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THE

AMERICAN WHIG REVIEW,

No. XXX.

FOR JUNE, 1850.

EDITORIAL NOTE.

The conductors of the Whig Review have heretofore expressed their own opinions, decidedly and without reservation, in regard to the extension of slavery, and other questions akin to, and springing out of, it. Any farther expression on their part would be merely to repeat what has been already said, or to fortify their own position with new arguments. The ground which they have taken they esteem to be strictly Whig and constitutional, and therefore intermediate, and conciliatory, between the extreme positions of the North and South. The question of the extension of slavery is simply a controversy between a certain class of propertyholders and the rest of the nation, and tends to confound all other distinctions of party. Opinion, on the one side, is arrayed against interest and opinion on the other, and a contest is excited in which argument ends almost of necessity in recrimination. Opinion will not yield when interest does not compel it, and interest is always ready to fortify itself with opinion.

That there has been of late a great improvement, however, in the public mind, in regard to the right method of conducting this dangerous controversy, we have evidence in a prospectus, lately issued by Southern representatives, Whig and Democratic, at Washington, of a new paper to be estab

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lished by them, for the defence of their institutions and their constitutional rights. The entire subject is to be thrown open to discussion, opinions are to be sifted and controverted, and of course reason and argument are to take the place of passion and recrimination.

In view of this marked improvement in public sentiment, the conductors of the Whig Review will feel themselves justified in persevering in the plan which they have now, for some time, adhered to, of giving the sentiments and arguments of both sides in regard to Slavery, without reserve. They have admitted, and shall continue to admit, articles from Northern and Southern pens indifferently, and biographies of statesmen representing constituencies of both extremes. No adequate or useful accounts of political actions or opinions can be given from a merely neutral point of view. Keeping therefore within the limits of courtesy, and of the doctrines of the National Whig Party, the Review will in future not feel itself bound to exclude sound Whig articles, advocating the views of either extreme. Our readers will then have before them a better chart of public opinion, by which they can mark out for themselves such a course as may seem to them to be the right one..

STABILITY AND GROWTH OF THE REPUBLIC.

A SURVEY of the ruins of modern European governments, suggests to the thoughts of an American, considerations full of hope and of glory for the present and the future of his own country. These governments have fallen to ruin for this one reason, says a certain satirical writer, "that they were not wise enough;" that the moral and intellectual powers set to govern them, did not know how to accomplish the work; that this incapacity had been long a standing, and a tolerated nuisance. Men of intrigue, without ability, without knowledge, and without virtue, or with forms of ability knowledge and virtue useless in the management of public affairs, had been suffered to occupy, or forced to occupy, the place of governors.

"Intellect," says the same writer, "is born in every century;" and the nineteenth flatters itself upon the power and quality of its intellect; but no one, in America, will ask the question that follows, 'what has become of this intellect.' We know very well what has become of it: it is embodied in our powerful laws and constitutions: it is not a talking, and a literary intellect, but a silent, effective and practical intellect; ruling men and nature in a way hitherto unexampled.

COLONIZATION.

the other one of these the industrious, economic and democratic spirit, (which is, alone, the governing principle in America, and which therefore governs peacefully, and successfully), and the other a reflection, or rather, an actual presence of the feudal monarchy, once the only ruling idea in Europe. These two contending principles, these twin passions, lie together, side by side, and intermingled, and continually striving one with the other for mastery in the heart of every European.

Democracy striving against monarchy and aristocracy, in the heart of the man himself-of the Frenchman, of the Englishman; that is the key to European politics. There are no more wars for the succession; there are no more crusades, but, everywhere, from end to end of civilized Europe, in the heart of each citizen a war of opinion, a struggle for change; and the rebellions, emutes, and Chartist insurrections, are but the signs of this internal struggle.

Shall we have a king, or shall we make laws for ourselves? Shall we have an hereditary aristocracy, or shall we have an aristocracy of nature and of God? The prestige of our monarchy is gone. With external trusses and supports we shore up the outward bursting walls of the ancient basilicon. The monarchy will not serve us there is no man who has an authenticated right to be king: and yet, how glorious the ancient monarchy! how gracious and magnanimous the kingly character; how it presides over the people like a divine ence; how, like Gods upon earth, kings walk among men! The crown, emblematic of eternity; the golden, star-adorned circle of legitimacy! Happy that people, who Amid that chaos of party strife which in the old time, unconscious of a new phimakes the passing history of European losophy; (for in these days, alas, philosonations in our day, we discern the fea-phy and science are become kings,) happy tures of two opposing principles, so opposite, neither can exist without destroying

Twenty-two millions of people, armed, at peace and industrious; without King, aristocracy, or a beaurocracy! This is 'the fact of modern times.' When there are mighty consequences, there must be mighty causes; there must be intellectual power somewhere, powerful intellectual centres, to govern a nation of so many millions of armed men in such a quiet and successful way.

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that people who, at ease in their vineyards, and among their feudal acres, feared God,

and honored the king; their's was a lot of God, a peaceful and benignant fortune. Our religion, too,-where is it? we know not: we have faith that there is a religion somewhere; we have faith, we are human; we believe that we have a touch of divinity; we know that we are the heirs of Heaven but this damning question, this doubt of all things, which goes in the train of our modern philosophy; this fiery emenation from the laboratory; this fume of the dissecting room and the museum; this modern science, has rotted the parchment and melted the seal, and erased the signature, and the testimony is lost, and the witnesses are dead, and we are dispoiled of our inheritance: we have no laws but such as come to us by the favor of God, at the hour, as the reward of prayer and supplication we have no religion, save the aftershine of Christianity, and such as is written in the script of nature upon the face of the universe. Happy, happy people were they of old; wretched, toilsome, the lot of us of modern days.'

Meanwhile, notwithstanding these lamentations and longings after the unrecoverable past, when it comes to a struggle for life between the two principles, Democracy invariably triumphs; the people have it all their own way. What is called reaction, is never apparently a retrogression. The Bastile is not rebuilt: no thought of such a thing. Paris continues Democratic even under a monarchy. Governments of the old form are re-established for an hour, for a day, for an age, only to be thrown down with redoubled violence. All appeals are to the people,-the poorer class, they are the acknowledged sovereigns. It is theirs to choose between monarchy and democracy.

In America the struggle is finished, and in all men's minds, there is a settled feeling that laws should emanate from the people, or from the people's representatives. Here is an end of civil wars; here, a community at peace with itself. There is outlet for ambition in the bloodless strife of party; there is a love of order and a sense of the dignity of manhood, and of the nature of public and private rights, which confers upon the body of the laws, and upon the general structure of society, a stability combined with a plasticity and flexibility suitable to the progressive and improving spirit of the age.

Democracy in America is a solid and well established form of government, not because of any inherent stability and firmness in Democracy itself, but because of the unanimity and peaceful acquiescence of the people in its decrees. An aristocracy, a constitutional monarchy, or any other form, were it once agreed upon and adopted, and acquiesced in, as the great and final fact of the age, as very destiny itself (for in this light is republican democracy viewed in America,) might stand as firmly ;-no thanks to the virtue of its founders or its supporters. A form of government impressed upon the minds and hearts of a people is a permanent and indistructable form, or distructable only by new ideas and modern opinions, more attractive and amiable than the old and on such a foundation rests American republican Democracy, that it reigns sole monarch in the pride and affection of the people; the glory of the private man is that he too is no idle member of the State, but can effectually stretch out his hand against oppression, and cast a condemnatory vote, and fear no consequences; or if such a fear crosses him, he will search out its cause, and will not rest till he has crushed it. In America the power of the individual citizen is absolutely unlimited: whatever of native strength and advantage he is crowned with, setting aside the ordinary chances which befal human endeavor, and that medium of good and evil chance, which it has pleased God to mingle in the affairs of men, his success and his honor and his influence will be duly proportioned to the ability and the strength, (vis-virtus) that is in him.

If these things are true, the glory and the power of the nation must become commensurate with its native valor and strength, and more than that, the consummation sighed for by all philosophers,' a government by nature's aristocracy, a government of the best and strongest, must finally be here established; and that too, will be a government by law, since the best and the strongest are, under God, the defenders of law.

This then is what we mean by a popular government, a government where those only are admitted to the control who can make the people elect them; who can force the people to elect them, by the admiration and the awe of their ability and

their virtue, and their supernatural vigor | and foresight. Strong men in the villages and low hamlets, strongest among the few that surround them, are chosen by their peers; these elect others, better and more prominent than themselves, and thus the representative principle is carried out.

Behind all human affairs, and setting aside the accidents of chance, lies one predominant and ever ruling principle, upon which rest laws, usages, and influences; and that is the fear and veneration which we have for those who are, morally speaking, more powerful and far-sighted than ourselves. Governments, whether monarchic, aristocratic or republican, rest upon fear and veneration, whose form and exterior front, ceremonially expressed, we name religion,—worship. Men adore and worship virtue and force, but more especially virtue conjoined with force, under its various names of Piety, Heroism, and Statesmanship, the three kings,-intellectual sovereigns, which rule all human affairs, under God, whose representative on earth they are.

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What then is a form of government, if it is not some particular method of ascertaining, of sifting and choosing out among the rising spirits of the time, those powerful and aspiring intelligences who are marked by nature and shaped by education to become the recipients of authority? The Constitution ascertains for us the places and executive forms of power. It marks out the offices and functions of authority, of its inferior servants and functionaries, necessary to the establishment of a State, and the preservation of peace and order. It assigns over to the people, (as it must do in justice to them, seeing that it is only living men who can judge living men,) the business of selecting and appointing those who shall fill and satisfy the duties of the State. Our ancestors ascertained the form and the places of the state, for they saw it at its birth, and they alone could cast its horoscope; but they could not select the living representatives of power for ages to come: it was a part of their wisdom, enlightened by a religious regard, that they did not do this, and even forbade it forever to be done, and would allow nothing hereditary to come into the constitution of their state. They believed only in the aristocracy of

God and the choice of the people; they left their government in the the hands of the two powers;--strength and virtue in the one, respect and confidence in the many. They founded their state for all futurity upon the veneration of the people, and the greatness and majesty of those few who alone are fit, (for the day and for the hour,) to be the people's representatives.

They left the State in the hands of their successors, to be increased as they had increased it in its three dimensions, of solidity, durability, and extension. In every dimension of excellence, they trusted it would increase. In solidity, or, in other words, in its internal organic strength. The people to be more thoroughly bound together, by ties moral and mechanical. By community of sentiments, interest, and language, by facilities of intercommunication, and of internal commerce and exchange. This process of progress and nationalization, by internal improvement, and the steady pacificative and protective influence of good laws, was intended, by them, to augment that first dimension of excellence, internal depth, and solidity of organization.

For the second dimension named, the durability of their State, they, no doubt, trusted to the affections and the veneration of the people, who would always look back with reverence to the maxims of the founders of the Republic: and, still more, to that invincible attachment which all men have to institutions, which secure them in the enjoyment of freedom. They provided, also, a constitution of government of which the parts are compensatory, and operate as so many natural checks and balances upon each other.

For the third dimension of the greatness of the State, namely, its superficial extension, the founders of the Union left no settled maxims, nor any system of policy. They were too intently occupied with solidifying and conferring properties of duration upon our institutions, to anticipate the exigencies of territorial extension.

It is not, however, at all difficult to conjecture what line of policy would have been indicated by them, had they chosen to advise their successors on this point. In the cession of all the State territories to the nation, in the treaty of peace with England, securing a band of territory across

the continent, and in the purchase of Lou- | and the Capes of Good Hope and Coroisiana, and of Florida, we have a succes- mandel. To this first and most gigantic sion of acts illustrating the policy which of all colonial systems, if we except that actuated them. They were wise enough' of England, may be traced the centralizato accomplish, by negotiation and purchase, tion of ancient arts, arms, commerce and what a certain desperate and witless faction religion about the shores of the Mediterahave lately undertaken to accomplish by nean; giving the early nations that preparseizure and invasion. ation which they needed to receive in succeeding centuries the higher and more positive and ameliorating influences of Phoenician, Grecian, Roman, Saracenic, Gallic and English conquest.

It is said that we have no colonial policy, when, at this very time, the entire nation is agitated by a controversy regarding the admission of several colonies to the dignity of States and Territories. A more effectual, though unsystematic, colonization than ours, the world has never known. It surpasses that of all other nations, not only in its rapidity but in the spirit by which it is sustained, and in its effects upon the nation at large. To attain a correct understanding of our own colonial movements, it will be necessary to take a rapid survey of that of other nations, both ancient and modern.

From a few centres the tribes of the Hellenes spread themselves over, at first, the Greek islands and promontories, and gradually the entire shores of the Mediterranean and Euxine seas. They had not a colonial system, but they colonized most effectually. Egypt, in the days of her military renown had a colonial system, strictly so called, and like that of England in our time, it was chiefly for commercial ends. This was at a time when Egypt was the great power of the world; the civilizer and the conqueror of East and West. There is reason to believe that with the early Pharaos the military colonial was a part of the general system of State policy. Before the building of Tyre and Sidon, while the Greeks were as yet an unknown tribe of Barbarians, before the Exodus of the Hebrews, before Rome had become even a village; the military trading colonies established by a series of conquering Pharaos, had planted the germs of civilization along all the shores of Europe and Asia. By her colonial system Egypt civilized and subdued the world, and made all nations tributary to her trading kings, who drew their revenues from royal monopolies, from export and the produce of land. The lines of Egyptian conquest were the lines of primeval commercial enterprise, stretching out in great radii to the Straits of Calpe,

We find at the foundation of the political system, of the Egyptians, the principle of caste, by which the people were divided into many orders, the three principal orders being the Priesthood, the Military, and the Industrial classes. The military orders and the Priesthood depended for their subsistence upon the labors of the inferior castes : their colonies, like the nation itself, were composed invariably of the three orders the military order subdued and intimidated, while the priests converted and instructed, and the merchants traded with the people whom they subdued. We may suppose the Pharaos to have been impelled by a three fold motive in extending their conquests and detaching their colonies; first, to increase their revenues and to enlarge the commerce of their merchants, by which they themselves also thrived; second, to reap for themselves military renown, and third and lastly to make the worship of Egypt the common worship of all nations. Our limits forbid us here from entering far enough into the subject to show that commercial intercourse was the leading and most powerful motive with these primeval conquerors, and those who in after ages followed their example.

That the colonial system of Egypt was not the best nor the most efficient, partaking in every particular of the weakness and corruption of their home economy and general policy, is evident from the rapidity and ease with which they were supplanted by the powers who succeeded them, and who brought other and more liberal systems of colonization, with happier and more enduring institutions.

Next in order, and superior in efficacy, follows the colonial system of the Phoenicians, whose lines of commercial enterprise were marked at intervals by the founding

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