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2 (1856) Reports and public letters of John C. Calhoun / by John C. Calhoun. Edited by Richard K. Cralle
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54

SPEECHES.

submit to be outlawed by England, in order that she maynot be by France ? Is the independence of England dearerto us than our own ? Must we enter the European strugglenot as an equal, consulting our peculiar interest, but bedragged into it as the low dependant, the slave of England ?

The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Randolph) has toldus, that we are contending against religion in the person ofEnglandthat she is, in a word, the patroness of Christianity .Unhappy country ! Doomed to submission to preserve thepurity of religion ! Doomed to slavery, that England maybe independent! Because Bonaparte is not a Protestant ,you must surrender your rights ! Because he is a despot,you dare not resist! What does the gentleman intend ? Isit his wish, by thus dragging into the heat of political debatethe sacred cause of religion, to promote its interests or thatof a faction ? If the former, let him point out an instance inancient or modern times when the junction of religion andpolitics has not been fatal to the interest of both. It is thisunnatural union which has engendered the foulest progeny ofhuman woes. History is full of its disasters, and the gentle-man is too familiar with its pages to require a particularrecital. If the gentleman's intention is not to advance thecause of religion, but to promote the views of a party, wordscannot truly describe its real character. It is a trick thathas been, and still continues to be practised on the too easycredulity of our nature. Its frequency, however, does notchange its nature ; it may indeed furnish some apology, thatthose who practise it are led into it without due reflection onits character ; but when understood, what can be more shock-ing, than that this, the most sacred of all things, the mediumof divine communion, our consolation as mortals, should beprostrated to the gratification of some of the worst feelingsof the human heart ? Such then is the cause of the warand of its continuation ; and such the nature of the opposi-tion experienced, and its justification. It remains to be seen