raised up those who were prostrate at the footstool of a gorged and stultified monarchy. They aimed a fatal blow at social and political despotism. They determined to navigate and explore the shoreless ocean of freedom, and in the fulness of their virtuous resolve exclaimed, as if to the genius of Liberty,

"Build me straight, O worthy master,
Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,

And with wave and whirlwinds wrestle."

Let the historian tell of the perils of that devoted ship-of the toil and hunger-of the fatigue and cold-of the privation and sickness of the precious blood which was shed-of the bitter tears which flowed-of the sighs and prayers which were wafted to Heaven-how many hapless victims were by violence and butchery hurried untimely to judgment-how she was tempest-tossed upon the maddened elements-how her trembling structure was exposed to wreck and destruction, ere she was safely moored in the haven of peace.

Three quarters of a century have just elapsed since that spirit-stirring declaration; and thirteen feeble and sparsely set. tled colonies have given place to thirty-one populous sovereign States, with others in process of formation, and on their way to join the happy sisterhood. A crude and disjointed confederacy has been replaced by a glorious constitutional union-forming a free and happy government, where all are protected and none are oppressed; where labor is bountifully rewarded; where learning is encouraged and the arts and sciences cherished; where misfortune is provided for; where each one worships God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and where want and destitution in the abodes of virtuous industry are unknown. The scion of a monarchical stock, transplanted to the genial soil of liberty, we have flourished beyond the most sanguine anticipations in all that can elevate and secure the best interests of mankind.

Our form of government, which has proved so eminently successful, was at first the recipient of taunts and sneers from all the pampered pimps of "Divine Right" pretensions throughout the earth. Its success provoked their envy, and now its sublime moral grandeur wrings from the trembling occupants

of unsteady thrones unwilling admiration. Taught by dearly purchased experience, they long since despaired of crushing by the armed power of the world a people devoted to the arts of peace; and hence they have assiduously sought to assail, divide, and conquer us, with the moral artillery of spurious philanthropy and an exuberant display of zeal in the cause of freedom and humanity; that they too and their abettors and apologists may at the same time

"Compound for sins they are inclined to,

By damning those they have no mind to."

But, however much we may indulge domestic controversies touching our internal affairs, we shall, I trust, receive and treat with becoming scorn, lessons upon national morality from European monarchies or their self-constituted nobility. If it is proper that we should receive, they are by no means entitled to give instructions upon national wrongs nor lessons on human rights. We will pass by Russia with her military despotism, her knouts, her serfs, and Siberian exiles; and France, with her impulsive, restless, revolution-loving people, who court oppression one day that they may throw it off by violence another; whose liberty is licentiousness, and whose idea of freedom is the right to sack and plunder; and we too will pass by proud, decayed, and superannuated Spain, and ferocious, blood-thirsty, and bigoted Austria, and pay our respects for a moment to powerful, haughty, and aristocratic England, in morals as in war, a "foeman worthy of our steel." The best epitome of her self-importance, and of the American Revolution and Independence, is given by the sarcastic English writer, Sidney Smith. "There was," says he, "a time when the slightest concessions would have satisfied the Americans, but all the world was in heroics. One set of gentlemen met at the Lamb, another at the Lion, real blood and treasure men, breathing nothing but defiance. Eight years afterwards an awkward-looking gentleman in plain clothes walked up to the drawing-room at St. James, and, in the presence of the gentlemen of the Lamb, was introduced as Ambassador from the United States." Her pampered, indolent, consuming nobility, who hang like an incubus upon the industry of her people, have by their ill-timed and officious intermeddling in our

domestic affairs so often provoked and invited a return of civilities, that it may not be amiss to display upon this occasion the features of her veiled prophet. It is clearly the policy of our government and people to cherish friendly relations with this, as with all other nations, and this will be best attained by an occasional examination of accounts, and the prompt adjustment of balances.

There is much, very much, in England's history to admire; much indeed to contemplate in a spirit akin to filial reverence. In her glorious system of common-law, her encouragement of the arts and sciences-as the patron of letters, and the enterprising pioneer in commerce, she furnishes profitable lessons for contemplation and instruction. But, to those whose visions can penetrate the blaze of her martial glory, and look upon the seared eyeballs of her struggling, groaning, starving millions, she is but a whited sepulchre-" a huge burial-field unwalled and strewed with spoils of animals savage and tame." The history of her government is but the history of the rapacity and blood which have marked the pathway of her base and destructive career, from the time she sought with the ferocity of a tigress to strangle the infant of her own bosom, to the present moment. Her mighty influence among the nations of the earth, whether we regard her precepts or example, has not been exerted to ameliorate the condition of men-to diffuse more equally the blessings of a beneficent Providence, or to correct the vicious organization of society which she herself established; but for the accumulation of material wealth and the achievement of military renown. In her superhuman efforts she has not sought to elevate the condition of, and feed and clothe her own toiling masses, but to feast and pamper, and to cover with garters and gew-gaws, and gorgeous drapery, and invest with power and maintain in place a favored and unworthy few, while the abject many are crushed and debased by ignorance and want and every privation which can render our kind wretched and degraded; their substance consumed by a pensioned aristocracy, and eaten up by a fox-hunting priesthood, while the children of their bodies starve and die for the lack of the bread earned by the labor of their hands. It is the boast of this proud monarchy that her drum-beat encircles the world, and that the sun never goes down upon her possessions; and before she becomes a

trans-Atlantic almoner, she might remember with profit if not with pleasure, that she has thousands of subjects of both sexes and all ages and conditions, upon whom the light of heaven's sunshine has never fallen. If she has more tears to shed, and finer sensibility to expand, let her unharness woman from the subterranean coal car, where like the lowest orders of beasts of burden she is driven until all that was womanly has left her forever. Let her suspend her wholesale murder of children who

"Pine in want and dungeon's gloom,

Shut from the common air and common use
Of their own limbs,"

who in the last great day of accounts will raise their little hands against her for her system of factory labor, more destructive than the mandate of Herod: a system which renders them as inanimate as the machinery which is their co-worker, and which, like an evil spirit, has come hither to torment them before their time. Let her listen to the wailings of her sewing-women, who with tears of blood exclaim in the language of her own immortal poet,

"Oh men with sisters dear,

Oh men with mothers and wives,
It is not linen you're wearing out,
But human creatures' lives.

Stich, stich, stich,

In poverty, hunger and dirt,

Sewing at once, with a double thread,
A shroud as well as a shirt.

"But why do I talk of death,
That phantom of grizzly bone?

I hardly fear his terrible shape,

It seems so like my own.
It seems so like my own,

Because of the fast I keep.

Oh God! that bread should be so dear,

And flesh and blood so cheap."

If these grievances are too near the centre of regal magnifi cence to command attention, lest it mar the glories of her tro

phies and dim the effulgence of her regalia, let her for a moment, in the rich plentitude of her compassion, turn her eye to a neighboring green isle of the ocean, whose down-trodden children are groaning under the exactions of a government which, like the fabled vampire, is preying upon their warm heart's blood. Let her see them conquering that holy love of home which is stronger than death, and tearing themselves from friends and kindred and the remains of their beloved dead, that they may escape the destroying influences of a government less tolerable in its visitations than the curse which overthrew the cities of the plain. See them hovering upon our shores, the asylum of the oppressed, the home of the weary and the houseless wanderer, who has found no rest for the sole of his feet, amid the wide waste of the old world's desolation. Stained with guilt and drunk with the blood of nations, when she has redressed these and many kindred grievances, and atoned before Heaven for her whole career of atrocity and violence, she may assume to play the censor with more propriety and no less advantage; and we may then consent to discuss with her the national morality of a domestic institution of a portion of the States of this confederacy, which constitutes so large an item in her catalogue of mock solicitude; an institution which was planted upon our soil by her own cupidity, against the protest of our people, which is in no regard within the reach or control of federal legislation, and which the States where it had existence could not with safety or propriety suddenly throw off if they would.

When we were, as a people, few and feeble, we possessed the moral courage and physical force to achieve our independence against the most warlike nation of Christendom. Now that we are, by common consent, one of the great powers of the earth, if we are not equal to the reformation of our own abuses, we shall fail to draw profitable teachings from envious rivalry abroad. We will submit our shortcomings to a tribunal worthy to review them, a virtuous, intelligent, and refined people, whose opinion is free from the musty prejudices of decayed royalty. We will, socially speaking, confess to our full share of error, and to records in abundance of human frailty; but we will arraign and try, and, if need be, condemn and execute, where the sanctuary of justice is untainted with envy.