Independent State, we, in common with the rest of our sister States, have the right of making all such laws as we may deem essential to our interests and well-being as a State, provided that such law, or laws, do not tend to contravene the spirit or the letter of the great Charta of the nation. The Attorney-general of the U. S., one of the many constitutional expounders of the said great Charta of the nation, called upon-in consequence of the absurd and impertinent remonstrances of a foreign minister (a minister acting under the instructions of an insidious power, a power hostile to our progressing interests as a free and great people), the Attorney-general, we repeat, called upon by the President of the United States, in consequence of the remonstrances of Mr. Stratford Canning, to expound sundry : clauses of the national constitution, more particularly the 3d Paragraph of 2d Section, Article 1st, has so far compromised his honour and the best interests, not merely of this State, but of the country at large, as, by pronouncing the most extraordinary opinion that ever went abroad from the bench, or the walls of any court of law or of equity, to connive at the insolent pretensions and double views of interest, entertained by the most consolidated and aspiring power among the nations. Gentlemen! we must not allow ourselves to listen to any proposed amendment of the constitution upon this subject, affecting, as it does, a peculiar set of interests-interests not participated in but by three or more States of the four-and-twenty that compose our Union. No! Gentlemen! They are jealous of us, of our agricultural prosperity, and of our otium cum dignitate, in the north, and in the east, yea, even in the west! They say, our hands are white and delicate, and our complexions like the lily, while theirs are embrowned by toil, and hardened by the labours of the plough! Does not this, Gentlemen, evince a spirit of jealousy? It does, Gentlemen-and we will not subunit to be dictated to by the worst passions of selfish man! We will listen to reason, but not to the suggestions of envy! And are not, we repeat, our neighbours envious of us-our neighbours of the north, of the east, and of the west? They are, Gentlemen! They envy us, and every thing that is ours-our "ox, and our ass, our man-servant and our maid-servant"-yea, Gentleinen, every thing that is ours! Gentlemen! what are not the immunities and the privileges that we enjoy, possessing, as we do, this peculiar species of property? Gentlemen! you have all enjoyed its blessings! Lords of the soil-a soil fertile in those great staples that uphold our country abroad, rice and cotton (in fevers, say our envious neighbours, that sweep us from the face of the earth, as do the winds the sands of the desert, but do not believe them), living under a climate happily congenial with the fruits of the agriculturist -though our neighbours would fain persuade us that it is a climate of fogs, and mists, and pestilential vapours,

Where Genius sickens, and where Fancy dies!

blessed, Gentlemen! with these privileges and immunities, favoured thus by nature, and by nature's God, let us not lightly listen to any crafty suggestions that may tend to give a national bias (for that VOL. XXVIII. N.S.

K

would be a wrong one, inasmuch as it would not comport with our peculiar interests) to those grave and cautious feelings which we have hitherto brought to preside over our deliberations upon this important and interesting subject. No, Gentlemen! we sincerely hope, in the characteristic language of our stubborn brother of the "Mercury" (and he is a "graven," yea, a "brazen image," Gentlemen! before whom we bow down and worship), we do sincerely hope, Gentlemen!" that nothing is further from your intention than a disposition to recede, or to modify the act." Once do that, Gentlemen! and the die is cast! You compromise your honour, and you sign away the inheritance of your sires! Gentlemen! look at our situation at home! Look at the comforts that surround the Carolina planter ! Look at the princely, the almost eastern state of aristocratic and of lordly ease, in which he lives, and moves, and breathes -his "being's end and aim!" Who is so independent as the Carolina planter? From his gothic window, what a scene presents itself, what a blissful prospect greets his eye! Lo! in distant perspective, view the naked helots of the soil! See with what facility the smiling earth yields to the genial hand of culture! Behold the grateful slave! Mark in his discoloured eye the unutterable feelings stirring at his heart! View on his weather-beaten brows the genial dew of toil-attesting, as it falls, the generous ardour that inflames his breast!

Our neighbours reproach us with what they term the hardships. and the sufferings of our slaves. Gentlemen! their hardships and their sufferings attest their virtue! Did not our blessed Saviour endure hardships and sufferings? How else (though, truly, he spake (6 as man never spake") could he have been known to be the Son of God? But Gentlemen! are they not our slaves? Can we not, with impunity, load them with irons, and goad them with the lash? And do we not do it? And, Gentlemen! is their condition a whit the worse for this? Do they not thrive under this regimen ? Gentlemen! they do. Gentlemen! heed not the wailings of Mr. Peter Petrie-heed not the angry remonstrances of Mr. Stratford Canning! The President, the Secretary of State, the AttorneyGeneral of the U. S., Gentlemen! can have no sympathy with us. Mr. Adams, Gentlemen! will ere long go out of office (or, peradventure, like his illustrious predecessor, Mr. Madison, he may flee at the dead hour of the night, to avoid the sad appearance of being turned out of office)-Mr. Clay despairs of the presidential chairand Mr. Wirt, "secure on fortune's top," cares as little about the opinions of others, as his own. Gentlemen! we are a free people! And what is liberty if we are not allowed to do as we please? The power, Gentlemen! to do as we please, constitutes the blessing, constitutes, Gentlemen! the very definition of the term. In England, Gentlemen! they do not enjoy this blessing-they are not a free people! In that unhappy country, Gentlemen! every man is not eligible to the national representation-although he may, possibly, become a Lord Mayor, or a Chief Justice. Whereas, under our wise institutions, Gentlemen! the moment a man attains to the legal

age (provided he knows how to write his name), he is forthwith sent, with or without his consent, first to the State Legislature, and afterwards to the Congress. Not so in England, Gentlemen! In that country, it is not quite so easy a matter to become an M. P., as it is to become an M. C. with us. There, gentlemen! those luckless political aspirants who have not the means wherewithal to purchase a seat in the Parliament, are thereby driven to the unseemly expedient of exhibiting their precious patrician persons from sundry sheds and other such parliamentary places, comprehended under one expressive generic, Hustings (the name of a very ancient Court of Common Pleas, held before the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London), and thence, in good set terms, holding forth to a gaping, and sometimes to a roaring multitude (as the wit or the wisdom of the orator may abound), enumerating, with the most unblushing complacency, their various good qualities and qualifications, like St. Augustin at his beads, or Abelard (unsexed by Rodolphus and old Fulbert), at his faith's confession-while the wealthy nobles, proprietors of unsound boroughs, may command the votes of their tenants-trusting to their purses for the rest. Political ambition with us, Gentlemen! is the first of virtues! Its rewards among us are dazzling, yet only commensurate with the talents and the worth which they elicit. And thus it is that we are a nation of politicians. They say abroad that we have no literature! The reproach, Gentlemen! is the poor alternative of national envy, which sickens at our increasing prosperity. Gentlemen! we want no literature. We have books upon the law, and upon agriculture in abundance-and what more can we desire? Gentlemen! instead of founding a national university, with liberally endowed professorships, that may enable those who love letters to cultivate them with success, our national coffers more wisely appropriate their hoards in the construction of rail-roads and canals! The State of South Carolina, Gentlemen! is more immediately and particularly averse to the cultivation of letters-for letters are not congenial with the pursuits of the farmer and the ship-owner; and where is the man so little versed in the wisdom of this world, Gentlemen! who would not rather produce ten thousand bales of Sea Island cotton, than the most learned treatise on the Greek Digamma, or the celebrated problem of the Three Bodies? But, Gentlemen! we have insensibly wandered from our proper subject. Touching, then, the act of December, 1822, and the insidious remonstrances of the British minister at Washington, and, more particularly, the views of this subject entertained by the Attorney-General of the U. S., and, apparently, by the President himself, and his temporizing secretaries of state, we beg leave to conclude this our earnest memorial to your honourable body, in the cmphatic language of the late governor of our State (now a member of the Congress), which we beg you will lay to heart-weigh well-and vindicate, by your own conduct, from the foul aspersions that have been cast upon it by those who are the secret, but not less dangerous enemies to our state interests. "A firm determination to resist at the Lines, every invasion of our rice-fields and cotton-fields, and to preserve our sovereignty and independence as slave-holders, is earnestly

recommended; and if an appeal to the great principle of possession and self-interest (for we possess these slaves, and it is our interest to possess them), be disregarded, there would be more glory in forming a rampart with our cotton-bags and our rice-barrels, on the confines of our rice-fields and our cotton-fields, than, on the confines of our cotton-fields and our rice-fields, to lose, Gentlemen! our rice-barrels and our cotton-bags!"

(Signed) A. T. ESQ. CHAIRMAN,

AND

A. S. W. SECRETARY.'

The length of this extract will preclude our indulging in any further citations, except the following description of the Falls of Niagara, which we had marked as a favourable specimen of the Writer's talent for sketching.

While mine host was thus holding forth with an evident effort at display, the noise of the cataract gradually increased, and with it what appeared to be the invincible loquacity of the Canadian; until -within about two miles of the object of our visit-the thunder of the waters burst upon us with an explosion that had the desired effect of silencing our talkative friend, who consented to listen-finding that he was not listened to. We alighted at the inn, and immediately proceeded to the river, with a guide, who undertook to conduct us by the nearest and safest road. After a long winding and wet passage through a wood totally impervious to the rays of the sun, we reached the famous Table Rock; which-peering over the precipice into the black abyss beneath-affords the finest view of the Falls. As the base of the rock recedes by several feet, leaving a precarious surface jutting over the thunder and the foam of the infernal flood, my friend declined accompanying me to the verge of it, which I was determined to attain, in order to get a glimpse of the world of darkness underneath. I succeeded in getting within about two feet of the extreme point of this rock; and-feeling a slight sensation of giddiness, produced by the horrid noise and depth of the tumbling river-I prostrated myself, and crept to the edge of the precipice, which, from its abrupt retrogression, forms an immense cavity below, and afforded me a spectacle to which nature has no parallel: The first impulse of feeling produced a shock that vibrated through my whole frame, and I recoiled instinctively, and in horror. Some one now hailed me-whether my friend or the guide, I knew not-I heard a human voice in the distance-but my attention was too much absorbed with that which was before and beneath me, to see or hear any thing else. I ventured again to cast my eyes below, but all distinctness of vision was lost-annihilated by the boiling, bounding, bursting hell beneath me, which lashed, in its remorseless wrath, the eternal rocks, whose fiery points, as they broke the tremendous world of waters that came down upon them, sending them howling and hissing against the sides of the vast black cavity, appeared to me to acquire a living and horrid instinct from the force of torture. The mist came boiling upwards, mingled with the spray, which darted

with inconceivable violence and velocity from the bottom of the rocks against which the Great Fall (on the Canada side), comprising more than one half of the whole river, dashed its enormous bulk, damning itself into a thousand splinters. My sense of hearing and of sight became, at length, confused from the infernal and eternal roar beneath me. I was overpowered by the scene-I felt exhaustedand drawing back some distance from the verge of the rock, I got up-and endeavoured to shake off the lethargy that had crept upon me. I now looked around for my friend, and saw him quietly seated upon the stump of an old tree, at a very respectable distance from the terrible scene. He beckoned and shouted to me-begging me for God's sake to come away. When I got up to him, he told me (with a most impressive earnestness of manner) that the guide had assured him the Table Rock was considered very unsafe, and hoped I would not venture upon it again. I renewed my visits, however, regularly once a day during our sojourn, and as regularly returned with the same undefined feelings of the grandeur and horror of the scene. The Falls are supposed to have commenced at Queenstown, and to have worn their way back (a distance of seven miles) to the spot they now occupy. The cataract is formed by an immense ledge or strata of rock, which intersects the river, commencing east, and stretching to an unknown distance into Canada, on the west. During our stay, we witnessed three peculiarly brilliant and perfect rainbows, which hovered, serene and beautiful, above the infernal waters, like spirits of mercy, clothed in their innocent robes of white, and mutely pleading for the damned, who lifted up their hundred voices in supplication! Two days after our arrival, we crossed over to the American side-and, being now under the Falls, I approached step by step along the ledge of rocks that form a gradual descent to the level of the river, and seated myself near (as near as the spray would admit of-which, at a distance of at least fifteen feet, dashed with amazing violence against my person), the principal Fall between Goat Island and the American shore. On looking up, the whole river appeared rushing wild in wrath upon me! and, as I was seated, precipitated its vast mass of waters in one loud burst of thunder at my feet. My clothes having become almost saturated with the spray, I retraced my steps, and, joining my friend, we ascended a flight of stairs that led up to the shore on the American side. After discussing certain liquids and solids, we proceeded to explore the wilds of Goat Island, which, in spite of its unpromising name, afforded some romantic walks. The most interesting object to my friend, was a billiard-room; which he appeared to me to detect by a sort of instinct-for it was completely shrouded by trees. I do confess to thee, sentimental reader, that I was not exactly prepared to meet with such a trace of civilization in the wilderness; and, somehow or other, I began to moralize, or, rather, to meditate-whilst my friend, with a most accomplished hand, amused himself with knocking about the balls. I could not help thinking that the presence of that terrible monitor, whose voice sent up its awful thunders from the depths below, might have had the effect of subduing and awing