PLEA FOR THE DESCENDANTS OF JAMES RUMSEY. 77

rich returns, the people prosperous and happy, and the country rich with every blessing.

What a guarantee to the perpetuity and stability of the government, living in the hearts of its own people, and borrowing its own lustre and glory from their proud, prosperous, and independent condition. And, permit me to tell you, that deep and firm as may be the foundations of our country, still deeper will they be made by the policy which is before you. Let me beseech you to cast aside your prejudices, to throw off from your eyes the scales which have so long blinded you, and to come up to this mighty and momentous question with nothing but the holy impulses of patriotism directing your heart; and you will see inscribed upon our banners TRUTH and JUSTICE, as all for which we would appeal to you, or

ask at your hands. Our strength will be yours. The glory

that may surround us will radiate its effulgence to every portion of our common country, and the same destiny that awaits us and our children will be indissolubly connected with your own; and should any great event in the changes of life and the vicissitudes of the affairs of nations ever take place, to pull up the deep foundations of our government, and tear down our noble edifice, let me tell you that in the general wreck of the liberties of the country, the last spark will be found flickering on the plains of the West in the domicils of the humble tillers of the earth.

LII.-PLEA FOR THE DESCENDANTS OF JAMES RUMSEY.

EDWARD RUMSEY.

I HAVE stood upon the bank of the beautiful river which washes the broad border of my own beloved State, and contemplated the majestic steam palace in her proud career. Exchanging with rapidity and cheapness the productions of different climes, conveying with comfort and expedition the travelling public, giving new life and energy to commerce, to agriculture, to national industry and enterprise: I say, sir, I have stood in musing mood upon the shore of the fair Ohio, and viewed the noble steamer moving victorious against wind and current,

"Walking the waters like a thing of life,"

and then reflected that the only son of the man who first seriously attracted the attention of the skilful and ingenious to the subject-the only son of the man who first, by actual trial, proved its practicability-the only son of the man who, in his arduous struggles to perfect and present to the world the steamboat, expended his little fortune, banished himself from his home and his country, and in spite of all obstacles, was pushing onward to success, when arrested by sudden death. When I have reflected that the only son of this man was toiling for his daily bread, smitten by his God, and neglected by his country-when I have contemplated that and this spectacle, the steamboat and the unfortunate son of its inventor, feelings, emotions, reflections, have crowded upon me, of a character which, as a patriot, a philanthropist, and a Christian, I acknowledge it was improper and sinful to entertain. To the support of that stricken one I have thought his country abounding in resources, with more hundreds of millions of public domain than she can squander in ages, might contribute something more substantial than a medal, without any extraordinary stretch of liberality. But it is not for me to solicit it even for him. I shall be gratified, deeply gratified, if the government of his country shall honor the memory of his father for all his sacrifices and all his services by the adoption of this resolution.

LIII. THE SABBATH.

T. FRELINGHUYSEN.

MR. PRESIDENT-The Sabbath was made for man-not to be contemned and forgotten-the constitution of his nature

requires just such a season. It is identified with his pursuits, and his moral tendencies. God has ordained it in infinite benevolence. The reason for its institution, as recorded in his word, was his own example. It began with creation. The first week of time was blessed with a Sabbath. The garden of Eden would not have smiled in all its loveliness, had not the light of this day shone upon it. Blot it out, and the hope of the world is extinguished. When the whirlwind raged in France, how was it, sir? They could not carry their measures of ferocity and blood, while this last

palladium of virtue remained. Desolation seemed to pause in its course, its waves almost subsided: when the spirit of evil struck this hallowed day from the calendar, and enacted a decade to the Goddess of Reason-after which the besom swept all before it.

oppose

Our own experience must satisfy us that it is essential to the welfare of our condition. Put the mind to any action of its powers-let its energies be exerted incessantly, with no season for abstraction and repose, and it would very soon sink under a task so hostile to its nature: it would wear out in such hard service. So let the pursuits of business constantly engage our speculations, and the whole year become one unvaried calculation of profit and loss, with no Sabbath to open an hour for the return of higher and nobler feelings, and the heart will become the victim of a cold and debasing selfishness, and have no greater susceptibility than the nether mill-stones. And if in matters that are lawful, such consequences would ensue, what will be the results of a constant, unbroken progression in vice! Sir, I tremble at the prospect for my country. If this barrier against the augmenting flood of evil be prostrated, all your penalties and prisons will an utterly inefficient check. Irreligion will attain to a magnitude and hardihood that will scorn the restraints of your laws. Law, sir! of what avail can this be against the corrupted sentiment of a whole people? Let us weigh the interesting truth-that a free people can only flourish under the control of moral causes; and it is the Sabbath which gives vigor, and energy, and stability to these causes. The nation expects that the standard of sound principles will be raised here. Let us give it a commanding elevation. Let its tone be lofty. It is in this way we should expect to excite the enthusiasm of patriotism, or any other virtue. When we would awaken in our youth the spirit of literary emulation, we spread out to their vision a rugged path and a diffirult ascent, and raise the prize of fame high above the reach of any pursuit, but an ardent, laborious, and vigorous reach of effort. If we would kindle the love of country, we do not humble her claims to a miserable posture, just above downright indifference—but we point to a devoted Leonidas, and the brightest names of the scroll, and thus urge our youth onward and upward. Let us, then, sir, be as wise and faithful in the cultivation of sound moral principles.

LIV.-INVIDIOUS DISTINCTIONS.

HUGH S. LEGARE.

SIR, as a Southern man, I represent equally rent, capital, and wages, which are confounded in our estates; and I protest against attempts to array, without cause, without a color of pretext or plausibility, the different classes of society against each other, as if, in such a country as this, there could be any natural hostility or any real distinction between them-a country in which all the rich, with hardly an exception, have been poor, and all the poor may one day be rich—a country in which banking institutions have been of immense service, precisely because they have been most needed by a people who had all their fortunes to make by good character and industrious habits. Look at that remarkable pictureremarkable not as a work of art, but as a monument of history-which you see in passing through the rotunda. Two out of five of that immortal committee were mechanics, and such men! In the name of God, sir, why should any one study to pervert the natural good sense and kindly feelings of this moral and noble people-to infuse into their minds a sullen envy towards one another, instead of that generous emulation which everything in their situation is fitted to inspire to breathe into them the spirit of Cain, muttering deep curses and meditating desperate revenge against his brother, because the smoke of his sacrifice has ascended to heaven before his own! And do not they who treat our industrious classes as if they were in the same debased and wretched condition as the poor of Europe, insult them by the comparison? Why, sir, you do not know what poverty is. We have no poor in this country, in the sense in which that word is used abroad. Every laborer, even the most humble, in the United States soon becomes a capitalist, and even if he choose, a proprietor of land; for the West, with all its boundless fertility, is open to him. How can any one dare to compare the mechanics of this land (whose inferiority, in any substantial particular, in intelligence, in virtue, in wealth, to the other classes of our society, I have yet to learn) with that race of outcasts, of which so terrific a picture is presented by recent writers—the poor of Europe? a race, among no inconsiderable portion of whom famine and pestilence may be aid to dwell continually; many of whom are without mor

als, without education, without a country, without a God! and may be said to know society only by the terrors of its penal code, and to live in perpetual war with it. Poor bondmen! mocked with the name of liberty, that they may be sometimes tempted to break their chains, in order that, after a few days of starvation in idleness and dissipation, they may be driven back to their prison house to take them up again, heavier and more galling than before; severed, as it has been touchingly expressed, from nature, from the common air, and the light of the sun; knowing only by hearsay that the fields are green, that the birds sing, and that there is a perfume in flowers. And is it with a race whom the perverse institutions of Europe have thus degraded beneath the condition of humanity, that the advocates, the patrons, the protectors of our working-men, presume to compare them? Sir, it is to treat them with a scorn at which their spirit should revolt, and does revolt.

LV.-EULOGY ON YELL.

H. BEDINGER.

THE gentleman spoke of the gallant conduct of a certain heroic young officer who now has a seat in the other branch of our National Legislature, and of several other gallant men of the South, whose heroic deeds shall never die. But, sir, there was one whose name, greatly to my regret, he did not mention; I say greatly to my regret, only because I know, that with his accustomed ability and fervent feeling, he would have done such justice to the memory of that gallant hero as it never can receive from any poor eulogy of mine. I speak, sir, of one with whom I had the honor of a personal acquaintance, between whom and myself there existed an intimacy which, to me, was always a source of pride and pleasure; of one who, but a short time ago, stood with us upon this floor, and participated in our deliberations; one whose manly and dignified character, whose urbane and courteous manners, and whose unquestioned integrity, assigned to him the very highest place in the estimation of all who knew him. Sir, I shall never forget his conduct and bearing when the news first reached him, of the uncalled-for, unprovoked, and