Three

Mississippi, and embracing the whole temperate zone. thousand miles across, and half that breadth, is the magnificent parallelogram of our domain. We can run a national central road through and through, the whole distance, under our flag and under our laws. Military reasons require us to make it; for troops and munitions must go there. Political reasons require us to make it; it will be a chain of union between the Atlantic and Pacific States. Commercial reasons demand it from us; and here I touch a boundless field, dazzling and bewildering the imagination from its vastness and importance. The trade of the Pacific Ocean, of the western coast of North America, and of eastern Asia, will all take its track; and not only for ourselves, but for posterity.

Sir, in no instance has the great Asiatic trade failed to carry the nation or the people which possessed it to the highest pinnacle of wealth and power, and with it, to the highest attainments of letters, art, and science. And so will it continue to be. An American road to India, through the heart of our country, will revive upon its line all the wonders of which we have read, and eclipse them. The western wilderness, from the Pacific to the Mississippi, will spring into life under its touch. A long line of cities will grow up. Existing cities will take a new start. The state of the world calls for a new road to India, and it is our destiny to give it the last and greatest. Let us act up to the greatness of the occasion, and show ourselves worthy of the extraordinary circumstances in which we are placed, by securing, while we can, an American road to India, central and national, for ourselves and our posterity, now and hereafter, for thousands years to come.

of

T. H. Benton.

IT

LXXVII.

ADDRESS TO POLISH EXILES AT LONDON.

T is eighty-one years since Poland first was quartered by a nefarious act of combined royalty, which the Swiss Tacitus, John Müller, well characterized by saying that "God permitted the act, to show the morality of kings;" and it is twenty-four years since down-trodden Poland made the greatest - not the last manifestation of her imperishable vitality, which the cab

inets of Europe were either too narrow-minded to understand, or too corrupt to appreciate. Eighty-one years of still unretributed crime, and twenty-four years of misery and exile! It is a long time to suffer, and not to despair.

And all along this time, you, proscribed patriots of Poland, were suffering, and did not despair. You stood up before the world, a living statue, with unquenchable life-flame of patriotism streaming through its petrified limbs; you stood up a protest of eternal right against the sway of imperious might; a "Mene Tekel Upharsin," written in letters of burning blood on the walls of overweening despotism. Time, misery, and sorrow have thinned the ranks of your scattered Israel; you have carried your dead to the grave, and those who survive went on to suffer and to hope. Wherever oppressed Freedom reared a banner, you rallied around; - the living statue changed to a fighting hero. Many of yours fell; and, when crime triumphed once more over virtue and right, you resumed the wandering exile's staff, and did not despair. Many among you, who were young when they last saw the sun rise over Poland's mountains and plains, have your hair whitened and your strength broken with age, anguish, and misery; but the patriotic heart kept the freshness of its youth; it is young in love for Poland, young in aspirations for freedom, young in hope, and youthfully fresh in determination to break Poland's chains.

What a rich source of noble deeds patriotism must be, that has given you strength to suffer so much and never to despair! You have given a noble example to all of us, your younger brother in the family of exiles. When the battle of Canna was lost, and Hannibal was measuring by bushels the rings of the fallen Roman knights, the Senate of Rome. voted thanks to Consul Terentius Varro for "not having despaired of the Commonwealth." Proscribed patriots of Poland! I thank you that you have not despaired of resurrection and of liberty. The time draws nigh when the oppressed nations will call their aggressors to a last account; and the millions of freemen, in the fulness of their right, and their self-conscious strength, will pass judgment on arrogant conquerors, privileged murderers, and perjured kings. In that supreme trial, the oppressed nations will stand one for all, and all for one.

L. Kossuth.

LXXVIII.

KOSSUTH ON HIS CREDENTIALS.

LET ambitious fools,

let the pigmies who live on the scanty

food of personal envy, when the very earth quakes beneath their feet; let even the honest prudence of ordinary household times, measuring eternity with that thimble with which they are wont to measure the bubbles of small party interest, and, taking the dreadful roaring of the ocean for a storm in a water-glass; let those who believe the weather to be calm, because they have drawn a nightcap over their ears, and, burying their heads in pillows of domestic comfort, do not hear Satan sweeping in a hurricane over the earth; let envy, ambition, blindness, and the pettifogging wisdom of small times, let all these artistically investigate the question of my official capacity, or the nature of my public authority; let them scrupulously discuss the immense problem whether I still possess, or possess no longer, the title of my once-Governorship; let them ask for credentials, discuss the limits of my commission, as representative of Hungary. I pity all such frog and mouse fighting.

I claim no official capacity, no public authority, no representation; - boast of no commission, of no written and sealed credentials. I am nothing but what my generous friend, the senator from Michigan, has justly styled me, "a private and banished man.' But, in that capacity, I have a nobler credential for my mission than all the clerks of the world can write, the credential that I am a "man;" the credential that I am a "patriot; " the credential that I love with all sacrificing devotion my oppressed fatherland and liberty; the credential that I hate tyrants, and have sworn everlasting hostility to them; the credential that I feel the strength to do good service to the cause of freedom; good service, as perhaps few men can do, because I have the iron will, in this my breast, to serve faithfully, devotedly, indefatigably, that noble cause.

to jus

I have the credential that I trust to God in heaven, tice on earth; that I offend no laws, but cling to the protection of the laws. I have the credential of my people's undeniable confidence and its unshaken faith; to my devotion, to my manli

ness, to my honesty, and to my patriotism; which faith I will honestly answer without ambition, without interest, as faithfully as ever, but more skilfully, because schooled by adversities. And I have the credential of the justice of the cause I plead, and of the wonderful sympathy which, not my person, but that cause, has met, and meets, in two hemispheres.

These are my credentials, and nothing else. To whom this is enough, he will help me, so far as the law permits and it is his good pleasure. To whom these credentials are not sufficient, let him look for a better accredited man.

LXXIX.

EULOGY ON O'CONNELL.

THERE is sad news from Genoa. An aged and weary pilgrim, who can travel no farther, passes beneath the gate of one of her ancient palaces, saying, with pious resignation, as he enters its silent chambers, "Well, it is God's will that I shall never see Rome. I am disappointed, but I am ready to die.”

The "superb," though fading queen of the Mediterranean holds anxious watch through ten long days over that majestic stranger's wasting frame. And now death is there, the Liberator of Ireland has sunk to rest in the cradle of Columbus.

Coincidence beautiful and most sublime! It was the day set apart by the elder daughter of the Church for prayer and sacrifice throughout the world for the children of the sacred island, perishing by famine and pestilence in their houses and their native fields, and on their crowded paths of exile, on the sea and in the havens, and on the lakes, and along the rivers of this far-distant land. The chimes rung out by pity for his countrymen were O'Connell's fitting knell; his soul went forth on clouds of incense that rose from altars of Christian charity; and the mournful anthems which recited the faith, and the virtue, and the endurance of Ireland were his becoming requiem.

But has not O'Connell done more than enough for fame? On the lofty brow of Monticello, under a green old oak, is a block of granite, and underneath are the ashes of Jefferson. Read the epitaph, it is the sage's claim to immortality:

"Author of the Declaration of Independence, and of the Statute for Religious Liberty."

"He

Stop now and write an epitaph for Daniel O'Connell : gave liberty of conscience to Europe, and renewed the revolutions of the kingdoms toward universal freedom, which began in America and had been arrested by the anarchy of France."

Let the statesmen of the age read that epitaph and be humble. Let the kings and aristocracies of the earth read it and tremble.

Who has ever accomplished so much for human freedom with means so feeble? Who but he has ever given liberty to a people by the mere utterance of his voice, without an army, a navy, or revenues, without a sword, a spear, or even a shield?

It was O'Connell's mission to teach mankind that Liberty was not estranged from Christianity, as was proclaimed by revolutionary France; that she was not divorced from law and public order; that she was not a demon like Moloch, requiring to be propitiated with the blood of human sacrifice; that democracy is the daughter of peace, and like true religion, worketh by love.

W. H. Seward.

LXXX.

NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY.

From a Speech before the National Convention of France, 1789.

YES,

́ES, gentlemen, it is to your immediate self-interest, to your most familiar notions of prudence and policy, that I now appeal. I say not to you now, as heretofore, beware how you give the world the first example of an assembled nation untrue to the public faith. I ask you not, as heretofore, what right you have to freedom, or what means of maintaining it, if, at your first step in administration, you outdo in baseness all the old and corrupt governments. I tell you, that unless you prevent this catastrophe, you will all be involved in the general ruin; and that you are yourselves the persons most deeply interested in making the sacrifices which the government demands of you.

I exhort you, then, most earnestly, to vote these extraordinary supplies; and God grant that they may be sufficient! Vote