age, removed to Western Virginia, and, after Braddock's defeat, to South Carolina. He was a man of a vigorous frame of mind as well as body, and was distinguished among his neighbors by his jealousy of the encroachments of government, carrying his principle so far as to oppose the adoption of the federal constitution on the ground that it gave other states the power of taxing his own. He married Miss Caldwell, of Charlotte County, Virginia.

The father's residence was situated in the wild, upper portion of the state, and was known as the Calhoun Settlement. The future senator was sent at the age of thirteen to the nearest academy, which was fifty miles distant. It was presided over by the Rev. Dr. Waddell, a Presbyterian, his brother-in-law. In consequence of the death of this gentleman's wife not long after, the school was broken up. Calhoun continued to reside with Mr. Waddell, who happened to have in charge the circulating library of the village. This small collection of books was eagerly devoured by the young student, whose tastes even then led him to the graver departments of literature. He read the histories of Rollin, Robertson, and Voltaire, with such assiduity, that in fourteen weeks he had despatched several of each, in addition to Cook's Voyages, and a portion of Locke on the Understanding. This intense application injured his eyes and his general health to such an extent that his mother interposed, and by a judicious course of out-door physical exercise, succeeded in restoring the natural vigor of his constitution, and giving him a taste for rural sports which was of service then, and afterwards, as a relief to his mental labors.

After four years spent at home, Calhoun en

Мовани

tered Yale College in 1802, on the completion of his course studied law at the celebrated school of Litchfield, and was admitted to practice in 1807. In 1808 he was elected to the Legislature of South Carolina, and in 1811 to the National House of Representatives. In 1817 he was appointed Secretary of War by President Monroe, an office

which he held for seven years, introducing during his incumbency an order and vigor in its administration, which was of eminent service to the future operations of the department. In 1825 he was elected Vice-President, with Mr. Adams as President, and again in 1829. In 1831 he resigned the office, to take General Hayne's place, vacated by his election as Governor of South Carolina, in the Senate. He retired at the close of his term. During Mr. Tyler's administration, he was appointed Secretary of State. In 1845 he was again returned to the Senate, where he remained in active service until his death, which occurred at Washington, March 31, 1850.

Mr. Calhoun was a warm advocate of the war of 1812, of the nullification proceedings in his native state during General Jackson's administration, and was for many years the leading statesinan of the Southern States. He took extreme ground in regard to State rights and the slavery question.

Webster, in his tribute in the Senate to Calhoun, noticed the qualities of his mind, and the simple, single pursuits of his life. "His eloquence was part of his intellectual character. It was plain, strong, terse, condensed, concise; sometimes impassioned, still always severe. Rejecting ornament, not often seeking far for illustration, his power consisted in the plainness of his propositions, in the closeness of his logic, and in the earnestness and energy of his manner"-adding, "I have known no man who wasted less of life in what is called recreation, or employed less of it in any pursuits not connected with the immediate discharge of his duty. He seemed to have no recreation but the pleasure of conversation with his friends."* Ingersoll, too, in his History of the Second War with England, condenses in a few vigorous words a striking picture of Calhoun as an orator, including the marked characteristics of the man:-" Speaking with aggressive aspect, flashing eye, rapid action and enunciation, unadorned argument, eccentricity of judgment, unbounded love of rule; impatient, precipitate in ambition, kind in temper; with conception, perception, and demonstration, quick and clear; with logical precision arguing paradoxes, and carrying home conviction beyond rhetorical illustration; his own impressions so intense, as to discredit, scarcely to listen to any other suggestions."

The publication of Calhoun's works, edited by Richard K. Cralle, under the direction of the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina, was commenced in Charleston in 1851, and shortly after transferred to the Messrs. Appleton of New York. Four volumes have been issued, and others are to follow. The first includes the posthumous work on which the author had been engaged in 1848 and 1849, A Disquisition on Government, and a Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States; the remainder are occupied with Speeches delivered in the House of Representatives, and in the Senate of the United States. His Documentary Writings and a Life are in preparation.

Calhoun's view of state rights is expressed in broad terms in his Disquisition on Government, in his theory of the right of the minority, which is the essence of the volume. This, like his other

*Remarks in the Senate, April 1, 1850.

ther the Union is a union between States, as distinct communities, or a mere aggregate of the American people, as a mass of individuals; and in this light his opinions would lead directly to consolidation.

66

But to return to the bill. It is said that the bill ought to pass, because the law must be enforced. The law must be e forced! The imperial edict must be executed! It is under such sophistry, couched in general terms, without looking to the limitations which must ever exist in the practical exercise of power, that the most cruel and despotic acts ever have been covered. It was such sophistry as this that cast Daniel into the lion's den, and the three Innocents into the fiery furnace. Under the same sophistry the bloody edicts of Nero and Caligula were executed. The law must be enforced. Yes, the act imposing the "tea-tax must be executed." This was the very argument which impelled Lord North and his administration to that mad career which for ever separated us from the British crown. Under a similar sophistry, that religion must be protected," how many massacres have been perpetrated? and how many martyrs have been tied to the stake? What! acting on this vague abstraction, are you prepared to enforce a law without considering whether it be just or unjust, constitutional or unconstitutional? Will you collect money when it is acknowledged that it is not wanted? He who earns the money, who digs it from the earth with the sweat of his brow, has a just title to it against the universe. No one has a right to touch it without his consent except his government, and this only to the extent of its legitimate wants; to take more is robbery, and you propose by this bill to enforce robbery by murder. Yes: to this result you must come, by this miserable sophistry, this vague abstraction of enforcing the law, without a regard to the fact whether the law be just or unjust, constitutional or unconstitutional.

In the same spirit, we are told that the Union must be preserved, without regard to the means. And how is it proposed to preserve the Union? By force! Does any man in his senses believe that this beautiful structure-this harmonious aggregate of States, produced by the joint consent of all-can be preserved by force? Its very introduction will be certain destruction to this Federal Union. No, no. You cannot keep the States united in their constitutional and federal bonds by force. Force may, indeed, hold the parts together, but such union would be the bond between master and slave-a union of exaction on one side and of unqualified obedience on the other. That obedience which, we are told by the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Wilkins), is the Union! Yes, exaction on the side of the master; for this very bill is intended to collect what can be no longer called taxes-the voluntary contribution of a free people—but tribute-tribute to be collected under the mouths of the cannon! Your custom-house is alrealy transferred to a garrison, and that garrison with its batteries turned, not against the enemy of your country, but on subjects (I will not say citizens), on whom you propose to levy contributions. Has reason fled from our borders? Have we ceased to reflect? It is madness to suppose that the Union can be preserved by force. I tell you plainly, that the bill, should it pass, cannot be enforced. It will prove only a blot upon your statute-book, a reproach to the year, and a disgrace to the American Senate. I repeat, it will not be executed; it will rouse the dormant spirit of the people, and open their eyes to the approach of despotism. The country has sunk into avarice and political corruption, from which nothing can arouse t but some measure, on the part of the Government,

of folly and madness, such as that now under consideration.

Disguise it as you may, the controversy is one between power and liberty; and I tell the gentlemen who are opposed to me, that, as strong as may be the love of power on their side, the love of liberty is still stronger on ours. History furnishes many instances of similar struggles, where the love of liberty has prevailed against power under every disadvantage, and among them few more striking than that of our own Revolution; where, as strong as was the parent country, and feeble as were the colonies, yet, under the impulse of liberty, and the blessing of God, they gloriously triumphed in the contest. There are, indeed, many and striking analogies between that and the present controversy. They both originated substantially in the same cause— with this difference-in the present case, the power of taxation is converted into that of regulating industry; in the other, the power of regulating industry, by the regulation of commerce, was attempted to be converted into the power of taxation. Were I to trace the analogy further, we should find that the perversion of the taxing power, in the one case, has given precisely the same control to the Northern section over the industry of the Southern section of the Union, which the power to regulate commerce gave to Great Britain over the industry of the colonies in the other; and that the very articles in which the colonies were permitted to have a free trade, and those in which the mother-country had a monopoly, are almost identically the same as those in which the Southern States are permitted to have a free trade by the act of 1832, and in which the Northern States have, by the same act, secured a monopoly. The only difference is in the means. the former, the colonies were permitted to have a free trade with all countries south of Cape Finisterre, a cape in the northern part of Spain; while north of that, the trade of the colonies was prohibited, except through the mother-country, by means of her commercial regulations. If we compare the products of the country north and south of Cape Finisterre, we shall find them almost identical with the list of the protected and unprotected articles contained in the act of last year. Nor does the analogy terminate here. The very arguments resorted to at the commencement of the American Revolution, and the measures adopted, and the motives assigned to bring on that contest (to enforce the law), are almost identically the same.

ROBERT WALSII.

In

ROBERT WALSH was born in the city of Baltimore in 1784. His father was by birth an Irishinan, bearing the same name; his mother was of Quaker Pennsylvanian origin. He received his early education at the Catholic College at Baltimore, and the Jesuit College at Georgetown. He was sent to Europe after passing through the usual school course to complete his education, and remained abroad until his twenty-fifth year, when he returned, married, and commenced the practice of the law, having prosecuted his studies under the superintendence of Robert Goodloe Harper. Owing in part, probably, to his deafness, he soon abandoned this profession.

He commenced his literary career as a writer in the Port Folio, and in 1809 published A Letter on the Genius and Disposition of the French Government, including a View of the Taxation of the French Empire, in which he commented with severity on the measures of

Napoleon. It contained a large mass of information respecting the internal economy of the government of Napoleon, which was entirely new to English readers. The work was written with spirit, and was received with favor not only in his own country, but, what was then a rarity, in England, where it passed through four editions, and the Edinburgh gave a hearty endorsement to its merits in a leading article.

Robert Walsh

In 1811 he commenced with the year the publication of the first quarterly attempted in America, The American Review of History and Politics. Eight numbers appeared, carrying the work through two years. Most of the articles were from the pen of the editor.

In 1813 his Correspondence with Robert Goodloe Harper respecting Russia and Essay on the Future State of Europe appeared. He also furnished several biographical prefaces to an edition of the English poets, in fifty eighteenmo. volumes, then in course of publication in Philadelphia. In 1817 he became the editor of The American Register, a valuable statistical publication, which was continued for two years only. In 1818 he published, in Delaplaine's Repository, a long and elaborate biographical paper on Benjamin Franklin, which still remains one of the most interesting memoirs of the sage. In 1819 Mr. Walsh published An Appeal from the Judgments of Great Britain respecting the United States of America. Part First, containing an Historical Outline of their Merits and Wrongs as Colonies, and Strictures upon the Calumnies of the British Writers. This work, forming an octavo volume of five hundred and twelve closely printed pages, was called forth by the long-continued calumnies of the British press, and particularly of the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, in their endorsements of the foolish and unfounded slanders set forth by hasty, ignorant, and irresponsible travellers through the United States. These reviews,

= Vide ante, vol. i. 638.

representing the deliberate judgment of the two great political parties of their country, excited a resentment in American readers which has left its traces to the present day.

Mr. Walsh met these assailants with facts drawn from English testimony of undoubted authority, often from previous admissions of the assailants themselves. The work is divided into sections on the history of the British maladministration of the American colonies, "the hostilities of the British Reviews," and the topic of negro slavery. It is careful in its statements, calm in tone, and at the same time energetic. It was at once accepted as an able vindication by the Americans, and did much to mend the manners of the English journals.

In 1821 he commenced, with Mr. William Fry, the National Gazette, a small newspaper, published on alternate afternoons. It was soon enlarged, and published daily. Mr. Walsh remained connected with this journal for fifteen years, and during that period did much to enlarge the scope of the newspaper literature of the country by writing freely and fully upon books, science, and the fine arts, as well as polities, and by joining in his treatment of the latter topic a little of the suariter in modo, which had hitherto been somewhat lacking in the American press, to the fortiter in re, which required no increase of intensity.

Mr. Walsh was also connected with the editorship of The American Magazine of Foreign Literature, the forerunner of the Museum and Living Age of Mr. Littell, but in 1822 resigned that charge for the more agreeable task of the resuscitation of his original Review. The first number of the American Review was published in March, 1827. It was continued with great ability for ten years, and among its many excellent qualities is to be commended for its frequent and thorough attention to home literature and other subjects of national interest.

In 1837, Mr. Walsh finding the Gazette was failing to furnish its former support, retired from it. He published, about the same time, two volumes selected from his contributions to its columns, and from articles still in manuscript, under the title of Didactics. He removed in the same year to Paris, where he has since resided, filling, until a few years since, the post of United States Consul. He has maintained a constant and prominent literary connexion with his country by his regular foreign correspondence to the National Intelligencer, and more recently to the New York Journal of Commerce.

No American abroad has enjoyed more intimate relations with the savans and politicians of Europe, or has traced with greater interest the progress of government and science.

SENTENCES FROM DIDACTICS.

We should endeavour to poetize our existence; to keep it clear of the material and grosser world. Music, flowers, verse, beauty, and natural scenery, the abstractions of philosophy, the spiritual refinements of religion are all important to that end.

Liberty is a boon which few of the European nations are worthy to receive or able to enjoy When attempts to give it have been vainly made, let us, before we speak of them, inquire whether they were practicable.

We should keep acknowledged evil out of the way of youth and its fealty; as we would avert frost from the blossom, and protect vegetable or animal life of any kind in its immaturity, from perilous exposure.

Maxim for a Republic.-Let the cause of every single citizen be the cause of the whole; and the cause of the whole be that of every single citizen.

Real sympathy and gratitude show themselves, not in words and pageants, but acts, sacrifices, which directly afford "comfort and consolation."

Let none of us cherish or invoke the spirit of religious fanaticism:-the ally would be quite as pestilent as the enemy.

We should never inquire into the faith or profession, religious or political, of our acquaintance; we should be satisfied when we find usefulness, integrity, beneficence, tolerance, patriotism, cheerfulness, sense, and manners. We encounter every day really good men, practical Christians, and estimable citizens, belonging respectively to all the sects and classes.

There is nothing, however good in itself, which may not be converted into "stuff," by making a jumble of it, and interpolating trash; and there is no journalist who may not be represented as inconsistent, no allowance being made for difference of times and circumstances, and the just and vivid impressions of particular periods and events.

It is well observed that good morals are not the fruit of metaphysical subtleties; nor are good political constitutions or salutary government. Abstractions and refinements are far from being enough for human nature and human communities.

Truth should never be sacrificed to nationality; but it is a sort of treason to decry unjustly indigenous productions, exalting at the same time those of a foreign country, without due examination or real grounds-to pretend national mortification in cases to which the opposite sentiment is due. Good, instructive literature and general politics need, in our country, liberal treatment in every quarter. They are subject to obstacles and disadvantages enough, without precipitate, sweeping, quackish opinions

The effusions of genius, or rather, the most successful manifestations of what is called talent, are often the effects of distempered nerves and complexional spleen, as pearls are morbid secretions. How much of his reputation for superiority of intelleet did not Mr. J. Randolph owe to his physical ills and misanthropic spirit!

The more the heart is exercised in the domestic affections, the more likely it is to be sympathetic and active with regard to external objects.

There are some human tongues which have two sides, like those of certain quadrupeds-one, smooth; the other very rough.

Restraints laid by a people on itself are sacrifices made to liberty; and it often shows the greatest wisdom in imposing them.

Write as wisely as we may, we cannot fix the minds of men upon our writings, unless we take them gently by the ear.

Candour is to be always admired, and equivocation to be shunned; but there is such a thing as supererogation, and very bold and ingenuous avowals may do much more harm than good.

It is an old saying that it is no small consolation to any one who is obliged to work to see another

voluntarily take a share in his labour: since it seems to remove the idea of the constraint.

It would be well to allow some things to remain, as the poet says, "behind eternity;-hid in the secret treasure of the past."

A prudent man ought to be guided by a demonstrated probability not less than by a demonstrated certainty.

Men of wit have not always the clearest judgment or the deepest reason.

The perusal of books of sentiment and of descriptive poetry, and the frequent survey of natural scenery, with a certain degree of feeling and fancy, must have a most beneficial effect upon the imagination and the heart.

The true Fortunatus's purse is the richness of the generous and tender affections, which are worth much more for felicity, than the highest powers of the understanding, or the highest favours of fortune.

HENRY WHEATON.

HENRY WHEATON was a descendant from Robert Wheaton, a Baptist clergyman who emigrated in the reign of Charles I. to Salem, and afterwards removed to Rhode Island. He was born in Providence, November, 1785, and entered Brown University at the age of thirteen. After the completion of his course he studied law, and in 1806 went to Europe, to complete his education.

Wheaton

He resided for several months at Poitiers, engaged in the study of the French language, and of the recently established Code Napoleon. He afterwards devoted some time to the study of English law in London, and was an intimate of the American minister, Mr. Monroe. On his return he was admitted to the bar, and practised at Providence until 1813, when, in the meanwhile having married his cousin, the daughter of Dr. Wheaton of the same city, he removed to New York. Before his departure, he delivered a fourth of July oration, chiefly devoted to a consideration of the wars then raging in Europe, of which he spoke with detestation. After his establishment in New York he became the editor of the National Advocate, which he conducted for two years with marked ability. During this period he was appointed Judge of the Marine Court, and held for a few months the office of Army Judge Advocate. In 1815 he resumed practice, and in the same year published a Treatise on the Law of Maritime Captures and Prizes, regarded as the best work which had then appeared on the subject. In 1816 he was appointed Reporter of the Supreme Court at Washington, a position which he retained until 1827, publishing during his incumbency twelve volumes of Reports. In 1821 he was elected a member of the Convention called to revise the Constitution of the State of New York, and in 1825 was appointed by the Legislature one of the commissioners to revise, upon a new and systematic plan, all the statute