They touch our country, and their shackles fall. power LESSON LXXVII. The Same Subject.-MONTGOMERY. THE broken heart, which kindness never heals, 'Twas night :-his babes around him lay at rest, Their mother slumbered on their father's breast: A yell of murder rang around their bed; They woke; their cottage blazed; the victims fled; The negro, spoiled of all that nature gave- A silent, secret, terrible control, That ruled his sinews, and repress'd his soul. Thus spurned, degraded, trampled, and oppress'd, A Christian broker in the trade of blood: LESSON LXXVIII. The Slave Trade.-Extract from a Discourse delivered at Plymouth, Mass. Dec. 22. 1820, in commemoration of the first settlement of New-England.-By DANIEL WEBSTER. Ir the blessings of our political and social condition have not now been too highly estimated, we cannot well over-rate the responsibility which they impose upon us. We hold these institutions of government, religion, and learning, to be • transmitted as well as enjoyed. We are in the line of conveyance through which whatever has been obtained by the spirit and efforts of our ancestors, is to be communicated to our children. We are bound to maintain publick liberty, and, by the exam ple of our own systems, to convince the world, that order, and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be signal, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions, which maintain that government can rest safely on nothing but power and coercion. As far as experience may show errours in our establishments, we are bound to correct them; and if any practices exist, contrary to the principles of justice and humanity, within the reach of our laws or our influence, we are inexcusable if we do not exert ourselves to restrain and abolish them. I deem it my duty, on this occasion, to suggest, that the land is not yet wholly free from the contamination of a traffick, at which every feeling of humanity must revōlt—I mean the African slave trade. Neither publick sentiment, nor the law, has yet been able entirely to put an end to this odious and abominable trade. At the moment when God, in his mercy, has blessed the world with a universal peace, there is reason to fear, that, to the disgrace of the christian name and character, new efforts are making for the extension of this trade, by subjects and citizens of christian states, in whose hearts no sentiment of justice inhabits, and over whom neither the fear of God nor the fear of man exercises a control. In the sight of our law, the African slave trader is a pirate and a felon; and in the sight of heaven, an offender far beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. There is no brighter part of our history, than that which records the measures which have been adopted by the government, at an early day, and at different times since, for the suppression of this traffick; and I would call upon all the true sons of New-England, to cooperate with the laws of man, and the justice of heaven. If there be, within the extent of our knowledge or influence, any participation in this traffick, let us pledge ourselves here, upon the Rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit that the land of the pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammerI see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those, who by stealth, and at midnight, labour in this work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New-England. Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards; and let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it. I would invoke those who fill the seats of justice, and all who minister at her altar, that they execute the wholesome and necessary severity of the law. I invoke the ministers of our religion that they proclaim its denunciation of these crimes, and add its solemn sanctions to the authority of human laws. If the pulpit be silent, whenever, or wherever there may be a sinner, bloody with this guilt, within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its trust. 1 I call on the fair merchant, who has reaped his harvest upon the seas, that he assist in scourging from those seas the worst pirates that ever infested them. That ocean which seems to wave with a gentle magnificence, to waft the burdens of an honest commerce, and to roll its treasures with a conscious pride; that ocean which hardy industry regards, even when the winds have ruffled its surface, as a field of grateful toil; what is it to the victim of this oppression when he is brought to its shores, and looks forth upon it for the first time, from beneath chains, and bleeding with stripes?-What is it to him, but a wide spread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death? Nor do the skies smile longer; nor is the air fragrant to him. The sun is cast down from heaven. An inhuman and cursed traffick has cut him off in his manhood, or in his youth, from every enjoyment belonging to his being, and every blessing which his Creator intended for him. LESSON LXXIX. Report of an adjudged case, not to be found in any of the books. BETWEEN Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose; So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause, So famed for his talent in nicely discerning. "Again, would your worship a moment suppose LESSON LXXX. Song of Rebecca, the Jewess.-AUTHOR OF IVANHOE. When Israel, of the Lord beloved, |