Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/244

 object, our upward and onward career. As if in atonement for the wrong inflicted on the country by the angry Missouri controversy, which was then fresh in every mind, there seemed to be no circumscription to that genuine patriotism which everywhere within our embraces displayed itself. May we not trust, Mr. President, that a similar result will ensue from the still more angry Kansas controversy, and that the benign influences of such results will be as, durable as creation! This will assuredly be the case if the only question asked within this Capitol, when an embryo State asks for admission into the Union, shall be, ' Does her Constitution conform to the national requirement, a Republican form of Government?'"

Houston then went into an extended history of Mr. Monroe's words, and how they were commented on; that he was opposed to the so-called Holy Alliance, which sought to re-establish Spain in her former possessions. "Its position was: 'that crowned heads have a derived power to preserve what is legally established, was, as it ought to be, the invariable policy of those whom God has rendered responsible for power.' This is its language. Our excellent Minister to the Netherlands, Christopher Hughes, on the 25th August, 1823, at Liverpool revealed it. Great Britain, through Minister Canning, sought the co-operation of our Government. Monroe's reply was as a destructive earthquake to hopes of American acquiescence, at Paris. It was hailed by the Marquis of Lansdowne, in the House of Lords, in the following February, who said: 'He could grudge to the United States the glory of having thus early thrown her shield over those struggles for freedom which were so important, not only to America, but to the whole world. Let their lordships look to what had happened in the United States. There, a population of 3,000,000 had, in forty years, been increased to 10,000,000.' Brougham, in the House of Commons, echoed the same sentiment. 'He trusted that as the United States had the glory of setting, we should have the good taste to follow the example of holding fast by free institutions, and of ever assisting our brother freemen, in whatever part of the globe they might be found, in placing bounds to that infamous alliance.' "In June, when called upon to vote, Houston responded to an objector: "Any one from motives of humanity is entitled to undertake to become a protector. I should not feel myself restrained, at my age, to interpose in behalf of humanity, and to arrest the cruelties and murders committed on a defenceless people."

True to his instinct, Houston, shortly after this speech, in view of the pressure of business in the Senate, moved a resolution that the Senate meet at 11 o'clock instead of 12 o'clock, that there might be more time given for deliberation on important measures. On the 5th May Houston replied to Senator Hale, of New Hampshire, who had disparaged West Point Military Academy because so