of those qualities which, for the
above reasons, we might naturally have expected to distinguish
them, and are as deficient in energy of character and physical
courage as they are in all the moral and intellectual qualities. In
their social state but one degree removed from the veriest savages,
they might take a lesson even from these in morality and the
conventional decencies of life. Imposing no restraint on their
passions, a shameless and universal concubinage exists, and a total
disregard of morality, to which it would be impossible to find a
parallel in any country calling itself civilized. A want of
honorable principle, and consummate duplicity and treachery,
characterize all their dealings. Liars by nature, they are
treacherous and faithless to their friends, cowardly and cringing
to their enemies; cruel, as all cowards are, they unite savage
ferocity with their want of animal courage; as an example of which,
their recent massacre of Governor Bent, and other Americans, may be
given, one of a hundred instances."

These, Sir, are soon to be our beloved countrymen!

Mr. President, for a good many years I have struggled in opposition to
every thing which I thought tended to strengthen the arm of executive
power. I think it is growing more and more formidable every day. And I
think that by yielding to it in this, as in other instances, we give it
a strength which it will be difficult hereafter to resist. I think that
it is nothing less than the fear of executive power which induces us to
acquiesce in the acquisition of territory; fear, _fear_, and nothing
else.

In the little part which I have acted in public life, it has been my
purpose to maintain the people of the United States, what the
Constitution designed to make them, _one people_, one in interest, one
in character, and one in political feeling. If we depart from that, we
break it all up. What sympathy can there be between the people of Mexico
and California and the inhabitants of the Valley of the Mississippi and
the Eastern States in the choice of a President? Do they know the same
man? Do they concur in any general constitutional principles? Not at
all.

Arbitrary governments may have territories and distant possessions,
because arbitrary governments may rule them by different laws and
different systems. Russia may rule in the Ukraine and the provinces of
the Caucasus and