n claim a natural right to be a king or a judge
as to be a citizen. It might be as truly said that one is inherently a
shark because he was born at sea, or a horse because he happened to
have been born in a stable. So far is the theory of abolition from the
truth; and so widely remote is their hatred to colonization, from
being based in justice, or reason, that circumstances may occur in
which it shall become imperative duty for men to emigrate. America
presented a striking example of the truth of this. In this country it
was customary to talk of America as a daughter of England. He had
heard people talk as if America were about as large as one English
shire, and settled principally from their own villages. But the fact
was that America was an epitome of the whole world, peopled by
colonies from almost all parts of it. It was an eclectic nation; and
to talk to Americans, of the inherent right of a man to stay and be
oppressed, where he happened to be born--or the guilt of seducing him
to emigrate, is only to expose one's self to pity or scorn. To realize
this, it is only necessary to take a map of our wide empire, washed by
both oceans, and embracing all the climates of the earth, and get some
American boy to tell you the migrations of his ancestors. To omit all
mention of the red man, from Asia, and the poor black man, from
Africa; there, he will say in New-England, are the children of the
pilgrims, who were the fathers of your own Roundheads, driven out by
the mean and vexatious tyranny of James I.; and there, in lower
Virginia, three hundred leagues off, are the descendants of the
Cavaliers and Malignants. There, in the back parts of the same ancient
commonwealth, and in all western Pennsylvania, are the sturdy Scotch,
whose fathers were hanged in the streets of your cities, by that
perjured Charles II., who thus rewarded the loyalty that gave him back
his crown. In the same key State, of the Union is a nation of
industrious Germans; while in the empire state of New-York, are the
children of those glorious United Provinces, that disputed with
yourselves for ages, the empire of the seas; and between them both in
New-Jersey the descendants of those ancient Danes who often ravaged
your own coasts. The descendants of the Hugonauts, whose ancestors
Louis XIV. expelled from France, and placed cordons on his frontiers
to butcher as they went out, simply because they were Protestants,
peopling parts of the south; in other par