[From _Life and Speeches of Thomas Corwin_, by Isaac Strohn
(Dayton, Ohio, 1859)]
Mr. President, this uneasy desire to augment our territory has depraved
the moral sense and blunted the otherwise keen sagacity of our people.
What has been the fate of all nations who have acted upon the idea that
they must advance! Our young orators cherish this notion with a fervid
but fatally mistaken zeal. They call it by the mysterious name of
"destiny." "Our destiny," they say, is "onward," and hence they argue,
with ready sophistry, the propriety of seizing upon any territory and
any people that may lie in the way of our "fated" advance. Recently
these progressives have grown classical; some assiduous student of
antiquities has helped them to a patron saint. They have wandered back
into the desolated Pantheon, and there, among the polytheistic relics of
that "pale mother of dead empires," they have found a god whom these
Romans, centuries gone by, baptized "Terminus."
Sir, I have heard much and read somewhat of this gentleman Terminus.
Alexander, of whom I have spoken, was a devotee of this divinity. We
have seen the end of him and his empire. It was said to be an
attribute of this god that he must always advance and never recede. So
both republican and imperial Rome believed. It was, as they say, their
destiny. And for a while it did seem to be even so. Roman Terminus did
advance. Under the eagles of Rome he was carried from his home on the
Tiber to the farthest East on the one hand, and to the far West, among
the then barbarous tribes of western Europe, on the other.
But at length the time came when retributive justice had become "a
destiny." The despised Gaul calls out the contemned Goth, and Attila,
with his Huns answers back the battle-shout to both. The "blue-eyed
nations of the North," in succession or united, pour forth their
countless hosts of warriors upon Rome and Rome's always-advancing god
Terminus. And now the battle-axe of the barbarian strikes down the
conquering eagle of Rome. Terminus at last recedes, slowly at first, but
finally he is driven to Rome, and from Rome to Byzantium. Whoever would
know the further fate of this Roman deity, so recently taken under the
patronage of American democracy, may find ample gratification of his
curiosity in the luminous pages of Gibbon's _Decline and Fall_.
Such will find that Rome thought as you now think, that it was her
destiny to conquer provinces and nations, and no doubt she sometimes
said, as you say, "I will conquer a peace," and where now is she, the
mistress of the world? The spider weaves his web in her palaces, the
owl sings his watch-song in her towers. Teutonic power now lords it
over the servile remnant, the miserable memento of old and once
omnipotent Rome. Sad, very sad, are the lessons which time has written
for us. Through and in them all I see nothing but the inflexible
execution of that old law which ordains as eternal that cardinal rule,
"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods, nor anything which is
his." Since I have lately heard so much about the dismemberment of
Mexico I have looked back to see how, in the course of events, which
some call "Providence," it has fared with other nations who engaged in
this work of dismemberment. I see that in the latter half of the
eighteenth century three powerful nations, Russia, Austria, and
Prussia, united in the dismemberment of Poland. They said, too, as
you say, "It is our destiny." They "wanted room." Doubtless each of
these thought, with his share of Poland, his power was too strong ever
to fear invasion, or even insult. One had his California, another his
New Mexico, and the third his Vera Cruz. Did they remain untouched and
incapable of harm? Alas! no--far, very far, from it. Retributive
justice must fulfill its destiny, too.