Of course, Sectionalism is not forgotten. The pumpkin-lantern, that had performed so many offices of alarm, though a little wrinkled now, was too valuable a stage-property to be neglected. In the hands of so skilful an operator, its slender body flutters voluminous with new folds of inexpensive cotton, and its eyes glare with the baleful terrors of unlimited tallow. Mr. Choate honestly confesses that sectional jealousies are coeval with the country itself, but it is only as fomented by Anti-slavery-extension that he finds them dreadful. When South Carolina threatened disunion unless the Tariff of the party to which Mr. Choate then belonged were modified, did he think it necessary for the Protectionists to surrender their policy? There is not, and there never was, any party numerically considerable at the North, in favor of disunion. Were homilies on fraternal concessions the things to heal this breach, the South is the fitting place for their delivery; but mouth-glue, however useful to stick slight matters together, is not the cement with which confederacies are bound to a common centre. There must be the gravitation of interest as well as of honor and duty. We wonder that the parallel case of Scotland and England did not occur to Mr. Choate, in speaking upon this point. Scotland was clamorous and England jealously contemptuous, for nearly a century. Twice since the union, the land of cakes has been in rebellion; but as long as a pound Scots was only a twentieth part of a pound English,--as long as the treasury was filled chiefly from south the Tweed, and the sons of poor and proud Scottish lairds could make glittering abstractions from it,--as long as place was to be won or hoped for,--there was no danger. So with us,--though Jacob and Esau quarrelled already in the womb, yet, so long as the weaker and more politic brother can get the elder brother's portion, and simple Esau hunts his whales and pierces his untrodden forests, content with his mess of pottage,--honestly abiding by his bargain, though a little puzzled at its terms,--we think that fratricide, or the sincere thought of it, is very far off.
We should be glad to extract some passages of peculiar force and beauty,--such as that where Mr. Choate rebukes the undue haste of reformers, and calls to mind the slow development and longevity of states and ideas. But our duty is the less pleasing one of pointing to some of the sophistries of the argument and some of the ill-advised ebullitions of the orator. We leave his exegesis of "Render unto Cæsar" to answer itself; but what can be worse than this,--worse in taste, in temper, in reason?