S
UNIVERSITY COURIER.
portion of humanity. There is no condition in life, however poor or miserable, that he has not painted, and with a vividness that could come only from the heart. He loves the wretches whom he paints, and with a tear of pity in his eyes, he brings them out from obscurity and holds them up for the Christian world, and pleads for charity. His writings find a responsive chord in every heart that beats in sympathy with humanity.
At Pompeii, lately, the workmen found two spaces in the hardened mud of excavation. The spaces having been filled, like a mould with plaster, the figure of a woman, with her arms outstretched to a little boy, is brought to light. The child wos just beyond her reach, but as the fiery flood flowed in upon her; she had held arms to save him.
Eighteen centuries have passed away. Every atom of that woman's form has passed away. Yet there stands the mother's love immortal still."
Thus it seems to me it is with authors. Those who think least of self, whose hearts are filled with love and actuated by noble impulses, will live. In the lapse of time their faults, their frailties, all that is human in them will pass away, and be forgotten. But there, embodied in their writings, their good will, their charity, all that is Divine in them will stand—immortal.
CALHOUN.
The complete failure of the attempts of Madison and Jefferson to force England and France to acknowledge and respect the rights of neutral nations; the crushing effects of the "Orders in Council" upon our commerce and the rebellious spirit awakened by the impressment of American seamen and the searching of American vessels was most favorable for bringing forth a set of youthful, ambitious, patriotic, war-loving politicians such as Clay, Calhoun, and Webster.
Though all these three will live in the minds of Americans, one of them will ever be foremost, that one, the representative of an idea, the nucleus around which the whole history of the Union is wound; states rights, nullification, slavery.
As one of the advocates of the "war policy", Calhoun makes no great impression having here many equals and superiors, but when he enters the arena as the advocate and impersonation of slavery, he stands forth a heedless gladiator combating with untiring determination against "the fearful odds of that unequal fray" in which public opinion, reason and morality were pitched against the peculiar institution."
The first noteworthy act of the "great nullified" was to sound the "long roel" which was to be his perpetual call to war not against foreign enemies, but against the prosperity of his own section and the tranquillity of the Union.
During Calhoun's first political years we find him as Mr. Adams says : "A man of fair and candid, of honorable principles, of clear and quick understanding, of cool self-possession, of enlarged philosophical views and of ardent patriotism," and above all "sectional and factious prejudices." But suddenly he becomes poisoned by the doctrines of "states rights," "nullification" and "slavery;" then there is but one side to all questions, all constitutionalities must start from and return to this same point, nothing is right which can not be turned and twisted to the advantage of the sometimes "municipal" and sometimes national institution. Though he admitted, while Vice-President, the right of Congress to prohibit slavery in the territories, he thought all else must yield to it, for he considered it "an incontestable right under the fundamental law of the land," and also as an absolute necessity.
Now he acknowledges no power of the constitution or Congress to control this horrible crime of the nineteenth century. He is then accused of veering around in his politics to be always before the wind and making his intellect the pandor of his will. These reproaches were brought forth by no friendly feeling. Mr. Calhoun was a man of deep convictions; his veering was gradual, it was not the result of personal ambition, but was the result of personal ambition, but was the result of a most thorough course of logical reasoning.
Slavery had split the Union into two geographical sections.
Embittered but free, Calhoun battled for a principle which he considered of the greatest importance, heeding no party calls and fearing not the enmity of any one. He was not a traitor as some claim, but he did see at the first glance that with slavery and the feeling in the North the Union could not be of long duration, hence his continual cry of, Halt! Consider!
He claims that he is wholly separate from political parties of the day and belongs to that small and denounced party which is determined, if possible to SAVE the liberty and the constitution of the country in the great crisis of affairs.
He cried to the North and the Union, "Let us alone." He expected that the North would not dare to attack the "peculiar institution" if the South made a determined stand and gave the North to understand that they meant to protect their property. He hoped and was sanguine that slavery and the Union could both be saved.
His whole attitude in the Texas case was for the extension of slavery. He did not see that such slight victory for the cause was but one more death-knell.
He honestly wished to preserve the Union, because he believed that a high and sacred regard for the constitution as well as the dictates of wisdom made it the duty, not to resort to extreme remedy until all others had failed.
With the constitution and the existing Northern feeling he admitted that he could not see the future. How fortunate! For looking through the mist and seeing the "fields of the dead" of that terrible conflict in which brother slaughtered brother, father slaughtered son, how could he have supported with all the power of that towering intellect a principal which held in chains 12,000,000 human beings.
Time alone he thought would right the question. If slavery could be done away with by the lapse of time, the South would have no cause for complaint, but if Congress should endeavor to legislate it away, then it would have just cause for complaint and for protecting its rights.
On the 4th of March 1850 his last speech was read to the Senate. This scene was one of the grandest of historical tragedies; sadder than Macbeth, though not a drop of blood was shed. Every eye in the Senate chamber supported by two friends. The heavy curtains were drawn to, behind a man who battled most earnestly and tragically for an idea.