of possible attainment; and
never yet did a passionate struggle after an absolutely unattainable
object fail to be productive of misery to an individual, of madness
and confusion to a people. As the inhabitants of those burning
climates which lie beneath a tropical sun, sigh for the coolness of
the mountain and the grove; so (all history instructs us) do nations
which have basked for a time in the torrid blaze of an unmitigated
liberty, too often call upon the shades of despotism, even of military
despotism, to cover them,--

"--O quis me gelidis in vallibus Haemi
Sistat, et ingenti ramorum protegat umbra!"

a protection which blights while it shelters; which dwarfs the
intellect and stunts the energies of man, but to which a wearied
nation willingly resorts from intolerable heats and from perpetual
danger of convulsion.

Our lot is happily cast in the temperate zone of freedom, the clime
best suited to the development of the moral qualities of the human
race, to the cultivation of their faculties, and to the security as
well as the improvement of their virtues;--a clime not exempt, indeed,
from variations of the elements, but variations which purify while
they agitate the atmosphere that we breathe. Let us be sensible of the
advantages which it is our happiness to enjoy. Let us guard with pious
gratitude the flame of genuine liberty, that fire from heaven, of
which our Constitution is the holy depository; and let us not, for the
chance of rendering it more intense and more radiant, impair its
purity or hazard its extinction!

ON BROUGHAM AND SOUTH AMERICA

I now turn to that other part of the honorable and learned gentleman's
[Mr. Brougham's] speech; in which he acknowledges his acquiescence in
the passages of the address, echoing the satisfaction felt at the
success of the liberal commercial principles adopted by this country,
and at the steps taken for recognizing the new States of America. It
does happen, however, that the honorable and learned gentleman being
not unfrequently a speaker in this House, nor very concise in his
speeches, and touching occasionally, as he proceeds, on almost every
subject within the range of his imagination, as well as making some
observations on the matter in hand,--and having at different periods
proposed and supported every innovation of which the law or
Constitution of the country is susceptible,--it is impossible to
innovate without appearing to borrow from him. Ei