ation: J. C. CALHOUN.]

Notwithstanding the bitterness of accusation brought against him, he was
not a traitor nor a man given over to selfish ambition, as Dr. von
Holst, his most competent biographer and critic, has clearly shown.
Calhoun believed both in slavery and in the Union, and tried to maintain
a balance between the two, because he thought that only in this way
could his section maintain its prestige or even its existence. He
failed, as any other man would have done; and we find him, like
Cassandra, a prophet whom we cannot love. But he did prophesy truly as
to the fate of the South; and in the course of his strenuous labors to
divert the ruin he saw impending, he gave to the world the most masterly
analysis of the rights of the minority and of the best methods of
securing them that has yet come from the pen of a publicist.

[Illustration: Signature: W. P. Trent]

REMARKS ON THE RIGHT OF PETITION

Delivered in the Senate, February 13th, 1840

Mr. Calhoun said he rose to express the pleasure he felt at the evidence
which the remarks of the Senator from Kentucky furnished, of the
progress of truth on the subject of abolition. He had spoken with strong
approbation of the principle laid down in a recent pamphlet, that two
races of different character and origin could not coexist in the same
country without the subordination of the one to the other. He was
gratified to hear the Senator give assent to so important a principle in
application to the condition of the South. He had himself, several years
since, stated the same in more specific terms: that it was impossible
for two races, so dissimilar in every respect as the European and
African that inhabit the southern portion of this Union, to exist
together in nearly equal numbers in any other relation than that which
existed there. He also added that experience had shown that they could
so exist in peace and happiness there, certainly to the great benefit of
the inferior race; and that to destroy it was to doom the latter to
destruction. But he uttered these important truths then in vain, as far
as the side to which the Senator belongs is concerned.

He trusted the progress of truth would not, however, stop at the point
to which it has arrived with the Senator, and that it will make some
progress in regard to what is called the right of petition. Never was a
right so much mystified and magnified. To listen to the discussion, here
and elsewhere, you would sup