65. AMERICAN INNOVATIONS. [JAMES MADISON, who served two terms as President of the United States, was a Virginian by birth. As a writer and a statesman, he stands among the first of his times.] WH HY is the experiment of an extended Republic to be rejected, merely because it may comprise what is new? Is it not the glory of the people of America, that while they bave paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situa tion, and the lesson of their own experience? 2. To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example) of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness. 3. Had no important step been taken by the leaders of the Revolution, for which a precedent could not be discovered,— no government established, of which an exact model did not present itself, the people of the United States might, at this moment, have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils; must, at best, have been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind, 4. Happily for America,-happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a Revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabric of governments which have no model on the face of the globe. They formed the design of a great confederacy, which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate. 5. If their works betray imperfections, we wonder at the fewness of them. If they erred most in the structure of the Union, this was the most difficult to be executed; this is the work which has been new modelled by the act of your con vention, and it is that act on which you are now to deliberate and to decide. JAMES MADISON, 66. THE EAGLE. BIR IRD of the broad and sweeping wing! II. Thou sittest like a thing of light, Amid the noontide blaze: The midway sun is clear and bright- Thy pinions to the rushing blast O'er the bursting billow spread, Where the vessel plunges, hurry, past, III. Thou art perch'd aloft on the beetling crag, And the waves are white below, And on, with a haste that cannot lag, They rush in an endless flow. Again, thou hast plumed thy wing for flight To lands beyond the sea, And away like a spirit wreath'd in light, IV. Thou hurriest o'er the myriad waves, And thou leavest them all behind; 1 A Thou sweepest that place of unknown graves, When the night storm gathers dim and dark, With a shrill and boding scream, Thou rushest by the foundering bark, Lord of the boundless realm of air! In thy imperial name, The hearts of the bold and ardent dare Beneath the shade of thy golden wings, From the river of Egypt's cloudy springs VI. For thee they fought, for thee they fell, Thou wert, through an age of death and fears, Till the gather'd rage of a thousand years Burst forth in one awful hour. VII. And then, a deluge of wrath it came, And the nations shook with dread; And it swept the earth till its fields were flame, VIII. And where was then thy fearless flight? To the lands that caught the setting light, The cradle of Liberty. There, on the silent and lonely shore, For ages I watch'd alone, And the world, in its darkness, ask'd no more IX. "But then came a bold and hardy few, X. "And now that bold and hardy few Are a nation wide and strong, And danger and doubt I have led them through, And they worship me in song; And over their bright and glancing arms On field and lake and sea, With an eye that fires, and a spell that charms, PERCIVAL 67. THE PROSPECT OF WAR. [J. C. CALHOUN, born in South Carolina, 1782; died, 1850.-"The eloquence of Mr. Calhoun," said Webster, "was a part of his intellect. It grew out of the qualities of his mind, and was plain, strong, terse, condensed, concise. Re'ecting ornament, his force consisted in the plainness of his propositions, in the closeness of his logic, and in the strength and energy of his manner." A distinguished contemporary statesman, Wilde, gives the following analysis of Calhoun's oratory:-"With a genius eminently metaphysical, he applied to politics his habits of analysis, abstraction, and condensation, and thus gave to the problems of government something of that grandeur which the higher mathematics have borrowed from astronomy. The wings of his mind were rapid, but capricious, and there were times when the light which flashed from them as they passed, glanced like a mirror in the sun, only to dazzle th beholder. Engrossed with his subject, careless of his words, his lofties flights of eloquence were sometimes followed by colloquial or provincial bar barisms But, though often incorrect, he was always fascinating. Language with him, was merely the scaffolding of thought, employed to raise a dome, which, like Angelo's, he suspended in the heavens.] WE E are told of the danger of war. We are ready to acknowledge its hazard and misfortune, but I cannot think that we have any extraordinary danger to apprehend,at least, none to warrant an acquiescence in the injuries we have received. On the contrary, I believe no war would be less dangerous to internal peace, or the safety of the country. 2. In speaking of Canada, the gentleman from Virginia introduced the name of Montgomery with much feeling and in terest. Sir, there is danger in that name to the gentleman's argument. It is sacred to heroism! It is indignant of submission! It calls our memory back to the time of our Revolution, to the Congress of 1774 and 1775. 3. Suppose a speaker of that day had risen and urged all the arguments which we have heard on this occasion; had told that Congress, "Your contest is about the right of laying a tax; the attempt on Canada has nothing to do with it; the war will be expensive; danger and devastation will overspread our country, and the power of Great Britain is irresistible?" With what sentiment, think you, would such doctrines have been received? 4. Happy for us, they had no force at that period of our country's glory. Had such been acted on, this hall would never have witnessed a great people convened to deliberate for the general good; a mighty empire, with prouder prospects than any nation the sun ever shone on, would not have risen |