the subject of corporations, and which found their way in eloquent, but not very judicial language, into that judgment. Concurring, as I then did, and do still, generally, to the uttermost, in his views, upon the great and ever vital question of moneyed corporations, permit me yet to suggest that this holy horror of corporate seals, and the mystic nature of wax, and all that other “transcendentalism,” which that late learned and lamented Judge declares "had enveloped both the courts and the profession in a mist, growing out of the airy nothingness of the subject matter, and enabled corporations, like the pestilence which walketh unseen, to do their mischief, and escape responsibility," is by no means to be extended to all corporations, and least of all, perhaps, to municipal corporations. There is nothing in the origin, past history, or purposes of such corporations, which ought to subject them to odium or disfavor, or to stricter rules than other public officers, or certainly, at least individuals, exercising like powers. To these corporations, more than to any other proximate cause— more by far than to Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights, the work of the great "iron barons" of King John, and the silken nobles and knights of King James, who drew the rebellious sword or wielded the seditious pen, to enforce and protect their own peculiar rights, we owe it, that the small spark of popular liberty, in that day, was not wholly extinguished, crushed out, in the blood and darkness, and oppressions of the feudal ages. The Senates and Councils of Italy, the Parliaments of France, the Cortez of Spain, would have availed nothing-the House of Commons nothing, with its Pyms and Hampdens, and Sydneys and Russells, of later times, had not the patient and sturdy burghers of the cities and towns, while the kings and barons of Europe, in deadly array, met the infidel hosts, like Sir Kenneth and the Saracen, "under the burning sun of Syria," slowly, but steadily, gone on increasing in wealth, and population, and power. By little and little, availing themselves of the necessities of the nobles, made urgent then by the Crusades, they purchased or extorted privilege upon privilege, till every vestige of their feudal servitude was swept away, and, in the midst of absolutism and oppression elsewhere, a select body of freemen, electing their own officers, and governed by their own ordinances, grew up to a magnitude and strength which, too late, drew the attention and hostility of barons and kings. It was in these corporations that, through the dark ages, the representative idea of government was preserved, which, in our times, and in this country, has been brought to so great perfection. It was the common council and trainbands of a municipal corporation, which gave so great aid to the cause of the people in the first great struggle between power and liberty in the time of the first Charles; and it was the revocation of the charter of a municipality which contributed so greatly to drive the second James from his throne. It was a corporate charter, too, which the sturdy freemen of Connecticut, to save it from destruction, hid within the rough and gnarled, but fostering bosom of the Charter Oak. There may have been no "transcendentalism" in all this, but there was a mystic notion, which impelled the honest burghers and citizens of those times, to hold even the wax and the parchment of their charters too sacred, for kings, and the vicegerents of kings, to touch.

Nor is there any thing in the purposes for which these corporations are organized, which demands odium, or jealousy even, from the most sensitive lover of liberty. They are but subdivisions of the government, established for the convenience of the more compact communities, or particular consociations of citizens.

They derive all their power from the great body of the people, represented in the legislature; and this power is at any moment liable to be taken away. Their purposes are not the pursuit or aggregation of wealth, nor yet of political power; but the control and management of the internal and municipal affairs of the citizens dwelling within their limits. And in all this they are eminently democratic, acting through a common council or local legislature, the members of which are elected by the citizens, and, from the nature of the case, more directly amenable to their constituents than any other class of representatives.

CAMPAIGN OF 1860.

Extract from Speech at Dayton, May 19, 1860.

He was not for the North, nor for the South, but for the whole country; and yet, in a conflict of sectional interests, he was for THE WEST all the time. In a little while-even after the present year, men east of the mountains would learn that there was a West, which to them has heretofore been an "undiscovered country." He hoped fervently to see the day when we should hear no more of sections; but as long as men elsewhere demanded a "united North," and a united South," he wanted to see a "united West." Still the "United States" was a better term, more patriotic, more constitutional, and more glorious than any of them.

Referring to Mr. Lincoln's "irrepressible conflict" speech of 1858,

Mr. VALLANDIGHAM proceeded for some time to denounce the sentiment of the speech in a vehement and impassionate manner, as revolutionary, disorganizing, subversive of the government, and ending necessarily in disunion. Our fathers had founded a government expressly upon the compatibility and harmony of a Union of States, "part slave, and part free," and whoever affirmed the contrary, laid the axe at the very root of the Union.

Extract from Speech at same place, June 30, 1860.

There are now two extreme sectional parties. Six years ago the Abolition sentiments of the free States culminated in the Republican organization. In the course of time it has brought forth its inevitable fruit, in the organization, especially in the Gulf or Cotton States, of an extreme Southern or pro-slavery party, the offspring, but the very antipode of the Republican party. If either of these is suffered to prevail, the Union is at an end. Even now it is in peril from mere conflict between them. But the death of the parent will be the death of the child. Kill the Northern and Western anti-slavery organization, the Republican party, and the extreme Southern pro-slavery, "fire-eating" organization of the Cotton States, will expire in three months. Continue the Republican party-above all, put it in power, and the antagonism will grow till the whole South will become a unit. It is our mission here in Ohio, as one of the free States, to conquer and crush out Northern and Western sectionalism, as this is the especial enemy in our midst.

POSITION ON THE WAR; APRIL, 1861.*

To the Editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer :

DAYTON, OHIO, April 17, 1861.

I have a word for the Republican press and partisans of Cincinnati and other places abroad, who now daily falsify and misrepresent me and matters which concern me here in Dayton.

*This card, written two days after the President's Proclamation of War, is referred to in the letter to Hendrickson, ante, page 302,

My position in regard to this civil war, which the Lincoln Administration has inaugurated, was long since taken, is well known, and will be adhered to to the end. Let that be understood. I have added nothing to it, subtracted nothing from it, said nothing about it publicly, since the war began. I know well that I am right, and that in a little while the "sober second thought of the people" will dissipate the present sudden and fleeting public madness, and will demand to know why thirty millions of people are butchering each other in civil war, and will arrest it speedily. But, meantime, should my own State be invaded, or threatened with invasion, as soon as it may be, then, as a true native-born son of Ohio, acknowledging my first allegiance to be to her, I will aid in defending her to the last extremity, asking no questions. Whoever shall refuse then, or hesitate, will be a traitor and a dastard. And this same rule I apply as well to the people of Virginia, Kentucky, or Missouri, as to any of the free States, North or West.

As to myself: No threats have been made to me personally; none within my hearing; no violence offered; no mob anywhere; none will be; nobody afraid of any, and every statement or rumor in regard to me circulated orally, or published in the Republican press, is basely idle and false. And now let me add, for the benefit of the cowardly slanderers of Cincinnati or elsewhere who libel me daily, that if they have any business with me, I can be found every day and at any time, either at home, or upon the streets of Dayton.

PRIVATE CONFERENCE ON THE WAR AND USURPATION, PROPosed. DAYTON, OHIO, May 7th, 1861.

MY DEAR SIR:-The almost unanimous uprising of the people in the North and West-called forth by the fatal error, as I think, that the purpose of the Lincoln Administration is to preserve the Union, and that it can be preserved by civil war— is being abused to the utter destruction of the Constitution and the inauguration of a military despotism. The first proclamation was, at least, of doubtful legality; the blockade still more so; but the astounding proclamation of May 3d, undertaking by Executive authority alone to "raise and support armies," and to "provide and maintain a navy," discloses at once, the bold conspiracy to usurp all power into the hands of the Executive-since a Congress of partisans surrounded by 30,000 soldiers, can but be the tool of the President. No king of England, since James II., would have dared attempt such a usurpation: England, at no time, since the reign of Henry VIII., would have submitted to it. And all this within twenty days! If there be any spirit of liberty left, is it not time to arouse and strike a blow to rescue the Republic from an impending military despotism? If you agree with me, can we not have a conference of the friends of Constitutional and limited government-of true popular government-say at Chillicothe on the 15th of this month (May), to concert some measures to arouse the people to a sense of the danger which presses upon us? I shall be glad to hear from you.

REV. SABIN HOUGH:

LETTERS TO SABIN HOUGH; 1861.

DAYTON, OHIO, April 26.

DEAR SIR:—I thank you most cordially for your letter of the 24th. It strength ens me in the truth and right. Its words are fitly and truly spoken. This folly,