Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/476

 lion's mouth. England, as I shall presently show, would be well enough pleased to have it so extricated.

Mr. President, I have looked, but looked in vain, in both wings of this Capitol, for a fellow-member who was a fellow-member with me when the celebrated Monroe doctrine was announced. Of the two hundred and sixty-one Senators and Representatives who constituted the Congress which commenced its session on the first Monday of December, 1823, I stand here alone, and I will not disguise it, as one who regards himself as among the last of his race—as one who feels that he is approaching his journey's end on life's pilgrimage, and who has now no other ambition to gratify than to " render the State some service." All those worthy spirits, alas! have, one by one, quitted earth, with the exception of President Buchanan, ex-President Van Buren, ex-Senator Branch, ex-Senator Rives, Governor Letcher, and Governor Wickliffe of Kentucky, Governor Johnson of Virginia, General Mercer, General Campbell of South Carolina, Mr. Saunders of North Carolina, Mr. Stuart of Pennsylvania, Mr. Blair of Tennessee, and possibly two or three others. To say nothing of the distinguished merits of the survivors, in that great Congress might have been seen, in the full meridian of strong intellect, the Jacksons and Clays, the Websters and Randolphs, the Macons and Forsyths, the Bentons and Livingstons, the Barbours and Johnsons, the McLanes and McDuffies, the Kings and Smiths, the Taylors and Hamiltons, the Floyds and Holmeses, the Ruggleses and Bartletts. It was to such men, chosen alike for their wisdom and integrity, representing twenty-four sovereign States and thirteen millions of inhabitants, that Mr. Monroe (counseled by a Cabinet composed of John Quincy Adams, William H. Crawford, John C. Calhoun, Samuel L. Southard, Williatn Wirt, and John McLean) addressed himself in such confident and resolute language with reference to the ulterior purposes of this country. I shall never cease to remember the exultant delight with which his noble sentiments were hailed. They met not only with a cordial, but an enthusiastic reception both in and out of Congress. They were approved with as much unanimity as if the entire population of the Union had been previously prepared to re-echo their utterance. At that glorious epoch there was a broad, towering spirit of nationality extant. The States stood in the endearing relation to each other of one for all, and all for one. The Constitution was their political text-book, the glory of the Republic their resolute aim. Practically, there was but one party, and that party animated by but one object—our upward and onward career. As if in atonement for the wrong inflicted upon 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 is: Does her constitution conform to the national requirement—"a republican form of government"? We have cheapened ourselves immensely in the world's esteem, and, I fear, polluted our system of government, in our extravagant disbursements, which have been overlooked in the profitless strife which had its emanation in the hostility to the institution of negro slavery. Let each new State, hereafter, come slave or free, as she chooses, and we shall henceforth