Saviour, 1824, while all European Christendom beheld, with cold unfeeling apathy, the unexampled wrongs and inexpressible misery of the Christians in Greece, a proposition was made in the Congress of the United States, almost the sole, the last, the greatest repository of human hope and of human freedom, the representatives of a nation capable of bringing into the field a million of bayonets, while the freemen of that nation were spontaneously expressing its deep-toned feeling, its fervent prayer for Grecian success, while the whole continent was raising, by one simultaneous emotion, solemnly and anxiously supplicating and invoking the aid of Heaven to spare Greece and to invigorate her arms, while temples and senate houses were all resounding with one burst of generous feeling-(gentlemen may call it enthusiastic declamation if they please; would to God we could hear such declamation and the utterance of such feeling from them)-in the year of our Lord and Saviour, that Saviour alike of Christian Greece and of us—a proposition was offered in the American Congress, to send a messenger to Greece, to inquire into her state and condition, with an expression of our good wishes and our sympathies-and it was rejected." Go home, if you dare; go home, if you can, to your constituents, and tell them that you voted it down--meet, if you dare, the appalling countenances of those who sent you here, (I mean no defiance,) and tell them that you shrank from the declaration of your own sentiments-that you cannot tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefinable danger, affrighted you--that the spectres of cimeters, and crowns, and crescents, gleamed before you, and alarmed you; and that you suppressed all the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty, by national independence, and by humanity. I cannot bring myself to believe, that such will be the feeling of a majority of this house. But, for myself, though every friend of the measure should desert it, and I left to stand alone, with the gentleman from Massachusetts, I will give to the resolution the poor sanction of my unqualified approbation.

105.-EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH OF JOHN RANDOLPH ON THE SAME QUESTION.

MR. CHAIRMAN,-It is with serious concern and alarm, that I have heard doctrines broached in this debate, fraught with consequences more disastrous to the best interests of this people than any that I have ever heard advanced during the five-and-twenty years that I have been honoured with a seat on this floor. They imply, to my apprehension, a total and fundamental change of the policy pursued by this government, ab urbe condita-from the foundation of the republic, to the present day. Are we, sir, to go on a crusade, in another hemisphere, for the propagation of two objects--objects as dear and delightful to my heart as to that of any gentleman in this, or in any other assemblyliberty and religion--and, in the name of these holy words -by this powerful spell, is this nation to be conjured and persuaded out of the high way of heaven-out of its present comparatively happy state, into all the disastrous conflicts arising from the policy of European powers, with all the consequences which flow from them?

Liberty and religion, sir! I believe that nothing similar to this proposition is to be found in modern history, unless in the famous decree of the French national assembly, which brought combined Europe against them, with its united strength, and, after repeated struggles, finally effected the downfall of the French power. Sir, I am wrong-there is another example of like doctrine; and you find it among that strange and peculiar people--in that mysterious book, which is of the highest authority with them, (for it is at once their gospel and their law,) the Koran, which enjoins it to be the duty of all good Moslems to propagate its doctrines at the point of the sword--by the edge of the cimeter. The character of that people is a peculiar one: they differ from every other race. It has been said, here, that it is four hundred years since they encamped in Europe. Sir, they were encamped, on the spot where we now find them, before this country was discovered, and their title to the country which they occupy is at least as good as ours. They hold their possessions there by the same title by which all other countries are held-possession, obtained at first by a successful employment of force,

confirmed by time, usage, prescription-the best of all possible titles. Their policy has been not tortuous, like that of other states of Europe, but straightforward: they had inva riably appealed to the sword, and they held by the sword, The Russ had, indeed, made great encroachments on their empire, but the ground had been contested inch by inch; and the acquisitions of Russia on the side of Christian Europe-Livonia, Ingria, Courland-Finland, to the gulf of Bothnia-Poland!-had been greater than that of the Mahometans. And, in consequence of this straightforward policy to which I before referred, this peculiar people could boast of being the only one of the continental Europe, whose capital had never been insulted by the presence of a foreign military force. It was a curious fact, well worthy of attention, that Constantinople was the only capital in continental Europe-for Moscow was the true capital of Russia—that had never been in possession of an enemy. It is, indeed, true, that the Empress Catharine did inscribe over the gate of one of the cities that she had won in the Krimea, (Cherson, I think,) "the road to Byzantium;" but, sir, it has proved-perhaps too low a word for the subject-but a stumpy road for Russia. Who, at that day, would have been believed, had he foretold to that august (for so she was) and illustrious woman that her Cossacks of the Ukraine, and of the Don, would have encamped in Paris before they reached Constantinople? Who would have been believed, if he had foretold that a French invading force-such as the world never saw before, and, I trust, will never again see-would lay Moscow itself in ashes? These are considerations worthy of attention, before we embark in the project proposed by this resolution, the consequences of which no human eye can divine.

I would respectfully ask the gentleman from Massachusetts, whether in his very able and masterly argument— and he has said all that could be said upon the subject, and more than I supposed could be said by any man in favou of his resolution-whether he himself has not furnished an answer to his speech-I had not the happiness myself to hear his speech, but a friend has read it to me. In one of the arguments in that speech, toward the conclusion, I think, of his speech, the gentleman lays down, from

Puffendorf, in reference to the honeyed words and pious professions of the holy alliance, that these are all surplusage, because nations are always supposed to be ready to do what justice and national law require. Well, sir, if this be so, why may not the Greeks presume-why are they not, on this principle, bound to presume, that this government is disposed to do all, in reference to them, that they ought to do, without any formal resolutions to that effect? I ask the gentleman from Massachusetts, whether the doctrine of Puffendorf does not apply as strongly to the resolution as to the declaration of the allies-that is, if the resolution of the gentleman be indeed that almost nothing he would have us suppose, if there be not something behind this nothing which divides this house (not horizontally, as the gentleman has ludicrously said-but vertically) into two unequal parties, one the advocate of a splendid system of crusades, the other the friends of peace and harmony; the advocates of a fireside policy-for, as had been truly said, as long as all is right at the fireside, there cannot be much wrong elsewhere--whether, I repeat, does not the doctrine of Puffendorf apply as well to the words of the resolution as to the words of the holy alliance?

But, sir, we have already done more than this. The president of the United States, the only organ of communication which the people have seen fit to establish between us and foreign powers, has already expressed all, in reference to Greece, that the resolution goes to express actum est--it is done-it is finished-there is an end. Not, that I would have the house to infer, that I mean to express any opinion as to the policy of such a declaration-the practice of responding to presidential addresses and messages had gone out for, now, these two or three-and-twenty years.

106.-SECOND EXTRACT FROM THE SAME SPEECH.

MR. CHAIRMAN,-Permit me, sir, to ask why, in the selection of an enemy to the doctrines of our government, and a party to those advanced by the holy alliance, we should fix on Turkey? She, at least, forms no part of that alliance; and I venture to say, that, for the last century,

her conduct, in reference to her neighbours, has been much more Christian than that of all the "most Christian,' "most Catholic," or "most faithful" majesties of Europe -for she has not interfered, as we propose to do, in the internal affairs of other nations.

But, sir, we have not done. Not satisfied with attempting to support the Greeks, our world, like that of Pyrrhus or Alexander, is not sufficient for us. We have yet another world for exploits: we are to operate in a country distant from us eighty degrees of latitude, and only accessible by a circumnavigation of the globe, and to subdue which, we must cover the Pacific with our ships, and the tops of the Andes with onr soldiers. Do gentlemen seriously reflect on the work they have cut out for us? Why, sir, these projects of ambition surpass those of Bonaparte himself.

It has once been said of the dominions of the King of Spain-thank God! it can no longer be said that the sun never set upon them. Sir, the sun never sets on ambition like this: they who have once felt its scorpion sting, are never satisfied with a limit less than the circle of our planet. I have heard, sir, the late coruscation in the heavens attempted to be accounted for by the return of the lunar cycle, the moon having got back into the same relative position in which she was nineteen years ago. However this may be, I am afraid, sir, that she exerts too potent an influence over our legislation, or will have done so, if we agree to adopt the resolution on your table. I think about once in seven or eight years, for that seems to be the term of our political cycle, we may calculate upon beholding some redoubted champion, like him who prances into Westminster Hall, armed cap-a-pie, like Sir Somebody Dimock, at the coronation of the British king, challenging all who dispute the title of the sovereign to the crown-coming into this house, mounted on some magnificent project, such as this. But, sir, I never expected, that, of all places in the world, (except Salem,) a proposition like this should have come from Boston!

Sir, I am afraid, that, along with some most excellent attributes and qualities-the love of liberty, jury trial, the writ of habeas corpus, and all the blessings of free government, that we have derived from our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, we have got not a little of their John Bull, or rather