could I regard him as a safe
counselor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts should be
mainly bent on considering not how the Union may be best preserved, but
how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it should be
broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts we have high, exciting,
gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children.
Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day
at least that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision never
may be opened what lies beyond! When my eyes shall be turned to behold
for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the
broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States
dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds,
or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and
lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now
known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its
arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe
erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto
no such miserable interrogatory as "What is all this worth?" nor those
other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first; and Union
afterward;" but every-where, spread all over in characters of living
light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea and
over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other
sentiment dear to every true American heart--Liberty and Union, now and
forever, one and inseparable!

SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS.

[From the same.]

When I shall be found, sir, in my place here in the Senate, or
elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because it happens to spring up
beyond the little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I
refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to
American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty
and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment of Heaven, if I see
extraordinary capacity and virtue, in any son of the South; and if,
moved by local prejudices or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here
to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may
my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!

Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in
refreshing remembrances of the past; let me remind you that, in early
times, no Stat