other age or country. By the representative principle, a principle unknown and impracticable among the ancients, the whole mass of society is brought to operate in constraining the action of power and in the conservation of liberty.

GEORGE MCDUFFIE.

AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP AND ITS DUTIES.

Ir behooves us to look our perils and difficulties, such as they are, in the face. Then, with the exercise of candor, calmness, and fortitude, being able to comprehend fully their character and extent, let us profit by the teachings of almost every page in our annals, that any defects, under our existing system, have resulted more from the manner of administering it than from its substance or form.

We less need new laws, new institutions, or new powers, than we need, on all occasions, at all times, and in all places, the requisite intelligence concerning the true spirit of our present ones; the high moral courage, under every hazard and against every offender, to execute with fidelity the authority already possessed; and the manly independence to abandon all supineness, irresolution, vacillation, and time-serving pusillanimity, and enforce our present mild system with that uniformity and steady vigor, throughout, which alone can supply the place of the greater severity of less free institutions.

To arm and encourage us in renewed efforts to accomplish everything on this subject which is desirable, our history constantly points her finger to a most efficient resource, and indeed to the only elixir, to secure a long life to any popular government, in increased attention to useful education and sound morals, with the wise description of equal measures and just practices they inculcate, on every leaf of recorded time. Before their alliance, the spirit of misrule will always, in time, stand rebuked, and those who worship at the shrine of unhallowed ambition must quail.

Storms, in the political atmosphere, may occasionally happen, by the encroachments of usurpers, the corruption or intrigues

of demagogues, or in the expiring agonies of faction, or by the sudden fury of popular frenzy; but, with the restraints and salutary influences of the allies before described, these storms will purify as healthfully as they often do in the physical world, and cause the tree of liberty, instead of falling, to strike its roots deeper. In this struggle the enlightened and moral possess also a power, auxiliary and strong, in the spirit of the age, which is not only with them, but onward, in everything to ameliorate or improve.

When the struggle assumes the form of a contest with power, in all its subtlety, or with undermining and corrupting wealth, as it sometimes may, rather than with turbulence, sedition, or open aggression by the needy and desperate, it will be indispensable to employ still greater diligence; to cherish earnestness of purpose, resoluteness in conduct; to apply hard and constant blows to real abuses, rather than milk-and-water remedies, and encourage not only bold, free, and original thinking, but determined action.

In such a cause, our fathers were men whose hearts were not accustomed to fail them through fear, however formidable the obstacles. Some of them were companions of Cromwell, and imbued deeply with his spirit and iron decision of character, in whatever they deemed right. . . . We are not, it is trusted, such degenerate descendants as to prove recreant, and fail to defend, with gallantry and firmness as unflinching, all which we have either derived from them, or since added to the rich inheritance.

At such a crisis, therefore, and in such a cause, yielding to neither consternation nor despair, may we not all profit by the vehement exhortations of Cicero to Atticus ?" If you are asleep, awake; if you are standing, move; if you are moving, run; if you are running, fly."

All these considerations warn us, the gravestones of almost every former republic warn us, that a high standard of moral rectitude, as well as of intelligence, is quite as indispensable to communities, in their public doings, as to individuals, if they would escape from either degeneracy or disgrace.

LEVI WOODBURY.

AMERICA'S TRUE GREATNESS.

AT present we behold only the rising of our sun of empire,only the fair seeds and beginnings of a great nation. Whether that glowing orb shall attain to a meridian height, or fall suddenly from its glorious sphere; whether those prolific seeds shall mature into autumnal ripeness, or shall perish, yielding no harvest, depends on God's will and providence. But God's will and providence operate not by casualty or caprice, but by fixed and revealed laws. If we would secure the greatness set before us, we must find the way which those laws indicate, and keep within it. That way is new and all untried. We departed early -we departed at the beginning-from the beaten track of national ambition. Our lot was cast in an age of revolution,— a revolution which was to bring all mankind from a state of servitude to the exercise of self-government,-from under the tyranny of physical force to the gentle sway of opinion,-from under subjection to matter to dominion over nature.

It was ours to lead the way,—to take up the cross of republicanism and bear it before the nations, to fight its earliest battles, to enjoy its earliest triumphs, to illustrate its purifying and elevating virtues, and by our courage and resolution, our moderation and our magnanimity, to cheer and sustain its future followers through the baptism of blood and the martyrdom of fire. A mission so noble and benevolent demands a generous and self-denying enthusiasm. Our greatness is to be won by beneficence without ambition. We are in danger of losing that holy zeal. We are surrounded by temptations. Our dwellings become palaces, and our villages are transformed, as if by magic, into great cities. Fugitives from famine, and oppression, and the sword, crowd our shores, and proclaim to us that we alone are free, and great, and happy. Our empire enlarges. The continent and its islands seem ready to fall within our grasp, and more than even fabulous wealth opens under our feet. No public virtue can withstand, none ever encountered, such seductions as these. Our own virtue and moderation must be renewed and fortified, under circumstances so new and peculiar.

Where shall we seek the influence adequate to a task so

arduous as this? Shall we invoke the press and the pulpit? They only reflect the actual condition of the public morals, and cannot change them. Shall we resort to the executive authority? The time has passed when it could compose and modify the political elements around it. Shall we go to the Senate? Conspiracies, seditions, and corruptions in all free countries have begun there. Where, then, shall we go to find an agency that can uphold and renovate declining public virtue? Where should we go but there, where all republican virtue begins and must end? where the Promethean fire is ever to be rekindled until it shall finally expire? where motives are formed and passions disciplined? To the domestic fireside and humbler school, where the American citizen is trained. Instruct him there, that it will not be enough that he can claim for his country Lacedæmonian heroism, but that more than Spartan valor and more than Roman magnificence is required of her. Go, then, ye laborers in a noble cause; gather the young Catholic and the young Protestant alike into the nursery of freedom, and teach them there, that, although religion has many and different shrines on which may be made the offering of a "broken spirit” which God will not despise, yet that their country has appointed only one altar and one sacrifice for all her sons, and that ambition and avarice must be slain on that altar, for it is consecrated to humanity.

WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD.

AMERICA'S INTRINSIC STRENGTH.

THE enemies of popular right and power have been pointing to the dreadful proof which is afforded in America, that an extended suffrage is a thing to be shunned, as the most calamitous thing possible to a country. I will not refer to the speeches that have dealt with this question in this manner, or to the newspapers which have so treated it. I believe now, that a great many people in this country are beginning to see that those who have been misleading them, for the last two or three years, have been profoundly dishonest or profoundly ignorant,

If I am to give my opinion upon it, I should say, that which has taken place in America within the last three years, affords the most triumphant answer to charges of this kind. Let us see the government of the United States. They have a suffrage which is almost what here would be called a manhood suffrage. There are frequent elections, vote by ballot, and ten thousand, twenty thousand, and one hundred thousand persons vote at an election. Will anybody deny that the government at Washington, as regards its own people, is the strongest government in the world, at this hour? And for this simple. reason: because it is based on the will, and the good will, of an instructed people. Look at its power! I am not now discussing why it is, or the cause which is developing this power; but power is the thing which men regard, in these old countries, and which they ascribe mainly to European institutions; but look at the power which the United States have developed ! They have brought more men into the field, they have built more ships for their navy, they have shown greater resources, than any nation in Europe at this moment is capable of. Look at the order which has prevailed at their elections, at which, as you see by the papers, fifty thousand, or one hundred thousand, or two hundred and fifty thousand persons vote, in a given State, with less disorder than you have seen lately in three of the smallest boroughs in England. Look at their industry. Notwithstanding this terrific struggle, their agriculture, their manufactures and commerce, proceed with an uninterrupted success. They are ruled by a President, chosen, it is true, not from some worn-out royal or noble blood, but from the people, and the one whose truthfulness and spotless honor have claimed him universal praise; and now the country that has been vilified through half the organs of the press in England, during the last three years, and was pointed out, too, as an example to be shunned, by many of your statesmen,— that country, now in mortal strife, affords a haven and a home for multitudes, flying from the burdens and the neglect of the old governments of Europe; and when this mortal strife is over,—when peace is restored, when slavery is destroyed, when the Union is cemented afresh,-for I would say, in the language of one of our own poets addressing his country,