peculiar structure and commercial spirit of modern society, and the facilities presented in our country for the acquisition of wealth, the eager pursuit of gain predominates over our concern for the affairs of the republic. This is, perhaps, our national foible. Wealth is the object of our idolatry; and even liberty is worshipped in the form of property. Although this spirit, by stimulating industry, is unquestionably excellent in itself, yet it is to be apprehended that, in a period of peace and tranquillity, it will become too strong for patriotism, and produce the greatest of national evils- popular apathy.

We have been frequently told that the farmer should attend to his plough, and the mechanic to his handicraft, during the canvass for the presidency. A more dangerous doctrine could not be inculcated. If there is any spectacle from the contemplation of which I would shrink with peculiar horror, it would be that of the great mass of the American people sunk into a profound apathy on the subject of their highest political interests. Such a spectacle would be more portentous to the eye of intelligent patriotism, than all the monsters of the earth, and fiery signs of the heavens, to the eye of trembling superstition. If the people could be indifferent. to the fate of a contest for the presidency, they would be unworthy of freedom. If I were to perceive them sinking into this apathy, I would even apply the power of political galvanism, if such a power could be found, to rouse them from their fatal lethargy. Keep the people quiet! Peace! peace! Such are the whispers . by which the people are to be lulled to sleep, in the very crisis of their highest concerns. "You make a solitude, and call it peace!" Peace? 'Tis death! Take away all interest from the people in the election of their chief ruler, and liberty is no more. What is to be the consequence? If the people do not elect the president, somebody must. There is no special providence to decide the question. Who, then, is to make the election, and how will it operate? You throw a general paralysis over the body politic, and excite a morbid action in particular members. The general patriotic excitement of the people, in relation to the election of the president, is as essential to the health and energy of the

political system, as circulation of the blood is to the health and energy of the natural body. Check that circulation, and you inevitably produce local inflammation, gangrene, and, ultimately, death. Make the people indifferent, destroy their legitimate influence, and you communicate a morbid violence to the efforts of those who are ever ready to assume the control of such affairs, the mercenary intriguers and interested office-hunters of the country. Tell me not of popular violence! Show me a hundred political factionists, -men who look to the election of a president as the means of gratifying their high or their low ambition, show you the very materials for a mob, ready for adventure connected with their common fortunes. this extraordinary excitement is obvious. It is a matter of selfinterest, of personal ambition. The people can have no such motives. They look only to the interest and glory of the country.

- and I will any desperate

The reason of

THE SPIRIT OF HUMAN LIBERTY.-D. Webster.

THE spirit of human liberty and of free government, nurtured and grown into strength and beauty in America, has stretched its course into the midst of the nations. Like an emanation from heaven, it has gone forth, and it will not return void. It must change, it is fast changing, the face of the earth. Our great, our high duty is to show, in our own examples, that this spirit is a spirit of health as well as a spirit of power; that its benignity is as great as its strength; that its efficiency to secure individual rights, social relations, and moral order, is equal to the irresistible force with which it prostrates principalities and powers. The world, at this moment, is regarding us with a willing, but something of a fearful, admiration. Its deep and awful anxiety is to learn, whether free states may be stable as well as free; whether popular power may be trusted as well as feared ;-in short, whether wise, regular and virtuous self-government is a vision for the contemplation of theorists, or a truth, established, illustrated, and brought into practice, in the country of Washington.

For the earth which we inhabit, and the whole circle of the sun, for all the unborn races of mankind, we seem to hold in our hands, for their weal or woe, the fate of this experiment. If we fail, who shall venture the repetition? If our example shall prove to be one, not of encouragement, but of terror, not fit to be imitated, but fit only to be shunned, where else shall the world look for free models? If this great western sun be struck out of the firmament, at what other fountain shall the lamp of liberty hereafter be lighted? What other orb shall emit a ray to glimmer, even, on the darkness of the world?

THE DESTINY OF THE UNITED STATES.-H. W. Hilliard.

WHEN Oregon shall be in our possession, when we shall have established a profitable trade with China through her ports, when our ships traverse the Pacific as they now cross the Atlantic, and all the countless consequences of such a state of things begin to flow in upon us, then will be fulfilled that vision which rapt and filled the mind of Nunez as he gazed over the placid waves of the Pacific.

I will now address myself for a moment to the moral aspect of this great question. Gentlemen have talked much and eloquently about the horrors of war. I should regret the necessity of a war; I should deplore its dreadful scenes; -but if the possession of Oregon gives us a territory opening upon the nation prospects such as I describe, and if, for the simple exercise of our rights in regard to it, Great Britain should wage war upon us, an unjust the regret which every one must feel will, at least, have much to counterbalance it. One of England's own writers has said: "The possible destiny of the United States of America, as a nation of one hundred millions of freemen, stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, living under the laws of Alfred, and speaking the language of Shakspeare and Milton, is an august conception."

war,

It is an august conception, finely embodied; and I trust in God

that it will, at no distant time, become a reality. I trust that the world will see, through all time, our people living, not only under the laws of Alfred, but that they will be heard to speak, throughout our wide-spread borders, the language of Shakspeare and Milton. Above all, is it my prayer that, as long as our posterity shall contine to inhabit these mountains and plains, and hills and valleys, they may be found living under the sacred institutions of Christianity. Put these things together, and what a picture do they present to the mental eye! Civilization and intelligence started in the East; they have travelled, and are still travelling, westward; but when they shall have completed the circuit of the earth, and reached the extremest verge of the Pacific shores, then, unlike the fabled god of the ancients, who dipped his glowing axle in the western wave, they will take up their permanent abode; then shall we enjoy the sublime destiny of returning these blessings to their ancient seat; then will it be ours to give the priceless benefits of our free institutions, and the pure and healthful light of the gospel, back to the dark family which has so long lost both truth and freedom; then may Christianity plant herself there, and while with one hand she points to the Polynesian isles, rejoicing in the late-recovered treasure of revealed truth, with the other present the Bible to the Chinese. It is our duty to aid in this great work. I trust we shall esteem it as much our honor as our duty. Let us not, like some of the British missionaries, give them the Bible in one hand and opium in the other, but bless them only with the pure word of truth. I hope the day is not distant, soon, soon may its dawn arise! — to shed upon the farthest and the most benighted of nations the splendor of more than a tropical sun.

THE NATIONAL DEFENCES.-F. Pierce.

In this age of progress, in this land of invention and almost boundless resources, we are not the people to stand still. We have not stood still. But while individual enterprise has kept pace, in all the various pursuits of life, with the best improvements

of the day, it must be admitted, considering our position upon the globe, the immense extent of our maritime frontier, the mode in which we must be assailed, if ever successfully, by a foreign foe, - the easy access to our most commanding harbors, the vast importance and exposed condition of our great commercial cities, especially since the successful application of steam-power to ocean navigation, that we have been singularly regardless of the improvements which in other countrics, especially in France and England, have been and are rapidly changing the character of military operations, offensive and defensive, both on the land and on the sea.

There are some things about the military defences of this country which may be considered as settled. I regard it as certain that no large standing army is ever to be maintained here, in time of peace, while our free institutions remain unshaken. In this we differ entirely from those nations with whom, from our position and political relations, we are in the greatest danger of a collision. It is equally certain, in my judgment, that stationary fortifications, in the best condition, with abundance of materiél, and well manned, will prove entirely inadequate to the defence of even our large commercial cities. It must be regarded as not less clear, that no foreign power can ever embark in the Quixotic enterprise of conquering this country, unless its constitution shall first be trampled in the dust by its children. Such a project can never be soberly contemplated while we are a united people. During our Revolution, in the weakness of our infancy, the invaders could scarcely command more ground than they were able immediately to occupy.

The leading purposes of an enemy will be, by the celerity and boldness of his movements on our coast, to keep up a constant alarm; to harass and cut off our commerce; to destroy our naval depots and public works; and, if possible, to lay our great commercial cities under contribution or in ashes. It is against prompt movements and vigorous exertions for objects like these, that we should prepare and provide. France and England have, and always must maintain, large and well-appointed standing armies;