changed virtue into a pretended vice, the Congress of 1817 usurped to itself the power of punishing the newlymade vice by fining and imprisoning all those who should dare exercise or practice the virtues they had been taught by the framers of our government.

"You not only very justly brand the neutrality laws of 1817 (1818) as usurpations on the reserved rights of the people, but you show very clearly that their origin is in the false assumption that government should direct the morals and sentiments of the people.' You refutethat doctrino (which is an excrescence of the divine right of kings) by very clearly showing that the divine right is reserved to the people themselves:

"That the American citizen sits enthroned in the charmed circle of his reserved rights, the monarch of his own actions, and that the reservation of these individual rights is the noblest feature of our system; and that he is the worst enemy cho, by legislative usurpation or ju dicial construction, would seek to impair them.'

"The Congress of 1817 did something more than impair an interesting class of reserved rights: it abolished them entirely; and, still worse, made the exercise of certain rights, which every preceding Congress of the American people regarded as virtues, punishable as high crimes and misdemeanors. The subsequent decisions of the courts riveted the usurpation, and have until now shackled the hands and caged the most patriotic sons of our republican land. Happy is it that the powers not directly granted to the legislative or executive department of our government were not confided to the judiciary, or to any other department, but reserved to the people of each state in the confederacy. Your movement to repeal the so-called neutrality laws of 1817 (1818) is, when properly interpreted, not a movement that any other nation has a right to take offense at, but a movement to reinvest the people of the United States with those reserved rights which the Congress of 1817 (1818) in an evil hour stole from them. HENRY CLAY descended from the speaker's chair, and accused Spain of rewarding her minister in the United States for the part he took in inducing the Congress of 1817 to commit the roguery on the reserved rights of the American

people, and intimated very clearly, in the speech which you quoted, that other powers besides Spain exerted all their influence to prevail with Congress to deprive our people of that portion of their reserved rights which the acts of 1817 took from them. That those acts were passed against the general sentiment of our country at the time, we have the authority of Thomas Jefferson for believing.

"That the Neutrality Laws of 1817 (1818) always have been, and are now against the general sentiment of our country, can be easily proved by the nomination of a candidate for the presidency who would advocate their repeal. There is no doubt that such a candidato would bo elected by an overwhelming majority..

"If the Congress of 1817 (1818) had not tied the hands of our people by stealing from them their reserved rights, and making the acts which had nearly deified Lafayette high crimes and misdemeanors, the British West Indies would not now have been given over to free-negro barbarism. The Jamaica planters would have cried aloud to the people of the United States against the tyranny of Great Britain in reducing them to a level with their own negroes. In the evidenco taken before the IIouse of Commons, it leaked out that they were casting their eyes toward us, and even contemplating annexation to the United States, but becamo discouraged when they found that the Neutrality Laws of 1817 (1818) had deprived our people of the liberty to assist them in throwing off the British yoke. Hence they had to submit to the policy of England in sacrificing the West Indies to enhance the value of her immense East India empire, and at the same time to hem in her great rival in agriculture, manufactures, and commerce by a free-negro barbarism planted in the centre of our republican hemisphere. I perceive by your speech on the neutrality laws that you understand English policy perfectly, which so few of our prominent statesmen seem to do. With that policy understood, none but downright traitors to their country could have made the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, and none but enemies to their country would oppose its annulment and the repeal of the neutrality laws. The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, the preposterous

claims set up to a large portion of Central America, and the Africanization of tropical America, are parts and parcels of the same policy that led Great Britain into tho late war with Russia-the policy being to preserve and extend her East India and Asiatic conquests against American competition in the West and Russian progress in the East,"

CHAPTER XIX.

Quitman and the. Vice-presidency. - Buchanan and Fremont.Speech on Federal Relations.—Its Influence on Public Opinion.His Views on the Slave-trade.-The subject considered.-Views of Luther Martin.-Argument of Major Marshall.-Re-elected to Congress. Decline of his Health.-His last political Letters.— The English-Kansas Bill.—Quitman's Votc.-The North and the South.-Alarming Posture of Affairs.-Can the Union be pre

scrved?

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1856. WHEN the National Democratic Convention assembled at Cincinnati, it was believed that Quitman would receive the nomination for the vice-presidency. He was regarded as the representative man of the party—of the action, progress, and expansion policy, which, if allowed full scope, would subdue internal controversies, secure Democratic ascendency, and place the republic in its proper position before the world. Quitman coveted distinction only with these views. On the first ballot he received the highest number of votes. The combinations that would seem to be indispensable to the nomination of a president, and the construction of what is called a platform of principles for the concentration of discordant opinions, rendered his nomination impracticable.*

* What his views were in the canvass that followed may be learned from the following note:

"Monmouth, October 17th, 1856. "MR. WALKER: DEAR SIR,-I have just received your letter of the 6th instant, in which you inform me that a report is circulated in your neighborhood, that Intely, when passing through Atalanta, I had given it as my opinion that New York and Pennsylvania would vote for Fillmore, and that I therefore recommended all Southern men to vote for him, and thus exclude Fremont. The only truth in this re

Shortly after resuming his seat in Congress he delivered his celebrated speech on the powers of the federal government with regard to the territories. It will bo found in the Appendix. He took occasion to discuss, incidentally, all the stirring issues of the day; the policy and designs of the Black Republican party; the Central American states; General Walker and Nicaragua; the repeal of the laws making the slave-trade piracy; legislation for public morality; the folly of attempting to legislate for posterity; and the relation of the states to the federal government and to the territories. This speech produced a profound impression at the time, and it will bear the test of the severest criticism. It was published in Europe, as significant of the views of a section of the Democratic party certain to control the destinies of the republic, and just as certain to claim for it a broader and grander sphere of operations, and a controlling influence in the affairs of this hemisphere. His sentiments were warmly welcomed by the American people. His popularity overleaped sectional boundaries. In every quarter, from Maine to Wisconsin, from Oregon to Florida, the press responded to his manly and thoroughly American doctrines.

In regard to the slave-trade he did not favor the reopening of it, but he doubted the alleged power of Congress to prohibit it, or to declare it piracy.

port is, that I did pass through Atalanta on my journey homeward. It was the day after the Know Nothing meeting had been held there. From whatever source it sprang, the report is utterly false. On all occasions, and every where, when my opinions have been asked, I stated what I believe will occur, and that is, that Fillmore will not carry a single electoral vote North or South. In this contest I can scarcely excuse the Southern man who throws his vote away on Fillmore. I would as soon recommend the Southern people to stand aloof from a contest involving their dearest rights, as to advise them to desert Buchanan. I can make due allowance for political prejudice and partisanship, but non-committalism in this contest is almost a crime."