he supposes they are to bring the true Democracy of the North to adopt the plans of the Secessionists for the extension of Slavery to make it the foundation of the political institutions of the country, or to assent to the division of the connery-resigning one half of it to Slavery-then, indeed, might the enemies of popular government indulge their fond hope that the bright prospects which opened on the birthday of free institutions in the New World, and have attended its progress to this hour, would soon close. But it is apparent even from the narrative of the worthy and truly honorable representative of England, that "the leaders" who conferred with him were conscious that they could not lead their party to sauction their purposes, that they were forced to disavow them, and advised postponement of the offer of mediation till they should come into power, which they only hoped to secure by "calling loudly for a more vigorous prosecution of the war, and reproaching the Government with slackness as well as with want of success in its military meas ures !" But the immense popular assemblies which bave everywhere denounced meciation of any sort show that no such jugglery would avail. The most distinguished leaders of the Democracy in this great commonwealth attended the vast meeting of the 6th of March. They are here again to-night. They unite in council with the members of the Republican party, with the chiefs of the old Whig party, with those of the original Anti-Slavery party, with the American party, peculiarly jealous of foreign influ ence, and with those of other strong classes which embrace with a sort of kindred sympathy the naturalized citizens of all Europe as brothers entranchised from feudal fetters, and rising here to usefulness and influence as the equals of the native born freeman. Every party and every class by whom free institutions are held dear in this country, merging all minor differences of opinion, are gathering in every quarter to devise measures to restore the nationality, secure the liberties of the country, and to give effect to these, the shouts of battle from a million of brave men are heard by land and sea. They see the feudal lords who hold the slaves in the South in bondage, to raise the commodities on which the laborers of the feudal lords in Europe are to exhaust their energies to exalt their privileged orders, are supported by such orders because of a common interest in the enslavement of mankind. And if the vassalage which holds the black race as mere animated machines, and is rapidly reducing the poor whites of the South to & dependence and suffering, rendering the fate of the slave of a kind master enviable--if such vassalage is to be upheld by the great modern dynasties abroad, combining their military power to give support to the despotic principle in a nation separated from them by the ocean, bow long will it be before such armed usurpation here will, by its reactionary force, recover the arbitrary power that belonged to the age of the Bourbons, the Tudors, and of that horde of feudal proprietors who monopolized the soil, holding the people as serfs appurtenant to the domain of masters, rising as a superstructure of oppression through grades from barons, counts, dukes, princes, kiugs, and emperors to autocrats? Our Southern chivalry, which but a generation back signed our Magna Charta of liberty and equality, in the course of one lifetime, by the indoctrination of the Slave system, working on one poor oppressed caste, are already prepared to join the Holy Alliance abroad in making a partition of this continent and setting up dynasties deriving their type from the Congress of Vienna, and they have an improved feature on the old feudal system, tending to reinvigorate it. In that State which led off in the assault upon the Union, the ownership of ten slaves, or an equivalent, was an essential qualification for a legislator. Carrying out this principle, the Confederate Congress has decreed that twenty slaves sball exempt the master from military ser vice. This will operate as a premium for multiply. ing slaves and divide the community into two great classes, the producers and the soldiery; creating a

military government, one portion of the people to fight, the other to feed the fighters. The starveling whites not suited to war and not subjected as sof diers will become slaves to the owners of estates on whom they must depend. That the crowned beads of Europe, who are invited to make the political constitutions of this continent, as well as its cotton, their concern, should have a disposition to admit States into the Holy Alliance which gives such earnest of hostility to free government, is not un natural. But what will the more enlightened portion of the European population think of this combination with slaveholders to extir.

pate liberty in America ? The organs of the privileged orders in Great Britain, the Quarterly Review, The Times, &c., already congratulated their patrons on the fact that Rebellion here has ar rested Reform in England. They proclaim that Lords Palmerston and Russell reached their power in England by pledges of reform, and now they rejoice that the Rebellion has exonerated them from their obligation! They would now, for the third time, attempt to crush the free principles which, nurtured here beyond the reach of despotic coali : tions, has attained a prosperity, spreading an influence back to the country of their origin, reforming their Government and elevating their people; and it is in the interest of the selfish few that the progress of nations in reform, in freedom and happiness, is to be arrested. Is it possible that a great war, waged by the potentates of Europe, in alliance with the slave system propagated in the South, against the Free States of America, will be cordially supported by the substantial, intelligent body of the European populations? Can Lord Lyons persusde himself or them that there are Democratic leaders! in the Free States capable of drawing the Democratic masses to join foreign powers in mediating a peace dividing the empire of free government on this continent with Slavery, European sovereigns to hold the balance of the continent? No patriot, no honest man of any party, no Democrat of influence with a party which has never been wanting to the country when its fortunes hung upon the scale of battle, could have made the questions which were submitted to Lord Lyons. Davis, Benjamin, Floyd and Toombs call themselves Democrats. Their emissaries in Europe, Slidell, Sanders and Mason, call themselves Demo crats. Their creatures in the Free States, Buchanan. Toucey, and the subaltern traitors associated with them, spared by the clemency of the Administration, call themselves Democrats. But these men in the North are only so many men on gibbets. The real Democrats everywhere are with the real Republicans, in arms for their country and its Constitution. It is not the interest of nations to destroy each other, and 1 hope no nation will interpose in any way to countenance the treason which has no object but the overthrow of republican institutions. The only effect would be to embitter and prolong the strife England especially, which has some consciousness of the value of such institutions, and has evinced a full sense of the mischiefs of the slave power now seeking her help to sacritice them here, will, I doubt not, recoil from the leprous touch. There was a time, indeed, when even that very class of Englishmen who would now see the Great Republic fall with so much satisfaction, looked toward it with very differ ent feelings. It was when they apprehended in vasion from France. Then the Free States of this continent, proud of their race and of the inspiration, responded to the patriotic heart of Britain. They did not intend to be passive while "the Latin race" established their ascendancy in the fatherland. At that dread crisis English statesmen recognized the value of this kindred sympathy, and honored the magnanimity which, forgetting the oppression dealt to us as an infant people aspiring to equality with their brethren beyond the Atlantic-remember ing only the glory of a common lineage, language, and literature-they felt, and with reason, that se mutual abhorrence of Slavery in whatever form in

posed, would induce the Government of the United States to make common cause with England against any attempt to invade or enslave her. But now that their apprehensions of danger from across the Channel are for the time allayed, and they feel no present need of help, the feeling for America, which for a moment expanded the hearts even of the English lordlings, has passed away. They have become as earnest as in '76 to overthrow our Government, and are co-operating with the Rebels, as with the Tories, in every possible way short of declared war, and have clearly evinced their disposition to take even that step whenever we will give them a pretext for it which will carry the people of England with them. We cannot therefore be too careful not to furnish the desired pretext, especially when the prople of Europe as well as of America are awakening to their interest in this struggle. We bad better suffer for a time from the pirates set afloat in England, and harbored and provisioned in their West ⚫ Ind a possessions, to devastate our commerce, to enable the English nation to put a stop to these outrages. I have confidence that they will do it, and I much prefer the mode adopted by the real noblemen of New York to touch the hearts of the real nobility of England-the men who love truth and justiceto whom alone she owes her greatness among the nations of the earth-to that proposed by my friend, General Butler. To send the starving poor of England cargoes of food, while ber aristocrats are turning loose upon us piratical vessels, tells more than words can express of the nature of this struggle and who are allies in it. I will venture to affirm that the mediating leaders who visited the British Minister in November are not among those who, while exhibiting such munificence toward his countrymen, were lavishing millions to sustain free government, although most of them are Democrats. The Rebellion here, this reactionary measure against free government, reacts across the water, stops all progress, all beneficence and reform for the people of Europe. That is the nature of this contest. You cannot, therefore, if you love yourselves, your rights, and the rights of those whom you are to leave behind you, if you love your brothers in fatherland, and wish to have an asylum for them, and to extend the principles of liberty in the old continent, you cannot but stand up for the Government you have installed here, regardless for the moment of whom you have placed in power. I am a member, as my friend said, of the existing Government, and I say to you here, although its measures may not meet the approval of some of you, yet, rely upon it, you have as honest a man as ever God made installed in the chair of the Chief Magistrate. [Loud applause.] We have a man from the people, like many of those I see before me, having a heart sympathetic for the masses, a man working his way from an humble and obscure position up to the elevated position that he now fills, and, of course, he feels, and feels deeply, as one of you, the Bature of the struggle that I have been endeavoring to paint. You must support him, my friends. It is your cause; not his.. [Three cheers for the Presi dent. Thanking you again, my friends, for the cordiality and kindness with which you have been pleased to receive me, I give way to others who can add much to what I have said, and say it better. [Prolonged cheers.]

Calls for "Batler" and "Fremont."

JOHN AUSTIN STEVENS, jr., read the letter from Secretary Chase. It was received with frequent applanse.

Load calls for "Fremont."

Mayor OPDYKE-Gentlemen, I have now the pleasure of introducing to you a distinguished and eloquent representative in Congress from a sister State, a gentleman who has stood by the Government manfully and fearlessly; I introduce to you Judge Kelley of Philadelphia. [Loud applause.]

SPEECH OF THE HON. W. D, KELLEY. Judge KELLEY said: In the name of unconditional loyalty to the Constitution, Philadelphia greets New York. [Cheers.] In the name of the unity of that country, founded by the original of that grand monument [the statue of Washington was immediately in front of the stand], the Keystone sends greeting to the Empire State. [Applause.] And this after two years of war-two years of war! We of Pennsylvania have tears for the dead, sympathy for the mangled and the bereaved, but these are for our individual hearts, our private circles; for our country we have but pride and devotion [cheering "Good, good"]; two years of war in which the Ruler of Providence has more clearly than ever before in history, demonstrated how from seeming evil He is educing good, how within His purposes it is to make the folly and wrath of men to praise Him [cheers]; two years in which the American people have made more of glorions history than ever was made before in the same brief period. O, my countrymen, look back over that little period of two years and remember when in the first wild outburst of wounded and indignant patriotism you gathered to this square. Your country was bankrupt; you could not borrow at one per cent a month the little sum of $5,000,000; your navy lay in Southern yards in ordinary, upon the distant coast of Africa or in the far Pacific; your army was on the frontiers of Texas, in New Mexico, in the far Territory of Washington, every where but where your Government could command it; your arsenals emptied alike of arms and ammunition and accouterments; an enemy, strengthened by your navy and by your military resources, had fired upon your flag and threatened to unfurl from the dome of your capitol a foreign banner, but the heart of America did not tremble, and two years of war, even disasters, has not chilled or bated our patriotism. [Cheers, "No, no."] We are here to-day to say that no star must be stricken from our flag["Never"]; no acre of our country surrendered if it takes from our lockers the last dollar and from our hearth-sides the last able-bodied boy. [Cheers, "Hurrab."] These are the sentiments of Pennsylvania, and I am glad you respond to them with such fervor. We bebold all the possible consequences of the war; we have made a navy; we have made an army such as the eye of God never beheld before upon this planet; we have conquered in two years well-nigh 400,000 square miles of territory. "Good! good!"'] We have not borrowed of England or the Continent, or any foreign man or nation, one picayune toward bearing the expense. [Applause.] Oh, my friends, this is a proud day. We bad demonstrated, before Rebel bands desecrated our flag, the beneficence of republican institutions. In eighty short years we had conquered a Continent." Yes, our flag floated on yon Eastern promontories in the broad blaze of the noonday sun, while there on our golden sands, the morning dawn just tipped its stars, and all was ours, and civilization was blooming over all. We had demonstrated the capacity of man for self-government and of popular institutions, raised the poor emigrant and his children to the fall stature of manhood and to all the powers and rights of citizenship, nay, to the capacity not only to enjoy, but to exercise them all. [Cheers.] The potentates of Europe had seen the peasant and the laborer expand into the citizen and the capitalist; they had seen from the humblest walks of life the man of honor, wealth, and distinction spring.

Eighty years had served to demonstrate this. But, was their sneer-1 good Government for peace, yet no Government for war. ls it not a Government for war? When Congress passed what the Copperheads call the Conscription bill, and served Dotice upon France and England that every man who had not depending upon him, and him alone, aged parents or tender chilhood, should be called to

the field, they concluded that all Europe in alliance would not do to meet the American people under that Government which was not good for war. [Cheers.] So good for war that, while we go on to conquer those who are armed with our resources, we hold the envious aristocracy of Europe in check, and dare them to do their worst [cheers], and dare them so defiantly, that I refer you to the New York papers of the day for the altered opinion of Lord John Russell, as expressed in the House of Lords. [Cheers." Give it to him!" "Bully!" Bully for the American people. [Cheers.] Bully for those institutions [ Bully for Kelley"]that open the school-house for the poor child, and give a just return for all the labor that he or his parents perform. What is this war? What is it about ? Between whom is it, men of New York? ["Three cheers for Kelley."] No, do not cheer so insignificant a being; keep quiet, and hear him. Is it between political parties? No; here on this stand are men of all parties. I do not know what party I belong to. I was tool or sinner enough to hasten home in 1852 to vote for Frank Pierce, and since then I have been fighting for freedom and civilization in the ranks of the Republican party. [Cheers; "Good." No, my friends, not between political parties; nor is it between contending States. The line seems to divide States, but take the exception. East Tennessee and West Virginia are loyal as New York or Pennsylvania ["Good, good"], though one of them lies south of Kentucky, and the other has been held by Eastern Virginia, as Russia holds Poland, or as England has held Ireland. [Cheers.] Yet they are loyal. It is a war between two orders of civilization-the order of civilization which we enjoy, which opens a schoolhouse to every child coming into the commonwealth by birth or emigration; which gives to the son of the poorest laborer, whether of native or foreign birth, the mastery of the English language, the art of writing and of figures, and enables him to go forth and arm himself with snowledge, and wisdom, and power to contend with the world and get a fair day's wages for a fair day's work. The other order of civilization is one which holds that capital should own its labor; that laboring men and women should be held for sale and purchase like cattle in the stall or upon the shambles. And, my friends, do not let us blink the question. The taking of Fort Sumter, the taking of Vicksburg, will not settle the war.

One or

the other of these orders of civilization must be vic'torious, triumphant over the whole land before you can have peace. [Cheers. That's the talk."] You have heard from Secretary Chase. Like him, I am for letting the darkey in. I do not think he is a bit better than I or you, and I do not see why he should not do picket duty in the swamps as well as I or my son. I do not see why he should not work for us as ably as he worked for his enemy, and I am for letting him in, and letting him, under the Stars and Stripes, win his way to freedom by proving on the bloody field the power of his manhood. ["Bravo." Applause. This we have to do. This we will do. And having done it, we will-having sunk the traitors, from Fernando up or down, whichever it might be [laughter and applause]-we will have sunk them deeper than ever plummet sounded; we will have so squelched treason that our children and our children's children to the latest generation will never fear another civil war. We will have peace with England and with France, and, what is more, we will have demonstrated to the world the power as well as the beneficence of republican institutions; we will have shown the world that that Constitution framed under his [pointing to the statue of Washington] wise auspices is not only beneficent over a young and peaceful people, but is a fit canopy-I say is a fit canopy for a continent. [Loud and prolonged applause, and three cheers for Kelley]

Loud calls for "Fremont."

The Mayor, amid loud applause, introduced Brig.Gen. Crawford of Penn., one of the defenders of Fort Sumter under Majo- Anderson.

Brewster, esq., of Philadelphia; Col. Stewart L Woodford, Col. Taylor, and ex-Councilman Horatio N. Wild; and an ode was read by William Ross Wallace; after which, as the shades of night were falling, the Mayor adjourned the meeting, with loud cheers for the Union and the Star-Spangled Banner.

ADDRESS BY FRANCIS LIEBER,

CHAIRMAN ON THE COUNCIL'S COMMITTEE ON ADDRESSES.

Read at the Meeting of the Loyal National League, by their request, in Union Square, New York, on the 11th of April, 1863.

It is just and wise that men engaged in great and arduous cause should profess anew, from time to time, their faith, and pledge them-7 selves to one another, to stand by their cause to the last extremity, even at the sacrifice of all they have and all that God has given themtheir wealth, their blood, and their children's blood. We solemnly pledge all this to our cause, i for it is the cause of our country and her noble history, of freedom, and justice, and truth-it is the cause of all we hold dearest on this earth: we profess and pledge this-plainly, broadly, openly, in the cheering time of success, and most fervently in the day of trial and reverses.

We recollect how, two years ago, when reekless arrogance attacked Fort Sumter, the response to that boom of treasonable cannon was read, in our city, in the flag of our country-waving from every steeple and school-house, from City Hall and court house, from every shop window and market-stall, and fluttering in the hand of every child and on the head-gear of every horse in the busy street. Two years have passed; uncounted sacrifices have been made-sacrifices of wealth, of blood, and limb, and life-of friendship and brotherhood, of endeared and hallowed pursuite and sacred ties--and still the civil war is raging in bitterness and heart-burning-still we make the same profession, and still we pledge ourselves firmly to hold on to our cause and persevere in the struggle into which unrighteous men, be wildered by pride and stimulated by bitter hatred, have plunged us.

We profess ourselves to be loyal citizens these United States; and by loyalty we mean candid and loving devotion to the object which a loyal man-a loyal husband, a loyal friend, a loyal citizen-devotes himself. We e chew the attenuated argument derived by trifling scholars from meagre etymology. We take the core and substance of this weighty word, and pledge ourselves that we will loyally—not mer outwardly and formally, according to the lett but fervently and according to the spirit-adhe to our country, to her institutions, to freed. and her power, and to that great institet: called the government of our country, foun by our fathers, and loved by their sons and all right-minded men who have become citiz of this land by choice and not by birth-wi have wedded this country in the maturity their age as verily their own. We pledge selves as national men devoted to the nations: of this great people. No government can whal dispense with loyalty, except the fiercest desp ism ruling by naked intimidation; but a repul stands in greater need of it than an

ernment, and most of all a republic beset by open rebellion and insidious treason. Loyalty is pre-eminently a civic virtue in a free country. It is patriotism east in the graceful mold of candid devotion to the harmless government of an unshackled nation.

In pledging ourselves thus we know of no party. Parties are unavoidable in free countries, and may be useful if they acknowledge the country far above themselves and remain within the sanctity of the fundamental law which protects the enjoy ment of liberty prepared for all within its sacred domain. But Party has no meaning in far the greater number of the highest and the common relations of human life. When we are ailing, we do not take medicine by party prescription. We do not build ships by party measurement; we do not pray for our daily bread by party distinctions; we do not take our chosen ones to our bosoms by party demarcations, nor do we eat or drink, sleep or wake, as partisans. We do not enjoy the flowers of spring, nor do we harvest the grain, by party lines. We do not incur punishments for infractions of the commandments according to party creeds; and we do not, we must not, love and defend our country and our liberty, dear to us as part and portion of our very selves, according to party rules and divisions. Woe to him who does. When a house is on fire, and a mother with her child cries for help at the window above, shall the firemen at the engine be allowed to trifle away the precious time in party bickerings, or is then the only Word-"Water! pump away; up with the lad

der !"

Let us not be like the Byzantines, those wretches who quarreled about contemptible party refinements, theological though they were, while the truculent Mussulman was steadily drawing nearer-nay, some of whom would even go to the lord of the crescent, and with a craven Leart would beg for a pittance of the spoil, so that they would be spared, and could vent their party hatred against their kin in blood, and fellows in religion.

We know of no party in our present troubles; the word is here an empty word. The only line which divides the people of the north runs between the mass of loyal men, who stand by their country, no matter to what place of political meeting they were used to resort, or with what secent they utter the language of the land, or what religion they profess, or what sentiments they may have uttered in the excitement of former discussions, on the one hand, and those, on the other hand, who keep outside of that line-traitors to their country in the hour of Beed, or those who allow themselves to be misled by shallow names, and by reminiscences which ng around those names from bygone days, finding no application in a time which asks for hings more sterling than names, theories, or platforms.

If an alien enemy were to land his hosts on Four shores, would you fly to your arms and ng the tocsin because your country is in danger, Or would you meditatively look at your sword and gun, and spend your time in pondering whether the administration in power, which must and can alone direct the defence of your Bearths, has a right to be styled by this or that arty name, or whether it came into power with

your assistance, and will appoint some of your party to posts of honor or comfortable emoluments? And will any one now lose his time and fair name as an honest and brave citizen, when no foreigner, indeed, threatens your country, at least not directly, but far more, when a heedless host of law-defying men, heaping upon you the vilest vituperation that men who do not leave behind them the ingenuity of civilization when they relapse into barbarism, can inventwhen this host threatens to sunder your country and cleave your very history in twain, to deprive you of your rivers which God has given you, to extinguish your nationality, to break down your liberty, and to make that land, which the distributor of our sphere's geography has placed between the old and older world as the greatest link of that civilization which is destined to encircle the globe-to make that land the hot-bed of angry, petty powers, sinking deeper and deeper as they quarrel and fight, and quarreling and fighting more angrily as they sink deeper? It is the very thing your foreign enemies desire and have long desired. When nullification threatened to bring about secession-and the term secession was used at that early period-foreign journals stated in distinct words that England was deeply interested in the contest; for nullifi. cation might bring on secession, and secession would cause a general disruption-an occurrence which would redound to the essential benefit of Great Britain.

But the traitors of the North, who have been so aptly called adders or copperheads-striking as these reptiles do more secretly and deadly even than the rattlesnake, which has some chivalry, at least, in its tail-believe, or pretend to believe, that no fragmentary disruption would follow a division of our country into North and South, and advocate a compromise by which they pretend to believe that the two portions may possibly be reunited after a provisional division, as our peddlers putty some broken china cup.

As to the first, that we might pleasantly divide into two comfortable portions, we prefer being guided by the experience of all history, to following the traitors in their teachings. We will not hear of it. We live in an age when the word is nationalization, not denationalization; when fair Italy has risen, like a new-born goddess, out of the foaming waves of the Mediterranean. All destruction is quick and easy; all growth and formation is slow and toilsome. Nations break up, like splendid mirrors dashed to the ground. They do not break into a number of well-shaped, neatly framed, little lookingglasses. But a far more solemn truth even than this comes here into play. It is with nations as with families and with individuals. Those destined by nature to live in the bonds of friendship and mutual kindliness become the bitterest and most irreconcilable enemies, when once fairly separated in angry enmity, in precisely the same degree in which affection and good-will was intended to subsist between them. We must have back the South, or else those who will not reunite with us must leave the country; we must have the country at any price. If, however, a plain division between the North and the South could take place, who will deny that those very traitors would instantly begin to maneuver for a

gradual annexation of the North to the South? It is known to be so. Some of them, void of all shame, have avowed it. They are ready to petition on their knees for annexation to the South, and to let the condescending grantor, "holding the while his nose," introduce slavery, that blessed "corner-stone of" the newest "civilization," into the North, which has been happily purged from this evil. Let us put the heel on this adder and bruise all treason out of its head.

As to the compromise which they propose, we know of no compromise with crime that is not criminal itself, and senseless in addition to its being wicked. New guarantees, indeed, may be asked for at the proper time, but it is now our turn to ask for them. They will be guarantees of peace, of the undisturbed integrity of our country, of law, and liberty, and security, asked for and insisted upon by the Union men, who now pledge themselves not to listen to the words compromise, new guarantees for the South, armistice, or convention of delegates from the South and North--as long as this war shall last, until the North is victorious, and shall have established again the national authority over the length and breadth of the country as it was; over the United States dominion as it was before the breaking out of the crime which is now ruining our fair land-ruining it in point of wealth, but, with God's help, elevating it in character, strength, and dignity.

We believe that the question of the issue, which must attend the present contest, according to the character it has now acquired, is reduced to these simple words: Either the North conquers the South, or the South conquers the North. Make up your minds for this alternative. Either the North conquers the South and re-establishes law, freedom, and the integrity of our country, or the South conquers the North by arms, or by treason at home, and covers our portion of the country with disgrace and slavery.

Let us not shrink from facts or mince the truth, but rather plainly present to our minds the essential character of the struggle in which hundreds of thousands, that ought to be brothers, are now engaged. What has brought us to these grave straits?

Are we two different races, as the new ethnologists of the South, with profound knowledge of history and of their own skins, names, and language, proclaim? Have they produced the names which Europe mentions when American literature is spoken of? Have they advanced science? Have they the great schools of the age? Do they speak the choice idiom of the cultivated man! Have the thinkers and inventors of the age their homes in that region? Is their standard of comfort exalted above that of ours! What has this wondrous race produced? what new idea has it added to the great stock of civilization? It has produced cotton, and added the idea that slavery is divine. Does this establish a superior race?

There is no fact or movement of greater significance in all history of the human race, than the settlement of this great continent by European people at a period when, in their portion of the globe, great nations had been formed, and the national polity had finally become the normal type of government; and it is a fact equally pregnant with momentous results that the northern portion of this hemisphere came to

be colonized chiefly by men who brought along with them the seeds of self-government, and 8 living common law, instinct with the principles of manly self-dependence and civil freedom.

The charters under which they settled, and which divided the American territory into colonies, were of little more importance than the vessels and their names in which the settlers crossed the Atlantic; nor had the origin of these charters a deep meaning, nor was their source always pure. The people in this country a ways felt themselves to be one people, and unitedly they proclaimed and achieved their independence. The country as a whole was called by Washington and his compeers Ameries. for want of a more individual name. Still, there was no outward and legal bond between the colonies, except the crown of England; and when our people abjured their allegiance to that crown, each colony stood formally for itself The Articles of Confederation were adopted, by which our forefathers attempted to establish confederacy, uniting all that felt themselves to be of one nation, but were not one by outward legal form. It was the best united government our forefathers could think of, or of which, per haps, the combination of circumstances admitted. Each colony came gradually to be called a state and called itself sovereign, although none of them had ever exercised any of the highest attributes of sovereignty; nor did ever after the states do so.

Whenever political societies are leagued together, be it by the frail bonds of a pure con federacy, or by the consciousness of the people that they are intrinsically one people, and form one nation, without, however, a positive national government, then the most powerful these ill-united portions needs must rule; and as always more than one portion wishes to the leader, intestine struggles ensue in all such incoherent governments. It has been so in ant quity; it has been so in the middle ages; it ha been so and is so in modern times. Those of oth forefathers who later became the framers of of Constitution, saw this approaching evil, and the observed many other ills which had already overtaken the confederacy. Even Washington the strong and tenacious patriot, was brought the brink of despondency. It was a dark peri in our history; and it was then that our father most boldly, yet most considerately, perform the greatest act that our annals record-the engrafted a national, complete, and represen tive government on our halting confederacy government in which the senate, though representing the states as states, became tionalized in a great measure, and in which House of Representatives became exclusivi national. Virginia, which, under the Article Confederation, was approaching the leaders over all (in the actual assumption of which would have been resisted by other rapidly gr ing states, which would inevitably have le our Peloponnesian war)-Virginia was represented according to her population, every other portion of the country; Virginia, not as a unit, but by a number representatives who voted, and were bourd vote individually, according to their conscien and best light, as national men. The da of internal struggle and provincia!