What is patriotism? Is it a narrow affection for the spot where a man was born? Are the very clods where we tread e atitled to this ardent preference, because they are greener? No, Sir; this is not the character of the virtue. It soars higher for its object. It is an extended self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and twisting itself with the minutest filaments of the heart. It is thus we obey the laws of society, because they are the laws of virtue. In their authority we see, not the array of force and terror, but the venerable image of our country's honor. Every good citizen makes that honor his own, and cherishes it, not only as precious, but as sacred. He is willing to risk his life in its defence, and is conscious that he gains protection while he gives it; for what rights of a citizen will be deemed inviolable, when a State renounces the principles that constitute their security? Or, if his life should not be invaded, what would its enjoyments be, in a country odious in the eye of strangers, and dishonored in his own? Could he look with affection and veneration to such a country, as his parent? The sense of having one would die within him he would blush for his patriotism, if he retained any, and justly, for it would be a vice. He would be a banished man in his native land. I see no exception to the respect that is paid among Nations to the law of good faith. It is the philos ophy of politics, the religion of Governments. It is observed by barbarians. A whiff of tobacco-smoke, or a string of beads, gives Xot merely. binding force, but sanctity, to treaties. Even in Algiers, a truce may be bought for money; but, when ratified, even Algiers is or too just, to disown and annul its obligation. : 143. THE BRITISH TREATY, 1796.- Fisher Ames. ..he posts of our frontier to remain forever in the possession of Great Britain? Let those who reject them, when the treaty offers them to our hands, say, if they choose, they are of no importance. Will the tendency to Indian hostilities be contested by any one? Experience gives the answer. Am I reduced to the necessity of proving this point? Certainly the very men who charged the Indian war on the detention of the posts will call for no other proof than the recital of their own speeches. "Until the posts are restored," they exclaimed, "the treasury and the frontiers must bleed." Can Gentle en now say that an Indian peace, without the posts, will prove firm? No, Sir, it will not be, peace, but a sword; it will be no better than a lure to draw victims within the reach of the tomahawk. ་ On this theme, my emotions are unutterable. If I could find words for them, if my powers bore any proportion to my zeal, I would swell my voice to such a note of remonstrance, it should reach every loghouse beyond the mountains. I would say to the inhabitants, Wake from your false security! Your cruel dangers, your more cruel apprehensions, are, soon to be renewed. The wounds, yet unhealed, re to be torn open again. In the day-time, your path through the woods will be ambushed. The darkness of midnight will glitter with the blaze of your dwellings. You are a father, - the blood of your sons shall fatten your corn-fields! You are a mother, whoop shall wake the sleep of the cradle! the war Who will say that I exaggerate the tendencies of our measures? Will any one answer, by a sneer, that all this is idle preaching? Will any one deny that we are bound, and, I would hope, to good purpose, by the most solemn sanctions of duty, for the vote we give? Are despots alone to be reproached for unfeeling indifference to the tears and blood of their subjects? Are republicans irresponsible? Can you put the dearest interest of society at risk, without guilt, and without remorse? It is vain to offer, as an excuse, that public men are not to be reproached for the evils that may happen to ensue from their measures. This is very true, where they are unforeseen or inevitable. Those I have depicted are not unforeseen; they are so far from inevitable, we are going to bring them into being by our vote. We choose the consequences, and become as justly answerable for them as for the measure that we know will produce them. By rejecting the posts, we light the savage fires, we bind the victims. This day we undertake to render account to the widows and orphans whom our decision will make; to the wretches that will be roasted at the stake; to our country, and, I do not deem it too serious to say, to conscience and to God, we are answerable; and, if duty be anything more than a word of imposture, if conscience be not a bugbear, we are preparing to make ourselves as wretched as our country. There is no mistake in this case. There can be none. Experience has already been the prophet of events, and the cries of our future victims have already reached us. The Western inhabitants are not a silent and uncomplaining sacrifice. The voice of humanity issues from the shade of the wilderness. It exclaims, that, while one hand is held up to reject this treaty, the other grasps a tomahawk. It summons our imagination to the scenes that will open. It is no great effort of the imagination to conceive that events so near are already begun. I can fancy that I listen to the yells of savage vengeance, and the shrieks of torture! Already they seem to sigh in the Western wind! Already they mingle with every echo from the mountains! - 144. A REPUBLIC THE STRONGEST GOVERNMENT. — T. Jefferson. B. 1743; d. 1826. From his Inaugural Address, as President of the United States, March 4, 1801. DURING the throes and convulsions of the ancient world, — during the agonizing spasms of infuriated man, seeking, through blood and slaughter, his long-lost liberty, -it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows should reach even this distant and peaceful shore, that this should be more felt and feared by some, and less by others, and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand, undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear a republican Government cannot be strong, - that this Government is not strong enough. But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a Government which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may, by possibility, want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Government on earth. I believe it the only one where every man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order, as his own personal concern. Some times it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels, in the form of Kings, to govern him? Let history answer this question. Let us, then, with courage and confidence, pursue our own Federal and Republican principles. our attachment to Union and representative Government. Kindly separated, by nature and a wide ocean, from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe, too highminded to endure the degradations of the others, possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation, entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions, and their sense of them,enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practised in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man, acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which, by all its dispensations, proves that it delights in the happiness of man here, and his greater happiness hereafter with all these blessings, what more is necessary, to make us a happy and prosperous People? : Still one thing more, fellow-citizens: a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government; and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities. 145. JUDGES SHOULD BE FREE, 1802. -James A. Bayard. Born, 1767; died, 1815. LET it be remembered that no power is so sensibly felt by society as that of the Judiciary. The life and property of every man is liable to be in the hands of the Judges. Is it not our great interest to place our Judges upon such high ground that no fear can intimidate, no hope seduce them? The present measure humbles them in the dust It prostrates them at the feet of faction. It renders them the tool of every dominant party. It is this effect which I deprecate. It is this consequence which I deeply deplore. What does reason, what does argument avail, when party spirit presides? Subject your Bench to the influence of this spirit, and justice bids a final adieu to your tribunals. We are asked, Sir, if the Judges are to be independent of the People? The question presents a false and delusive view. We are all the People. We are, and as long as we enjoy our freedom, we shall be, divided into parties. The true question is, Shall the Judiciary be permanent, or fluctuate with the tide of public opinion? I beg, I implore gentlemen to consider the magnitude and value of the principle which they are about to annihilate. If your Judges are independent of political changes, they may have their preferences, but they will not enter into the spirit of party. But, let their existence depend upon the support of a certain set of men, and they cannot be impartial. Justice will be trodden under foot. Your Courts will lose all public confidence and respect." We are standing on the brink of that revolutionary torrent which deluged in blood one of the fairest countries in Europe. France had her National Assembly, more numerous and equally popular with our own. She had her tribuuals of justice, and her juries. But the Legislature and her Courts were but the instruments of her destruction. Acts of proscription, and sentences of banishment and death, were passed in the Cabinet of a tyrant. Prostrate your Judges at the feet of party, and you break down the mounds which defend you from this torrent! Are gentlemen disposed to risk the consequences? 146. ON THE JUDICIARY ACT, 1802. - Gouverneur Morris. Gouverneur Morris, born at Morrisania, New York, January 31st, 1752, died November 6th, 1818. He was a Delegate to the Continental Congress from New York, and subsequently represented that State in the Senate of the United States, before which body the following speeches were delivered. He was, for some time, minister from the United States to France, and during his residence in Europe formed the aquaintance of many historical personages, concerning whom he has given mteresting facts, in his published diary and letters. WHAT will be the situation of these States, organized as they now are, if, by the dissolution of our national compact, they be left to themselves? What is the probable result? We shall either be the victims of foreign intrigue, and, split into factions, fall under the domination of a foreign power, or else, after the misery and torment of a civil war, become the subjects of an usurping military despot. What but this compact, what but this specific part of it, can save us from ruin? The judicial power, that fortress of the Constitution, is now to be overturned. With honest Ajax, I would not only throw a shield before it, I would build around it a wall of brass. But I am too weak to defend the rampart against the host of assailants. I must call to my assistance their good sense, their patriotism and their virtue. Do not, Gentlemen, suffer the rage of passion to drive reason from her seat ! If this law be indeed bad, let us join to remedy the defects. Has it been passed in a manner which wounded your pride, or roused your resentment? Have, I conjure you, the magnanimity to pardon that offence! I entreat, I implore you, to sacrifice those angry passions to the interests of our country. Pour out this pride of opinion on the altar of patriotism. Let it be an expiating liba tion for the weal of America. Do not, for God's sake, do not suffer that pride to plunge us all into the abyss of ruin! Indeed, indeed, it will be but of little, very little, avail, whether one opinion or the other be right or wrong; it will heal no wounds, it will pay no debts, it will rebuild no, ravaged towns. Do not rely on that popular will which has brought us frail beings into political existence. That opinion is but a changeable thing. It will soon change. This very measure will change it. You will be deceived. Do not, I beseech you, in a reliance on a foundation so frail, commit the dignity, the harmony, the existence of our Nation, to the wild wind! Trust not your treasure to the waves. Throw not your compass and your charts into the ocean. Do not believe that its billows will waft you into port. Indeed, indeed, you will be deceived! Gast not away this only anchor of our safety. I have seen its progress. I know the difficulties through which it was obtained: I stand in the presence of Almighty God, and of the world; and I declare to you, that, if you lose this charter, never, no, never will you get another! We are now, perhaps, arrived at the parting point. Here, even here, we stand on the brink of fate. Pause pause!-for Heaven's sake, pause! 147. FREE NAVIGATION OF THE MISSISSIPPI, 1803. - Gouverneur Morris. SIR, I wish for peace; I wish the negotiation may succeed; and, therefore, I strongly urge you to adopt these resolutions. But, though you should adopt them, they alone will not insure success. I have no in eving that you ought to have taken possession of New violated. You T 1 1439 exposed to ... future advantage: you are justified by the re you are urged by the strongest motives of policy: you are commanded by every sentiment of national dignity. Look at the conduct of America in her infant years. When there was no actual invasion of right, but only a claim to invade, she resisted the claim, she spurned the insult. Did we then hesitate? Did we then wait for foreigr allian No, animated with the spirit, warmed with the soul of fr threw our oaths of allegiance in the face of our sovereign, mitted our fortunes and our fate to the God of battles. We |