"It is of the Divine providence that men should be shocked by direful deeds and aroused to remove their causes. It is of the Divine providence that sorrow and suffering should awaken sympathy, allay partisan feeling, soften the hardness of our natures, and dissuade from the fierce conflicts for place and power. It is provided in the constitution of our natures that a strong interest in a common cause, and deep sympathies awakened by a common. sorrow, should obliterate old grievances and draw us together, assimilate our natures, and bind us to one another by a common bond. Abhorrence of great and fiendish crimes is implanted in our natures, and when aroused it calls forth the most powerful efforts to punish the guilty and protect the innoceut. The Lord has so compounded man's nature; and, therefore, it is of his providence that we should be charmed by exalted virtues and heroic deeds, and that they should awaken aspirations to imitate them. He lifts us above the common level of ourselves by noble examples, and leads us to follow them. He provides standards of excellence by which we can measure others, and know what service justly to demand of them. Thus we can see that, without doing any violence to his divine order, the Lord has provided for every exigency in man's life, both as an individual and a nation. He has provided that we may obtain the greatest blessings consistent with our supreme good, which is the preservation of our freedom of will, from our prosperity and adversity, from a momentary personal pleasure or pain to those tragedies which fill every heart with fear and sorrow. He provides no evil, no sorrow. He provides good and good only, that evil may do the least harm, and be the occasion of bestowing a blessing. "The Lord reigneth; let the earth rejoice."

HE second session of the Thirty-First Congress com

"THE on

menced on Monday, the 2d of December, 1850, and terminated with the expiration of their term, at noon of the 4th of March, 1851. A considerable portion of the time of this short term was taken up in unprofitable discussions on various subjects, and many important bills which were matured by the committees of the two Houses remained to be acted upon the last two weeks of the session. The consequence was the failure of many measures in which much interest was felt by the public. Some of these bills were lost through the pressure of business and want of time; others through the violence of opposition to the bills. Among the latter was the River and Harbor Appropriation Bill, which involved principles always disputed by that portion of the Democratic party who adhered to the strictest construction of the Constitution, as particularly set forth in the veto message of the late President Polk, and some of his predecessors, denying to the National Government full powers to construct works of internal improvement, or those works deemed of local character. A majority of the House of Representatives had passed a bill making appropriations on a liberal scale for the improvement of rivers and harbors, but it was defeated in the Senate on the last night of the session, although a majority of that body were favorable to the measure, by the pertinacity and tact of the opposition, in preventing a

direct vote upon the bill. A bill making appropriations for French spoliations on American commerce previous to the year 1800 was also lost; likewise a joint resolution creating the grade of lieutenant-general in the army, intended in honor of Major-General Scott, for his long military eareer in the service of the country.

"Among the most important bills passed were the Civil and Diplomatic Appropriation Bill; the Army and Navy Appropriation Bills; a bill establishing new post-offices and post-routes; a bill making appropriations for lighthouses; an act to divide the district of Arkansas into two judicial districts; an act to reduce and modify the rates. of postage, by which the rates of postage on single letters were reduced to three cents on all prepaid letters, and five cents if not prepaid, on all distances under three thousand miles, and double those rates for distances exceeding three thousand miles. A similar reduction was made by the bill in the postage of newspapers and periodicals. Acts also passed, to amend the regulations for the appraisement of merchandise imported; to ascertain and settle private land claims in California; to found a military asylum for the relief and support of invalid and disabled soldiers of the army of the United States; joint resolutions. for the appointment of regents of the Smithsonian Institution; directing the distribution of the works of Alexander Hamilton (printed from papers previously purchased by Congress); and one authorizing the President to send a Government vessel to the Mediterranean to bring Kossuth, the Hungarian General, and other exiles among his countrymen, to the United States.

+

"Thus terminated the labors of the Thirty-first Congress, which, during its official term, had been more days in session than any preceding Congress since the adoption of the Federal Constitution. The peculiar circumstances of the times and the agitation of questions of vital interest, caused the consumption of much of the time of each

session, but several highly important measures were settled, after arduous debates, tending to the perpetuity of the Union and the national prosperity."

The great topics yet exciting public attention were the Compromise Measures, their reception North and South, and affairs growing out of them. While on "sick leave" in November, 1850, Mr. Webster wrote to the President from Boston :—

"On public subjects things are here becoming quiet. The excitement caused by the Fugitive Slave Law is fast subsiding, and it is thought that there is now no probability of any resistance, if a fugitive should be arrested. Thousands of young men have tendered their services to the marshal at a moment's warning. There is an evident and vast change of public opinion in this quarter since the adjournment of Congress.'

But Mr. Webster overestimated the peaceful tendency of affairs in Boston. Not long after this note was sent to the President, at a public meeting in Faneuil Hall it was declared that, "Constitution or no Constitution, law or no law, we will not allow a fugitive slave to be taken from the State of Massachusetts." In the following February the matter was tested in Boston, when a mob broke open the jail and released a supposed fugitive from slavery; and then Mr. Webster wrote to the United States Marshal, from Washington, February, 1851

"Information has reached this city, through the newspapers and private letters, that the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law has been forcibly resisted in the city of Boston by a lawless mob, which overpowered the officers of the law; and the President is surprised that no official

information has been received from you respecting this occurrence."

This wordy little dispatch shows the anxiety the President and his Cabinet entertained on account of this slave-hunting business in the North. But this was by no means the extent of their anxiety, as has already been shown.

A newspaper called the "Southern Press" had been established in Washington during the summer of 1850, the object of which, it was announced, was "to enlist every Southern man in a Southern cause, and in defense of Southern rights, be he Whig or be he Democrat." This organ announced that the time had come for all Southern men to unite for the purposes of self-defense. But this paper was, fortunately, of short duration. In November, 1850, the Nashville Convention reassembled, and although little came of its work, it was watched with interest from Washington.

The diplomatic affairs of the country were now also somewhat disturbed, and this had been the chief cause of leading Mr. Clay and others to urge the appointment of Daniel Webster as Secretary of State. It was no time to fill this important place in the Cabinet with a man unknown and without influence abroad.

With the beginning of General Taylor's Administration the versatile and unsteady Robert P. Letcher, of Kentucky, had been sent as Minister to Mexico; and to him Mr. Clayton, then Secretary of State, had forwarded the form of a treaty to be entered