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before the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the source of power, wealth, and knowledge, to the other, all unutterable woes, such is it at this day; it is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and hate blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy, that man can hold property in man!

In vain ye appeal to treaties, - to covenants between nations. The covenants of the Almighty, whether the old covenant or the new, denounce such unholy pretensions. To these laws did they of old refer, who maintained the African trade. Such treaties did they cite, and not untruly; for, by one shameful compact, you bartered the glories of Blenheim for the traffic in blood. Yet, in despite of law and of treaty, that infernal traffic is now destroyed, and its votaries put to death like other pirates. How came this change to pass? Not, assuredly, by Parliament leading the way; but the country at length awoke; the indignation of the people was kindled; it descended in thunder, and smote the traffic, and scattered its guilty profit to the winds.

Now, then, let the planters beware, - let their assemblies beware, let the government at home beware, - let the Parliament beware! The same country is once more awake, awake to the condition of negro slavery; the same indignation kindles in the bosom of the same people; the same cloud is gathering that annihilated the slave-trade; and if it shall descend again, they, on whom its crash may fall, will not be destroyed before I have warned them; but I pray that their destruction may turn away from us the more terrible judgments of God! Lord Brougham.

TH

LXX.

THE TEACHERS OF MANKIND.

HERE is nothing which the adversaries of improvement are more wont to make themselves merry with than what is termed the "march of intellect ;" and here I will confess, that I think, as far as the phrase goes, they are in the right. It is a very absurd, because a very incorrect expression. It is little cal

culated to describe the operation in question. It does not picture an image at all resembling the proceedings of the true friends of mankind. It much more resembles the progress of the enemy to all improvement. The conqueror moves in a march. He stalks onward with the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of war," banners flying shouts rending the air-guns thundering — and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks of the wounded, and the lamentations for the slain.

Not thus the schoolmaster, in his peaceful vocation. He meditates and prepares in secret the plans which are to bless mankind; he slowly gathers round him those who are to further their execution, he quietly, though firmly, advances in his humble path, laboring steadily, but calmly, till he has opened to the light all the recesses of ignorance, and torn up by the roots the weeds of vice. His is a progress not to be compared with anything like a march; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels more imperishable than the destroyer of his species, the scourge of the world, ever won.

Such men men deserving the glorious title of Teachers of Mankind I have found, laboring conscientiously, though, perhaps obscurely, in their blessed vocation, wherever I have gone. I have found them, and shared their fellowship, among the daring, the ambitious, the ardent, the indomitably active French; I have found them among the persevering, resolute, industrious Swiss; I have found them among the laborious, the warmhearted, the enthusiastic Germans; I have found them among the high-minded, but enslaved Italians; and in our own country, God be thanked, their numbers everywhere abound, and are every day increasing.

Their calling is high and holy; their fame is the property of nations; their renown will fill the earth in after-ages, in proportion as it sounds not far off in their own times. Each one of those great teachers of the world, possessing his soul in peace, performs his appointed course; awaits in patience the fulfilment of the promises; and, resting from his labors, bequeathes his memory to the generation whom his works have blessed, and sleeps under the humble but not inglorious epitaph, commemorating "one in whom mankind lost a friend, and no man got rid of an enemy." Lord Brougham.

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LXXI.

THE GREATNESS OF WASHINGTON.

REAT he was, preeminently great, whether we regard him sustaining alone the whole weight of campaigns all but desperate, or gloriously terminating a just warfare by his resources and his courage; presiding over the jarring elements of his political council, alike deaf to the storms of all extremes, or directing the formation of a new government for a great people, the first time that so vast an experiment had ever been tried by man; or, finally, retiring from the supreme power to which his virtue had raised him over the nation he had created, and whose destinies he had guided as long as his aid was required, retiring with the veneration of all parties, of all nations, of all mankind, in order that the rights of men might be conserved, and that his example never might be appealed to by vulgar tyrants.

This is the consummate glory of Washington; a triumphant warrior where the most sanguine had a right to despair; a successful ruler in all the difficulties of a course wholly untried; but a warrior, whose sword only left its sheath when the first law of our nature commanded it to be drawn; and a ruler who, having tasted of supreme power, gently and unostentatiously desired that the cup might pass from him, nor would suffer more to wet his lips than the most solemn and sacred duty to his country and his God required!

To his latest breath did this great patriot maintain the noble character of a captain the patron of peace, and a statesman the friend of justice. Dying, he bequeathed to his heirs the sword which he had worn in the war for liberty, and charged them 66 never to take it from the scabbard but in self-defence, or in defence of their country and her freedom;" and commanded them that, "when it should thus be drawn, they should never sheathe it, nor ever give it up, but prefer falling with it in their hands the relinquishment thereof," words, the majesty and simple eloquence of which are not surpassed in the oratory of Athens and Rome.

It will be the duty of the historian and the sage, in all ages, to let no occasion pass of commemorating this illustrious man;

and, until time shall be no more, will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of WASHINGTON !

Lord Brougham.

LXXII.

WASHINGTON, A MAN OF GENIUS.

HOW many times have we been told that Washington was

not a man of genius, but a person of excellent common sense, of admirable judgment, of rare virtues! He had no genius, it seems. O no! genius, we must suppose, is the peculiar and shining attribute of some orator, whose tongue can spout patriotic speeches; or some versifier, whose muse can hail Columbia; but not of the man who supported States on his arm, and carried America in his brain. What is genius? Is it worth anything? Is splendid folly the measure of its inspiration? Is wisdom its base and summit? that which it recedes from, or tends toward? And by what definition do you award the name to the creator of an epic, and deny it to the creator of a country? On what principle is it to be lavished on him who sculptures in perishing marble the image of possible excellence, and withheld from him who built up in himself a transcendent character, indestructible as the obligations of duty, and beautiful as her rewards?

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Indeed, if by genius of action, you mean will enlightened by intelligence, and intelligence energized by will, if force and insight be its characteristics, and influence its test, and if great effects suppose a cause proportionally great, a vital, causative mind, then was Washington most assuredly a man of genius, and one whom no other American has equalled in the power of working morally and mentally on other minds. His genius was of a peculiar kind, the genius of character, of thought, and the objects of thought solidified and concentrated into active faculty. He belongs to that rare class of men, rare as Homers and Miltons, rare as Platos and Newtons, who have impressed

their characters upon nations without pampering national vices. Such men have natures broad enough to include all the facts of a people's practical life, and deep enough to discern the spiritual laws which underlie, animate, and govern those facts.

E. P. Whipple

I

LXXIII.

IRISH ALIENS AND ENGLISH VICTORIES.

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SHOULD be surprised, indeed, if, while you are doing us wrong, you did not profess your solicitude to do us justice. From the day on which Strongbow set his foot upon the shore of Ireland, Englishmen were never wanting in protestations of their deep anxiety to do us justice; even Strafford, the deserter of the people's cause, the renegade Wentworth, who gave evidence in Ireland of the spirit of instinctive tyranny which predominated in his character, even Strafford, while he trampled upon our rights, and trod upon the heart of the country, protested his solicitude to do justice to Ireland! What marvel is it, then, that gentlemen opposite should deal in such vehement protestations? There is, however, one man, of great abilities, - not a member of this House, but whose talents and whose boldness have placed him in the topmost place in his party, who, disdaining all imposture, and thinking it the best course to appeal directly to the religious and national antipathies of the people of this country, abandoning all reserve, and flinging off the slender veil by which his political associates affect to cover, although they cannot hide, their motives, -distinctly and audaciously tells the Irish people that they are not entitled to the same privileges as Englishmen ; and pronounces them, in any particular which could enter his minute enumeration of the circumstances by which fellow-citizenship is created, in race, identity, and religion to be aliens - to be aliens in race - to be aliens in country- to be aliens in religion! Aliens! Good God! was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, in the House of Lords, - and did he not start up and exclaim, "Hold! I have seen the aliens do their duty!"

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The Duke of Wellington is not a man of an excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking that, when he heard his Roman Catholic countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase as offensive as the abundant vocabulary of his eloquent confederate could supply, I cannot help thinking that he ought to have recollected the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. "The battles, sieges, fortunes, that he

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