Its principles will stand the test of this crisis, as they have stood the test and torture of others.  They are exposed always, and they always will be exposed, to dangers.  There are dangers from the extremes of too much and of too little popular liberty; from monarchy, or military despotism, on one side, and from licentiousness and anarchy on the other.  This always will be the case.  The classical navigator had been told that he must pass a narrow and dangerous strait: 

    “Dextrum Scylla latus, laevum implacata Charybdis,
    Obsidet.”

Forewarned he was alive to his danger, and knew, by signs not doubtful, where he was, when he approached its scene: 

“Et gemitum ingentem pelagi, pulsataque saxa, Audimus longe, fractasque ad litora voces; Exsultantque vada, atque aestu miscentur arenae. ...  Nimirum haec ilia Charybdis!”

The long-seeing sagacity of our fathers enables us to know equally well where we are, when we hear the voices of tumultuary assemblies, and see the turbulence created by numbers meeting and acting without the restraints of law; and has most wisely provided constitutional means of escape and security.  When the established authority of government is openly contemned; when no deference is paid to the regular and authentic declarations of the public will; when assembled masses put themselves above the law, and, calling themselves the people, attempt by force to seize on the government; when the social and political order of the state is thus threatened with overthrow, and the spray of the waves of violent popular commotion lashes the stars,—­our political pilots may well cry out: 

    “Nimirum haec illa Charybdis!”

The prudence of the country, the sober wisdom of the people, has thus far enabled us to carry this Constitution, and all our constitutions, through the perils which have surrounded them, without running upon the rocks on one side, or being swallowed up in the eddying whirlpools of the other.  And I fervently hope that this signal happiness and good fortune will continue, and that our children after us will exercise a similar prudence, and wisdom, and justice; and that, under the Divine blessing, our system of free government may continue to go on, with equal prosperity, to the end of time.

[Footnote 1:  Art.  IV. sec. 4.]

[Footnote 2:  Statutes at Large, Vol.  I. p. 424.]

[Footnote 3:  Mr. Tyler.]

OBJECTS OF THE MEXICAN WAR.

A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, ON THE 23D OF MARCH, 1848, ON THE BILL FROM THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FOR RAISING A LOAN OF SIXTEEN MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.