O!

Surely if, in the tide of time, any nation ever existed, calling for the compassion of mankind, that nation is Spain. how she is degraded-how she is sunk—a foreign bayonet supports a tottering throne, whilst her imbecile monarch is watching, with a jealous eye, the progress of everything that is patriotic or worthy. His counsels, in his native country, have been more disastrous than the march of a desolating conqueror. His decrees are dictated by fear, cruelty, and despotism, and written in blood-at their approach, whatever is worthy, retires, as from the bond of death-in their van, amazement and flight; but behind, sorrow and solitude. In fine, the annals of Spain are like the Prophet's scroll, which was written within and without, and there was written lamentation, and mourning, and woe. Were it possible for America to desert her high career, to add an additional drug to the cup which Spain has been doomed to drink, we might well fear that we should provoke the vengeance of that God whose kind Providence has enabled us to march, with a giant's stride, to the fulfilment of our happy destinies, and whose favor is to be conciliated only by deeds of moderation and justice.

These are

These robbers are more ferocious than the Algerine corsairs; they spare neither age nor sex, but all fall beneath their murderous hands. Out of twelve vessels, not one was suffered to survive! Can the records of any age produce anything more monstrous or barbarous than this? the powerful motives which have induced us to recommend the adoption of such decisive measures; it is to save our property from plunder, our citizens from being murdered, and our flag from being insulted, and that it may become an inviolable safeguard over whatever subject or whatsoever sea it may wave.

LXXXIII-COMMUNICATION WITH MEXICO IN 1825.

THOMAS H. BENTON.

THE use of an unmolested passage between Mexico and the United States, is as necessary in a political, as in a commercial point of view. They are neighboring powers, inhabitants of the same continent, their territories are contiguous, and their settlements approximating to each other. They

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are the two chief powers of the New World, and stand at the head of that cordon of Republics, which, stretching from pole to pole, across the two Americas, are destined to make the last stand in defence of human liberty. They have the legitimates of Europe in front, and the autocrat of all the Russias in the rear. They are republican, and Republics have become "the abhorred thing," the existence of which is not to be tolerated in the land. The time was, Mr. President, when the kingdom and the republic could exist together; when the Swiss, and the Dutch, and the Venetian republics, were the friends and allies of kings and emperors. But that day has gone by. The time has come when the monarch and the republican can no longer breathe the same atmosphere. A speck of republicanism above the political horizon, now throws all Europe into commotion. Telegraphs play, couriers fly, armies move, the Cossacks of the Don and of the Ukraine couch their lances, kings and emperors vault into their saddles; a million of bayonets turn their remorseless points against the portentous sign! We Americans (I use the word in its broadest sense), we Americans see and hear all this, yet we remain strangers to each other, form no associations, and our communications are as tardy and as difficult as they are between the inhabitants of Africa and of Asia. Even with Mexico, our nearest neighbor, we have no communication, except by a sea voyage, through a boisterous gulf, infested with pirates. The bill before you is intended to correct a part of this evil; it will make "straight the way" between the United States and Mexico; it will open an easy channel of communication between them; not for merchandise only, but for thoughts and ideas; for books and for newspapers, and for every description of travellers. It will bring together the two nations whose power and whose positions, make them responsible to the world for the preservation of the Republican system. And shall a measure of such moment be defeated by a parcel of miserable barbarians, Arabs of the desert, incapable of appreciating our policy, and placing a higher value upon the gun of a murdered hunter, than upon the preservation of all the republics in the world!

LXXXIV.-LIBERTY IN SOUTH AMERICA.

JOHN RANDOLPH.

I WILL not detain the Senate further than to suggest, that I have heard that this great man—I have no doubt that he was a great man—a good man—there are a great many such great and good men- -La Fayette was one of them-at the commencement of the French Revolution-would not hear of any parley at all with what they considered the imprescriptible rights of men; they played the whole game, they would not hear of qualification, and we see what this desperate game has eventuated in―extremes always beget one another. This General Bolivar, called the South American Washington-as every man nowadays, who has commanded a platoon, is a Cæsar or a Hannibal, a Eumenes or Sertorius at least so he is the South American Washington. I remember, sir, that when the old Earl of Bedford was condoled with by a hypocrite, who wished in fact to wound his feelings, on the murder of his son Lord Russell, he indignantly replied that he would not exchange his dead son for the living son of any man on earth. So I, Mr. President, would not give our dead Washington for any living Washington, or any Washington that is likely to live in your time or in mine; whatever may be the blessings reserved for mankind in the womb of time. I do know, the world knows, that the principle of the American Revolution, and the principle that is now at work in the peninsula of South America and in Guatemala and New Spain, are principles as opposite as light and darkness-principles as opposite as a manly and rational liberty is opposed to the frantic orgies of the French Bacchanals of the Revolution, as opposite as a manly and rational piety is opposed to that politico-religious fanaticism, which, I am sorry to see, is not at work only in the peninsula of South America and New Spain, but has pervaded, or is pervading, all this country, and has insinuated itself wherever it can, to the disturbance of the public peace, the loosening of the keystone of this Constitution, and the undermining the foundation on which the arch of our Union rests. No, sir, they are as different as light and darkness-as common sense and practice differ from the visionary theories of moon-struck íunatics.

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LXXXV.-LAST CHARGE OF NEY.

J. T. HEADLEY.

THE whole continental struggle exhibited no sublimer spectacle than this last effort of Napoleon to save his sinking empire. Europe had been put upon the plains of Waterloo to be battled for. The greatest military energy and skill the world possessed had been tasked to the utmost during the day. Thrones were tottering on the ensanguined field, and the shadows of fugitive kings flitted through the smoke of battle. Bonaparte's star trembled in the zenith-now blazing out in its ancient splendor, now suddenly paling before his anxious eye. At length, when the Prussians appeared on the field, he resolved to stake Europe on one bold throw. He committed himself and France to Ney, and saw his empire rest on a single chance.

Ney felt the pressure of the immense responsibility on his brave heart, and resolved not to prove unworthy of the great trust committed to his care. Nothing could be more imposing than the movement of that grand column to the assault. That guard had never yet recoiled before a human foe, and the allied forces beheld with awe its firm and terrible advance to the final charge. For a moment the batteries stopped playing, and the firing ceased along the British lines, as without the beating of a drum, or the blast of a bugle, to cheer their steady courage, they moved in dead silence over the plain. The next moment the artillery opened, and the head of that gallant column seemed to sink into the earth. Rank after rank went down, yet they neither stopped nor faltered. Dissolving squadrons, and whole battalions disappearing one after another in the destructive fire, affected not their steady courage. The ranks closed up as before, and each treading over his fallen comrade, pressed firmly on. The horse which Ney rode fell under him, and he had scarcely mounted another before it also sunk to the earth. Again and again did that unflinching man feel his steed sink down, till five had been shot under him. Then, with his uniform riddled with bullets, and his face singed and blackened with powder, he marched on foot with drawn sabre, at the head of his men. In vain did the artillery hurl its storm of fire and lead into that living mass. Up to the very muzzles they pressed, and driving the artillerymen from their own pieces,

pushed on through the English lines. But at that moment a file of soldiers who had lain flat on the ground, behind a low ridge of earth, suddenly rose and poured a volley in their very faces. Another and another followed till one broad sheet of flame rolled on their bosoms, and in such a fierce and unexpected flow, that human courage could not withstand it. They reeled, shook, staggered back, then turned and fled. Ney was borne back in the refluent tide, and hurried over the field. But for the crowd of fugitives that forced him on, he would have stood alone, and fallen on his footsteps. As it was, disdaining to fly, though the whole army was flying, he formed his men into two immense squares, and endeavored to stem the terrific current, and would have done so, had it not been for the thirty thousand fresh Prussians that pressed on his exhausted ranks. For a long time these squares stood and let the artillery plough through them. But the fate of Napoleon was writ, and though Ney doubtless did what no other man in the army could have done, the decree I could not be reversed. The star that had blazed so brightly over the world, went down in blood, and the "bravest of the brave" had fought his last battle. It was worthy of his great name, and the charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo, with him at their head, will be pointed to by remotest generations with a shudder.

LXXXVI-DEFENCE OF POETS.

CALEB LYON.

IT has been truly said by one who had studied the world and drank deeply at the fountains of human knowledge, Let me make the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes her laws." All national lyrics are illustrations of the deep-seated veneration that poetry wedded to music awakes in the souls of mankind. The gentleman seems to have forgotten that David, the man after God's own heart, was a poet, and his psalms rise with grateful odor on every Sabbath, from a million of shrines in thanksgiving throughout Christian lands; that Solomon was a poet, whose compositions are models of beauty, and whose proverbs are axioms of wisdom. Homer was a poet, and his Iliad, composed five