in time, and which is likely to receive the plaudit of his Judge in immortality. God, from his throne, beholds not a nobler object on his footstool, than the man who loves his enemies, pities their errors, and forgives the injuries they do him. This is, indeed, the very spirit of the heavens. It is the image of His benignity, whose glory fills them.

To return to the subject before us―guilty, absurd and rash, as duelling is, it has its advocates. And had it not had its advocates-had not a strange preponderance of opinion been in favor of it, never, O lamentable Hamilton! hadst thou thus fallen, in the midst of thy days, and before thou hadst reached the zenith of thy glory!

O that I possessed the talent of eulogy, and that I might be permitted to indulge the tenderness of friendship, in paying the last tribute to his memory! O that I were capable of placing this great man before you! Could I do this, I should furnish you with an argument, the most practical, the most plain, the most convincing, except that drawn from the mandate of God, that was ever furnished against duelling-that horrid practice, which has, in an awful moment, robbed the world of such exalted worth. But I cannot do this; I can only hint at the variety and exuberance of his excellence.

The Man, on whom nature seems originally to have impressed the stamp of greatness, whose genius beamed, from the retirement of collegiate life, with a radiance which dazzled, and a loveliness which charmed the eye of sages.

The Hero, called from his sequestered retreat, whose first appearance in the field, though a stripling, conciliated the esteem of Washington, our good old father. Moving by whose side, during all the perils of the revolution, our young chieftain was a contributor to the veteran's glory, the guardian of his person, and the copartner of his toils.

The Conqueror, who, sparing of human blood, when

victory favored, stayed the uplifted arm, and nobly said to the vanquished enemy," Live!"

The Statesman, the correctness of whose principles, and the strength of whose mind, are inscribed on the records of Congress, and on the annals of the councilchamber; whose genius impressed itself upon the constitution of his country; and whose memory, the government, illustrious fabric, resting on this basis, will perpetuate while it lasts: and shaken by the violence of party, should it fall, which may heaven avert, his prophetic declarations will be found inscribed on

its ruins.

The Counsellor, who was at once the pride of the bar and the admiration of the court; whose apprehensions were quick as lightning, and whose development of truth was luminous as its path; whose argument no change of circumstances could embarrass; whose knowledge appeared intuitive; and who, by a single glance, and with as much facility as the eye of the eagle passes over the landscape, surveyed the whole field of controversy; saw in what way truth might be most successfully defended, and how error must be approached; and who, without ever stopping, ever hesitating, by a rapid and manly march, led the listening judge and the fascinated juror, step by step, through a delightsome region, brightening as he advanced, till his argument rose to demonstration, and eloquence was rendered useless by conviction; whose talents were employed on the side of righteousness; whose voice, whether in the council-chamber, or at the bar of justice, was virtue's consolation: at whose approach oppressed humanity felt a secret rapture, and the heart of injured innocence leapt for joy.

Where Hamilton was-in whatever sphere he moved, the friendless had a friend, the fatherless a father, and the poor man, though unable to reward his kindness, found an advocate. It was when the rich oppressed the poor; when the powerful menaced the

But, all these instances are of her fellow-men of merely co-equal, perhaps unknown descent and blood; co-existing from all time with herself, and making up, only accidentally, a part of her dominion. We ought to have been spared. The otherwise undistinguishing rigor of this outstretched sceptre might still have spared us. We were descended from her own loins: bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh; not so much a part of her empire as a part of herself-her very self. Towards her own it might have been expected she would relent. When she invaded our homes, she saw her own countenance, heard her own voice, beheld her own altars! Where was then that pure spirit which she now would tell us sustains her amidst self-sacrifices, in her generous contest for the liberties of other nations? If it flowed in her nature, here it might have delighted to beam out; here was space for its saving love: the true mother chastens, not destroys the child: but Britain, when she struck at us, struck at her own image, struck too at the immortal principles which her Lockes, her Miltons, and her Sidneys taught, and the fell blow severed us forever, as a kindred nation! The crime is purely her own; and upon her, not us, be its consequences and its stain. In looking at Britain, with eyes less prepossessed than we are apt to have from the circumstance of our ancient connexion with her, we should see, indeed, her common lot of excellence, on which to found esteem; but it would lift the covering from deformities which may well startle and repel. A harshness of individual character, in the general view of it, which is perceived and acknowledged by all Europe; a spirit of unbecoming censure, as regards all customs and institutions not their own; a ferocity in some of their characteristics of national manners, pervading their very pastimes, which no other modern people are endued with the blunted sensibility to bear: a universally self-assumed superiority, not innocently manifesting itself in speculative sentiments among themselves,

but unamiably indulged when with foreigners of whatever description in their own country, or when they themselves are the temporary sojourners in a foreign country; a code of criminal law that forgets to feel for human frailty, that sports with human misfortune, that has shed more blood in deliberate judicial severity for two centuries past-constantly increasing too in its sanguinary hue-than has ever been sanctioned by the jurisprudence of any ancient or modern nation, civilized and refined like herself; the merciless whippings in her army, peculiar to herself alone; the conspicuous commission and freest acknowledgment of vice in her upper classes; the overweening distinctions shown to opulence and birth, so destructive of a sound moral sentiment in the nation, so baffling to virtue. These are some of the traits that rise up to a contemplation of the inhabitants of this isle, and are adverted to, with an admission of qualities that may nay spring up as the correlatives of some of them, under the remark of our being prone to overlook the vicious ingredients, while we so readily praise the good that belongs to her.

How should it fall out, that this nation, more than any other that is ambitious and warlike, should be free from the dispositions that lead to injustice, violence and plunder; and what rules of prudence should check our watchfulness or allay our fears, in regard to the plans her conduct is the best illustration of her having so steadily meditated towards us? Why not be girded as regards her attacks, wary as regards her intrigues, alarmed as regards her habit of devastation and long indulged appetite of blood? Look at the marine of Britain, its vast, its tremendous extent! What potentate upon the earth wields a power that is to be compared with it? What potentate upon the earth can move an apparatus of destruction so without rival, so little liable to any counteraction? The world, in no age, has seen its equal. It marks a new era in the history of human force; an instrument of

power and of ambition, with no limits to its rapid and hideous workings but the waters and the winds. Why should she impiously suppose the ocean to be her own element? Why should she claim the right to give law to it, any more than the eagle the exclusive right to fly in the air? If ever there was a power formidable to the liberties of other states, particularly those afar off, is it not this? If ever there was a power which other states should feel warned to behold with fearful jealousy, and anxious to see broken up, is it not this? The opinion inculcated by her own interested politicians and journalists, that such a force is designed to be employed only to mediate for the rights of other nations, can hold no sway before the unshackled reflections of a dispassionate mind. All experience, all knowledge of man, explode the supposition. So, more particularly, does the very growth and history of this extraordinary power itself. It has swelled to its gigantic size, not through any concurrence of fortuitous or temporary causes, but through long continued and the most systematic national views. It was in the time of her early Edwards, that she first began arrogantly to exact a ceremonious obeisance from the flags of other nations, since which, the entire spirit of her navigation laws, her commercial usages, her treaties, have steadily looked to the establishment of an overruling marine. This is the theme from which her poets insult the world by singing, "Britannia's is the sea, and not a flag but by permission waves." It is the great instrument of annoyance in the hands of her ministers, with which they threaten, or which they wield, to confirm allies, to alarm foes, to make other states tributary to their manufacturing, their commercial or their warlike schemes. Even the multitude in their streets, their boys, the halt and the blind, learn it in the ballads, and at every carousal," Rule Britannia" is the loud acclamation, the triumphant echo of the scene! The end so long pursued with a constant view to unlimited