event of such startling character, of such momentous consequence, as that which you are assembled to celebrate. And that tongue has never found a place in mortal mouth, that voice has never vibrated on earthly air, that language has never been reduced within the compass of human sounds or human signs, which can express, with any approach to justice, the triumphant thrill of joy which that event produced in the bosom of every Boston Whig. In the name of every Boston Whig, then, I congratulate you on its occurrence, and from the bottom of all their hearts, I thank you for the exertions by which it was brought about.

What is that event, Sir? Is it the election of a handful of Whig Senators or a hundred of Whig Representatives to the Legislature of New York? What possible interest could the Whigs of Boston have in such a result? The jurisdiction of those magistrates could never extend, either for good or for evil, one inch beyond the boundaries of your own Commonwealth ;no, Sir, not even were they to stretch and strain their prerogative to the full dimensions and stature of the most approved democratic standards. Is it the mere success of a few thousand political friends, and the consequent defeat of a few thousand political foes? Why, Sir, such things have happened before since the world was made, and, thank Heaven, they have been getting to be pretty frequent within the last few months. But though the Whigs of Boston have always been rejoiced to hear of them, they have never regarded it as altogether indispensable, or, indeed, as anywise important, to despatch an embassy hundreds of miles over sea and land to say so. Is it the downright rejection and reprobation by a great majority of that very people who, above all others, were relied on for its approbation and adoption, of a financial policy which has already brought embarrassment and bankruptcy upon half the country, and which seemed destined in its further progress and final consummation to crush every energy and cripple every industry it had hitherto spared? Not even this definition, Sir, just and true as it is as far as it goes, conveys any adequate idea of the event, which, in the eyes of the Whigs of Boston, you are now engaged in celebrating. Embarrassment and bankruptcy, indeed, we have all seen and

suffered enough of. The people for whom I speak, have not merely sympathized with them elsewhere; they have shared them at home. And their share, you well know, Sir, has been neither light nor inconsiderable. But had it been ten times greater than it was, had it pleased Heaven to steep them in poverty to the very lips, so it had really been the work of Heaven, so it had resulted from their own rashness or mismanagement, so no wilful and wanton act of authority in other men had produced it, so any advantage, so even no detriment, were thereby accruing to the Republic and its liberties, they would have borne it all, and more than all, patiently and cheerfully. Massachusetts Whigs have learned of their Pilgrim Fathers to murmur at no dispensation of an overruling Providence. And they have learned, too, of their Patriot Fathers, neither to gainsay nor to grudge any amount of costs and charges which the maintenance. of their rights and liberties may require; and that, Sir, whether payment be demanded in gold and silver, or whether it may only be rendered in the harder coinage of their hearts, or in the purer currency of their blood.

It is then, Mr. Mayor and Gentlemen, in no spirit of mere party triumph; it is with no feeling of mere pecuniary relief; it is not to make merry with victorious friends; it is not-certainly, certainly, it is not to exult over vanquished enemies; nor is it only to testify our exceeding joy that the rash and ruinous policy of the national administration has received a blow from which it can never rise, and never in any degree recover, that we have come all the way from Faneuil Hall to offer you our hands, and to open to you our hearts on this occasion. The Whigs of Boston have felt that something more than all this has been accom plished; that something more worthy of the illuminations and bonfires and bell-ringings, and all the signs and modes and shows of a people's joy, to which this whole day and this whole City is devoted, has been achieved. We have come, Sir, to congratulate you on a Constitution restored to supremacy, on the inte rests of a whole people redeemed from oppression, on the rights of a whole people rescued from overthrow, on this great and glorious Republic, with all its appurtenances and all its attri butes, checked, arrested, stopped-I do not say on the brink,

but-midway down the steep of a fatal chasm, and raised up and replaced in safety on that old straightforward, constitutional, track of Liberty and Law, for which alone it was first constructed, and along which it has run with unmatched speed for more than forty years!

Such, Sir, it has seemed to us, is the event you this day cele brate. Such and so great-if New York be but true to herself hereafter, and who shall dare to suggest that she will ever again be false? such and so great will be the results of her late unexampled achievement.

Sir, this is neither the time nor the place for an argument. But no argument can be needed to sustain any thing that is expressed or any thing that is implied in the view we have taken of your victory. We all know that not only the prosperity, but the liberty of this country has, for eight years past, been overshadowed by an arbitrary and despotic power, and the rights of the people trampled in the dust by the iron heel of a usurping military favorite. We have all heard the will of one man proclaimed absolute throughout the land. We have all seen that single will guiding, governing, controlling, every thing, vetoing laws proposed, nullifying laws passed, dictating the proceedings of one branch of the legislature, expunging the records of the other, overleaping treaty obligations, denying the validity of judicial decisions, defying the very precepts of the Constitution, crushing old institutions, creating new institutions, removing everybody that could in any way be removed, appointing everybody that was in any way to be appointed, yes, Sir, up even to the successor to that exalted station, which, fortunately for the nation, it could itself no longer hold, as the vantageground of its own unsatiated dominion.

And that successor - what have we seen or known of him? I will not speak of him as a man. I will say nothing of his political character or personal qualities. I leave all these considerations to New York justice—to the justice of those who have seen him most, and who know him best-to that justice of which the venerable gentleman from Dutchess County has already given us a fair sample, if not a full measure. But what has he done as President of this Republic? What has he promised, pro

posed, or performed, as the chosen chief magistrate of this great people? Coming into power, and called upon to declare his purposes, at a moment when that whole Republic was wrapped in thick, wide-spread, midnight gloom, and that whole people bowed down beneath a weight of affliction almost unprecedented in the history of the commercial world, what light did he throw in upon that darkness? what consolation did he offer to that affliction? Light! Sir, it was the light of another night, newfallen upon midnight. Consolation! Sir, it was the consolation of that angel-voice in Revelation, which, after four trumpets of wrath had already sounded, after the third part of the trees were scathed and withered, and all the green grass was burnt up, after the third part of the sea had become blood, and the third part of the ships were destroyed, after the third part of the glorious sun and stars were smitten and had ceased to shine, was heard crying in Heaven," Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth, by reason of the other voices of the trumpets which are yet to sound!"

Happily, Sir, this voice was not uttered, in the present case, under any sanction of Divine right. Happily, the inhabiters of the earth to whom it related, were not, in this instance, the doomed subjects of a supreme, original, unquestionable authority. The power from which it proceeded was a mere human power — an entirely derivative power-an easily controllable power. And more than all, it was a power derived from that very people, and responsible to that very people, upon whom all these past woes had fallen, and all these future woes were about to fall. If that people would, they could hear the voice. If they would, they could interpret its tones. If they would, they could avert its dreadful denunciations, and put it to shame and to silence forever. And, Sir, it is the very event upon which we have been sent to congratulate you this day, that the people of this great State of New York have heard it, have understood it, and have, as far as on them depends, condemned it to shame and to silence for the future.

Mr. Mayor, the triumph of this day, neither in itself nor in its influences, relates to your own State only. No, Sir, I see the whole people of this country rising up to claim a share in it.

The State of New York, by its wide-spread territory and thicksettled population, by the inexhaustible resources of its soil, by the indomitable, and, I had almost said, illimitable, enterprise of its seaboard, and by all the countless attributes of wealth and pride and power with which it is crowded, exerts an influence over the concerns of this Republic, to which not even its great number of actual votes in the national councils furnishes any adequate index. But this is not all. It has been reserved to this great State to give that last finishing stroke to a series of strokes, that last crowning victory to a series of victories, without which all the rest would have been wellnigh wasted, but with which the cause of the Constitution and of the people is secure!

And there is still another view, Sir, in which the whole country may be said to claim a share in this triumphal jubilee. Many of the States of this Union, almost all of those which are represented here to-day, and many of those which are not represented, have already asserted that claim for themselves at the polls. Maine has done it; Rhode Island has done it; Vermont has done it; Massachusetts, I need not say, has done it. It has been asserted by Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio; by New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and, I had almost added, Michigan; but I have this instant learned that Michigan has at length been ascertained to have given a majority of nearly four hundred votes in favor of our adversaries,

"Oh, mighty Cæsar! dost thou lie so low,

Are all thy conquests, triumphs, glories, spoils,
Shrunk to this little measure!"

But, Sir, with this single exception, if, indeed, an exception it can be called, all the States which I have named have asserted by their own noble acts, an indisputable claim to a share in the triumphs of this day. But why should we stop there, Sir? Who shall fix the limits of that great tide of regeneration which is now washing over the land? Who shall say unto it, thus far shalt thou go and no further? Who shall declare that here its proud waves shall be stayed? For one, Mr. Mayor, I am content with no enumeration of the States which are at this