to naught, may no stone remain to point the inquirer to fields of valor, or to remind him of deeds of glory! And, finally, may the republic resemble the sun in his daily circuit, so that none shall know whether its path were more glorious in the rising or in the setting!

THE PROBLEM FOR THE UNITED STATES.-H. A. Boardman.

THIS Union cannot expire as the snow melts from the rock, or a star disappears from the firmament. When it falls, the crash will be heard in all lands. Wherever the winds of heaven go, that will go, bearing sorrow and dismay to millions of stricken hearts; for the subversion of this government will render the cause of constitutional liberty hopeless throughout the world. What nation can govern itself, if this nation cannot? What encouragement will any people have to establish liberal institutions for themselves, if ours fail? Providence has laid upon us the responsibility and the honor of solving that problem in which all coming generations of men have a profound interest, whether the true ends of government can be secured by a popular representative system. In the munificence of his goodness, he put us in possession of our heritage, by a series of interpositions scarcely less signal than those which conducted the Hebrews to Canaan; and he has, up to this period, withheld from us no immunities or resources which might facilitate an auspicious result. Never before was a people so advantageously situated for working out this great problem in favor of human liberty; and it is important for us to understand that the world so regards it.

If, in the frenzy of our base sectional jealousies, we dig the grave of the Union, and thus decide this question in the negative, no tongue may attempt to depict the disappointment and despair which will go along with the announcement, as it spreads through distant lands. It will be America, after fifty years' experience, giving in her adhesion to the doctrine that man was not made for self-government. It will be Freedom herself proclaiming that freedom is a chimera; Liberty ringing her own knell, all over

the globe. And, when the citizens or subjects of the governments which are to succeed this Union shall visit Europe, and see, in some land now struggling to cast off its fetters, the lacerated and lifeless form of Liberty laid prostrate under the iron heel of despotism, let them remember that the blow which destroyed her was inflicted by their own country.

So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart,
And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart.
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel;
While the same plumage that had warmed his nest
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast."

MORAL FORCE AGAINST PHYSICAL. -D. Webster. THE time has been, indeed, when fleets, and armies, and subsidies, were the principal reliances, even in the best cause. But, happily for mankind, there has come a great change in this respect. Moral causes come into consideration, in proportion as the progress of knowledge is advanced; and the public opinion of the civilized world is rapidly gaining an ascendency over mere brutal force. It is already able to oppose the most formidable obstruction to the progress of injustice and oppression; and, as it grows more intelligent, and more intense, it will be more and more formidable. It may be silenced by military power, but it cannot be conquered. It is elastic, irrepressible, and invulnerable to the weapons of ordinary warfare. It is that impassable, unextinguishable enemy of mere violence and arbitrary rule, which, like Milton's angels,

"Vital in every part,

Cannot, but by annihilating, die.”

Until this be propitiated or satisfied, it is in vain for power to talk either of triumphs or of repose. No matter what fields are desolated, what fortresses surrendered, what armies subdued, or what provinces overrun. In the history of the year that has passed by

us, and in the instance of unhappy Spain, we have seen the vanity of all triumphs, in a cause which violates the general sense of justice of the civilized world. It is nothing that the troops of France have passed from the Pyrenees to Cadiz; it is nothing that an unhappy and prostrate nation has fallen before them; it is nothing that arrests, and confiscation, and execution, sweep away the little remnant of national existence. There is an enemy that still exists, to check the glory of these triumphs. It follows the conqueror back to the very scene of his ovations; it calls upon him to take notice that Europe, though silent, is yet indignant; it shows him that the sceptre of his victory is a barren sceptre, that it shall confer neither joy nor honor, but shall moulder to dry ashes in his grasp. In the midst of his exultation, it pierces his ear with the cry of injured justice; it denounces against him the indignation of an enlightened and civilized age; it turns to bitterness the cup of his rejoicing, and wounds him with the sting which belongs to the consciousness of having outraged the opinions of mankind.

PROGRESS OF THE CAUCASIAN RACE.-T. H. Benton.

It would seem that the white race alone received the divine command to subdue and replenish the earth; for it is the only race that has obeyed it—the only one that hunts out new and distant lands, and even a new world, to subdue and replenish. Starting from western Asia, taking Europe for their field and the sun for their guide, and leaving the Mongolians behind, they arrived, after many ages, on the shores of the Atlantic, which they lit up with the lights of science and religion, and adorned with the useful and the elegant arts. Three and a half centuries ago, this race, in obedience to the great command, arrived in the New World, and found new lands to subdue and replenish. For a long time it was confined to the border of the new field (I now mean the Celtic Anglo-Saxon division); and even fourscore years ago the philosophic Burke was considered a rash man because he said the English colonists would top the Alleghanies, and descend into the valley

of the Mississippi, and occupy without parchment, if the crown refused to make grants of land. What was considered a rash declaration eighty years ago is old history, in our young country, at this day.

I cannot repine that this capitol has replaced the wigwam, this Christian people replaced the savages, white matrons the red squaws, and that such men as Washington, Franklin and Jefferson, have taken the place of Powhattan, Opechonecanough and other red men, however respectable they may have been as savages. Civilization or extinction has been the fate of all people who have found themselves in the track of the advancing whites, and civilization, always the preference of the whites, has been pressed as an object, while extinction has followed as a consequence of its resistance. The black and the red races have often felt their ameliorating influence. The yellow race, next to themselves in the scale of mental and moral excellence, and in the beauty of form, once their superiors in the useful and elegant arts and in learning, and still respectable, though stationary, this race cannot fail to receive a new impulse from the approach of the whites, improved so much since so many ages ago they left the western borders of Asia. The apparition of the van of the Caucasian race, rising upon them in the east after having left them on the west, and after having completed the circumnavigation of the globe, must wake up and animate the torpid body of old Asia. Our position and policy will commend us to their hospitable reception; political considerations will aid the action of social and commercial influences. Pressed upon by the great powers of Europe, the same that press upon us, they must in our approach see the advent of friends, not of foes; of benefactors, not of invaders. The moral and intellectual superiority of the white race will do the rest; and thus the youngest people and the newest land will become the reviver and the regenerator of the oldest. It is in this point of view, and as acting upon the social, political and religious condition of Asia, and giving a new point of departure to her ancient civilization, that I look upon the settlement of the Columbia river by the van of the Caucasian race as the most momentous human event in the history of man since his dispersion over the face of the earth.

THE REIGN OF PEACE. C. Sumner.

THAT future which filled the lofty visions of the sages and bards of Greece and Rome, which was foretold by the prophets and heralded by the evangelists, when man, in Happy Isles, or in a new paradise, shall confess the loveliness of peace, may be secured by your care, if not for yourselves, at least for your children. Believe that you can do it, and you can do it. The true golden age is before you, not behind you. not behind you. If man has been driven once from paradise, while an angel, with a flaming sword, forbade his return, there is another paradise, even on earth, which he may form for himself, by the cultivation of knowledge, religion, and the kindly virtues of life; where the confusion of tongues shall be dissolved in the union of hearts, and joyous nature, borrowing prolific charms from the prevailing harmony, shall spread her lap with unimagined bounty, and there shall be a perpetual jocund spring, and sweet strains borne on "the odoriferous wing of gentle gales," through valleys of delight, more pleasant than the Vale of Tempe, richer than the garden of the Hesperides, with no dragon to guard its golden fruit.

Let it not be said that the age does not demand this work. The robber conquerors of the past, from their fiery sepulchres, demand it; the precious blood of millions unjustly shed in war, crying from the ground, demands it; the voices of all good men demand it; the conscience, even of the soldier, whispers "Peace." There are considerations, springing from our situation and condition, which fervently invite us to take the lead in this work. Here should bend the patriotic ardor of the land, the ambition of the statesman, the efforts of the scholar, the persuasive influence of the press, the mild persuasion of the sanctuary, the early teachings of the school. Here, in ampler ether and diviner air, are untried fields for exalted triumphs, more truly worthy the American name than any snatched from rivers of blood. War is known as the last reason of kings. Let it be no reason of our republic. Let us renounce, and throw off forever, the yoke of a tyranny more oppressive than any in the annals of the world. As those standing