The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1844-08-27


task which we have undertaken, the intelligent and
pure minded of all parties will judge.
There is another subject nearly allied to this,
which also deserves notice at our hands. We refer
TO the speeches of the political orators Of the day
We shall proceed from time TO time, as leisure may
permit, in our labors of love, 10 furnish for the in
structlon and amusement of the public, quotations
and extracts from these speeches; and, by way Of
contrast to the taste, style, philosophy, temper and
ability generally observed in this department Of the
literature which is now flooding the land, we CON-
mence to-day with the exquisite, poetical and
statesman-like speech of the Hon. Rufus Choate,
OF Massachusetts, on the question of the annexa-
ton OF Texas to the United States, recently deli
vered before the W hg Young Mems Clay Club of
Boston. II is of the richest specimens of stump
oratory-that is nineteenth century, poetica, ele-
CANT, graceful and euphonious stump oratory-ex-
tant The rounding of the periods-the agreeable
swell of the sentences-and the clear, lmpid, pure
and flowing style, are all Characteristic and unique.
| We shall give too, few specimens OF the style and
character of Mr.. Choate's speech, the Immortality
Of our columns transmitting them to the centuries
| to come, like flies preserved in amber.
After enumerating the various questions involved
in the approaching Presidential contest, the speak
further, more fundamental, and more startling
question, what shall the nation be; who shall the
nation be; where shall the nation be; who, what,
and where is, and lis to be, our country itself? 1t
is question, not what the policy Of the nation shall
be, but what, who, where shall the nationbe.''
There, now Is not that the ne plus ultra OF
modern stump oratorya What world of mean
ing in these brief, emphatic, nervous sentences!
N nft he of Of Mr
Choate said that, seven if the Union should
survive the annexation, and the discussions
of annexation, it will be new, chang
ed, another Union-not this 1t will be
changed, not by time, which changes all
things-man, monuments, States, the great globe
itself not by time. but by power; not by imper-
ceptible degrees, but in day; not by successive
growth, uniolded and urged forward by an organic
law. an implanted force, noiseless and invisible
nutrition from beneath and from without, of which
every region, every State, akesthe risk; but by the
direct action of government, arbitrary, violent and
unjust, Of which no part has ever agreed to take
the risk" In speaking of other evils that would
follow this measure, Mr.. Choate observes, ''Bur
the evil Of annexation is as immediate as irretrev-
able, and eternal as it is enormous Time,
terms of Presidential office, ages instead of heal
medlcable wound. He who, some space heIeaf-
ter-how long, how brief that space-you may not
all taste Of death until you know he who, another
Thucydides, another Sismondi, shall observe and
shall paint union dissolved the silver cord loos-
ened, the golden bowl broken at the fountain he
who shall observe and who shall paint the nations
flag folded mournfuy, and laid aside in the silent
chamber where the memorials of renown and
urao ooA LII
record the ferocious factions, the profgate ambi-
ton, the hot rivalry, the of hate, truces of
treachery-whch shall furnish the matter of the
history of aenated States, till one after another
burns out and falls from its place on hgh-he shall
entitle this stained and mournful chapter the con-
sequences of annexation" OF the consequences
Of annexation to different parts of the Union, he
continued: "First, chief, most comprehensive, and
most rretrievsbe Of its evils, will be its disastrous
aspect on the durability Of the Union"-and again.
"W it not be regarded as affrontive to the pride,
as usurpation on the constitutional rights, as me-
nacing to the pockets, of portions of the people of
America, as well as an outrage on the sentiment OF
liberty and the spirit Of the age? How can it be
defended on the principles of our political associa-
ton? The generation of our fathers, who framed
the Union, saw as well as we do, the great natural
regional. division Of the country. They foresaw, as
well as we now see, that one of these regions might
come to prefer one system of industrial govern
mental policy; and another to prefer another
They foresaw, too, that in the progress OF time,
the operation Of natural causes might change, and
change often, all those relations which marked the
era OF 1883. The young cotton plant Of the South
scarcely known to art or commerce then, might
place or might keep the fair and fertile region that
alone produced it, for ages, at the head of the con-
federacy The exhausess soil and temperate cl-
mate of the West, might attract and seat the CEN
tire Of power thereon the impurpled prairie-by
the shores of inland oceans. Labor and liberty,
and culture might sometimes win it back to the
rock of Plymouth, the battle-felds OF Bunkerhi
and Bennington, 10 the SUBMITS of our granite
mountains, 10 the side of our bridal sea-" Of its
effects on New England, he remarked, -"ls this
day for New England TO be inactive, or to be dis
tracted? Do you need to be told, what love not
to dwell touch upon, that if the designs of some
Of those who would annex Texas could be accom-.
pshed; if they could succeed in turning Texas to
the account which they dream Of; if, by that aid,
they could subvert your industrial policy could
retransfer your workshops to Europe could pre-
vent the industry of America from doing the work
of America; could suspend these diversified en-
pigments, which develope, discipline, occupy and
reward the universal faculties Of this community
which give every taste and talent the task best
suited to it, ichich give occupation to the strong and
freak the bright and the dull to both seres and TO
all ages, and at all timss-in pinter and summer !;
in aoet Veather and in dry tvsather; By daylight
and lamp. light, to all and each-sa fair days.
wages for a fair days work'-if they could strike
down the giant arm of labor helpless to his side-if
the politics which you are this day in the field to
resist could triumph, do you not know that even if
the Union were preserved, New England would
be cast into provincial, into parochal insignii.
canoe; aye, that this New England, the New Eng
land that we love-the New England of our fathers