“The obelisk is thirty feet in diameter at the base, about fifteen feet at the top of the truncated part, and was designed to be two hundred and twenty feet high; but the mortar and the seams between the stones make the precise height two hundred and twenty-one feet.  Within the shaft is a hollow cone, with a spiral stairway winding round it to its summit, which enters a circular chamber at the top.  There are ninety courses of stone in the shaft,—­six of them below the ground, and eighty-four above the ground.  The capstone, or apex, is a single stone four feet square at the base, and three feet six inches in height, weighing two and half tons.”

[Footnote 1:  William Tudor died at Rio de Janeiro, as Charge d’Affaires of the United States, in 1830.]

[Footnote 2:  William Sullivan died in Boston in 1839, George Blake in 1841, both gentlemen of great political and legal eminence.]

[Footnote 3:  William Prescott (since deceased, in 1844), son of Colonel William Prescott, who commanded on the 17th of June, 1775, and father of William H. Prescott, the historian.]

[Footnote 4:  See the Note at the end of the Address.]

[Footnote 5:  See the “Records of the Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England,” as published in the third volume of the Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, pp. 47-50.]

OUR RELATIONS TO THE SOUTH AMERICAN REPUBLICS.

EXTRACTS FROM THE SPEECH ON “THE PANAMA MISSION,” DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES, ON THE 14TH OF APRIL, 1826.

It has been affirmed, that this measure, and the sentiments expressed by the Executive relative to its objects, are an acknowledged departure from the neutral policy of the United States.  Sir, I deny that there is an acknowledged departure, or any departure at all, from the neutral policy of the country.  What do we mean by our neutral policy?  Not, I suppose, a blind and stupid indifference to whatever is passing around us; not a total disregard to approaching events, or approaching evils, till they meet us full in the face.  Nor do we mean, by our neutral policy, that we intend never to assert our rights by force.  No, Sir.  We mean by our policy of neutrality, that the great objects of national pursuit with us are connected with peace.  We covet no provinces; we desire no conquests; we entertain no ambitious projects of aggrandizement by war.  This is our policy.  But it does not follow from this, that we rely less than other nations on our own power to vindicate our own rights.  We know that the last logic of kings is also our last logic; that our own interests must be defended and maintained by our own arm; and that peace or war may not always be of our own choosing.  Our neutral policy, therefore, not only justifies, but requires, our anxious attention to the political events which take place in the world,