2. The President of the United States certainly demands a degree of forbearance from his political opponents; but am I to be told that one can only allude to him in the humble language of a degraded Roman Senate, speaking of the emperor with his prætorian guards surrounding the capitol?

3. Am I to be told, when he came into power on principles of reform, after "keeping the word of promise to our ear, and breaking it to our hope," am I to be told that I must close my lips, or be denounced for want of decorum? Am I to be told, when he promised to prevent official influence from interfering with the freedom of elections, that I must not speak of the broken promise, under pain of the displeasure of his friends?

4. Am I to be told, when he came into power as a judicious tariff man, after advocating his principles and aiding in his election, believing at the time in his integrity, though I did not believe him possessed of intellectual qualifications,-am I to be told, after pledges that have been violated, promises that have been broken, and principles that have been set at naught, that I must not speak of these things as they are, for fear of being denounced for want of courtesy to the constituted authorities?

5. Why, to what pass are we come! Are we to be gagged -reduced to silence? If nothing else is left to us, the liberty of speech is left; and it is our duty to cry aloud, and spare not, when the undenied, admitted and declared fact before us is, that these pledges have been made and have been violated.

6. This administration is about to end; and if gentlemen can succeed in preventing us from complaining of being deceived, if they can reduce us to abject slavery, they will also have to expunge the history of the country, the President's written and recorded communications to Congress, and the most ardent professions of his friends, when fighting his battles, before they can conceal the recorded fact, that he has made pledges which he has violated, and promises which he has repeatedly broken.

7. If they succeed in reducing us to slavery, and close our lips against speaking of the abuses of this administration, thank God, the voice of history, trumpet-tongued, will proclaim these pledges, and the manner in which they have been violated, to future generations!

8. Neither here nor elsewhere will I use language, with regard to any gentleman, that may be considered indecorous; and the question, not easily solved, is, how far shall we restrain ourselves in expressing a just and necessary indignation; and whether the expression of such indignation may be considered a departure from courtesy?

9. That indignation, that reprobation, I shall express on all occasions. But those who have taken upon themselves the guardianship of the Grand Lama, who is surrounded by a light which no one can approach;—about whom no one is permitted to speak without censure,-have extended that guardianship to the presiding officer of this house.

10. Gentlemen are not permitted to speak of the qualifications of that officer for the highest office in the government. Shall we, sir, because he is here as presiding officer of this body, keep silent when he is urged upon the people, who are goaded and driven to his support, lest we be guilty of an indecorum against those who are the constituted authorities of the country? Thank God, it is not my practice to "crook the pliant hinges of the knee, that thrift may follow fawning !"

11. This aggression of power upon our liberties, sir, and this tame submission to aggression, forbode evil to this nation. "Coming events cast their shadows before them," deepening and darkening; and as the sun sets, the shadows lengthen It may be the going down of the great luminary of the Re public, and that we all shall be enveloped in one universa political darkness!

W. C. PRESTON.

93. THE MEXICAN WAR.

[T. CORWIN, at the bar and in Congress, earned the title of a popular and eloquent speaker.]

I

ASK, Mr. President, what has Mexico got from you for parting with two-thirds of her domain? She has given you ample redress for every injury of which you have complained. She has submitted to the award of your commissioners, and up to the time of the rupture with Texas, faithfully paid it. And for all that she has lost (not through or by you, but which loss has been your gain) what requital do we, her strong, rich, robust neighbor, make?

2. Do we send our missionaries there, "to point the way to heaven?" Or do we send the schoolmasters to pour daylight into her dark places, to aid her infant strength to conquer freedom, and reap the fruit of the independence herself alone hač won?

3. No, no; none of this do we. But we send regiments, storm towns, and our colonels prate of liberty in the midst of the solitudes their ravages have made. They proclaim the empty forms of social compact to a people bleeding and maimed with wounds received in defending their hearth-stones against the invasion of these very men who shoot them down, and then exhort them to be free.

4. Your chaplain of the navy throws aside the New Testa ment and seizes a bill of rights. He takes military possession of some town in California, and instead of teaching the plan of the atonement and the way of salvation to the poor, ignorant Celt, he presents Colt's pistol to his ear, and calls on him to take "trial by jury and habeas corpus," or nine bullets in his head. Oh! Mr. President, are you not the lights of the earth, if not its salt?

5. What is the territory, Mr. President, which you propose to wrest from Mexico? It is consecrated to the heart of the Mexican by many a well-fought battle with his old Castilian

master. His Bunker Hills, and Saratogas, and Yorktowns are there!

6. The Mexican can say, "There I bled for liberty! and shall I surrender that consecrated home of my affections to the Anglo-Saxon invaders? What do they want with it? They have Texas already. They have possessed themselves of the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. What else do they want? To what shall I point my children as memorials of that independence which I bequeath to them, when those battle-fields shall have passed from my possession?”

7. Sir, had one come and demanded Bunker Hill of the people of Massachusetts-had England's lion ever showed himself there, is there a man over thirteen and under ninety who would not have been ready to meet him? Is there a river on this continent that would not have run red with blood? Is there a field but would have been piled high with the unburied bones of slaughtered Americans, before these consecrated battle-fields of liberty should have been wrested from us?

T. CORWIN

SIR,

94. RETRIBUTIVE JUSTICE.

[Extract from a speech on the Mexican question.]

NIR, I have heard much, and read somewhat of this gentleman, Terminus. Alexander, of whom I have spoken, was a devotee of this divinity. We have seen the end of him and his empire. It was said to be an attribute of this god, that he must always advance, and never recede. So both republican and imperial Rome believed. It was, as they said, their des tiny; and for awhile it did seem to be even so.

2. Roman Terminus did advance. Under the eagles of Rome he was carried from his home on the Tiber to the furthest east on the one hand, and to the far west, among the then barbarous tribes of Western Europe, on the other. But at length the time came when retributive justice had become "a destiny."

3. The despised Gaul calls out to the contemned Goths, and Attila, with his Huns, answers back the battle-shout to both. The "blue-eyed nations of the north," in succession, are united, pour their countless hosts of warriors upon Rome and Rome's always advancing god, Terminus.

4. And now the battle-axe of the barbarian strikes down the conquering eagle of Rome. Terminus at last recedes, slowly at first, but finally he is driven to Rome, and from Rome to Byzantium. Whoever would know the further fate of this Roman deity, may find ample gratification of his curiosity in the luminous pages of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall."

5. Such will find that Rome thought as you now think, that it was her destiny to conquer provinces and nations; and no doubt she sometimes said as you say, "I will conquer in peace."

6. And where is she now, the mistress of the world? The spider weaves his web in her palaces, and the owl sings his watch-song in her towers. Teutonic power now lords it over the servile remnant-the miserable memento of old and once omnipotent Rome.

7. Sad, very sad, are the lessons which time has written for us. Through and in them all I see nothing but the inflexible execution of that old law which ordains as eternal that cardinal rule," Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods, nor any thing that is his."

8. Since I have lately heard so much about the dismemberment of Mexico, I have looked back to see how in the course of events, which some call "Providence," it has fared with other nations who engaged in this work of dismemberment.

9. I see that in the latter half of the eighteenth century three powerful nations-Russia, Austria, and Prussia-united in the dismemberment of Poland. They said, too, as you say, "It is our destiny." They "wanted room." Doubtless each of them thought, with his share of Poland his power was too strong ever to fear invasion, or even insult.

10. One had his California, another his New Mexico, and a