And what would be its termination? Standing armies and navies, draining the revenues of each portion of the dissevered empire, would be created; exterminating war would follow-not a war of two or three years, but of interminable duration until some Philip or Alexander, some Csar or Napoleon, would rise to cut the Gordian Knot, and solve the problem of the capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties of both the dissevered portions of this Union. Can you, sir, lightly contemplate these consequences? Can you yield yourself to a torrent of passion, amidst dangers which I have depicted in colors far short of what would be the reality, if the event should ever happen?

I implore gentlemen—I adjure them from the South or the North, by all they hold dear in this world—by all their love of liberty, by all their veneration for their ancestors—by all their regard for posterity—by all their gratitude to Him who has bestowed upon them such unnumbered blessings—by all the duties which they owe to mankind, and all the duties they owe to themselves—by all these considerations, I implore upon them to pause—solemnly to pause—at the edge of the precipice before the fearful and disastrous leap is taken into the yawning abyss below, from which none who take it will ever return in safety.

And, finally, Mr. President, I implore, as the best blessing which Heaven can bestow upon me on earth, that if the direful and sad event of the dissolution of the Union shall happen, I may not survive to behold the melancholy and heart-rending spectacle. H. Clay.

CXXXI.

NATIONAL GLORY.

We are asked, what have we gained by the war? I have shown that we have lost nothing, either in rights, territory, or honor; nothing, for which we ought to have contended, according to the principles of the gentlemen on the other side, or according to our own. Have we gained nothing by the war? Let any man look at the degraded condition of the country before the war,—the scorn of the universe, the contempt of ourselves, and tell me if we have gained nothing by the war. What is our present situation? Respectability and character abroad; security and confidence at home. If we have not obtained, in the opinion of some, the full measure of retribution, our character and Constitution are placed on a solid basis, never to be shaken.

The glory acquired by our gallant tars on the sea, by our Jacksons and our Browns on the land is that nothing? true we had our vicissitudes: there are humiliating events which the patriot cannot review without deep regret; but the great account when it comes to be balanced, will be found vastly in our favor. Is there a man who would obliterate from the proud pages of our history, the brilliant achievements of Jackson, Brown, and Scott, and the host of heroes on land and sea whom I cannot enumerate? Is there a man who could not desire a participation in the national glory acquired by the war? Yes, national glory, which, however the expression may be condemned by some, must be cherished by every genuine patriot.

What do I mean by national glory? Glory such as Hull, Jackson, and Perry have acquired. And are gentlemen insensible to their deeds, to the value of them in animating the country in the hour of peril hereafter? Did the battle of Thermopyl preserve Greece but once? While the Mississippi contributes to bear the tributes of the Iron Mountains and the Alleghenies to her delta, and to the Gulf of Mexico, the eighth of January shall be remembered, and the glory of that day shall stimulate future patriots, and nerve the arms of unborn freemen, in driving the presumptuous invader from our country's soil.

Gentlemen may boast of their insensibility to feelings inspired by the contemplation of such events. But I would ask, does the recollection of Bunker's Hill, Saratoga, and Yorktown, afford no pleasure? Every act of noble sacrifice of the country, every instance of patriotic devotion to her cause, has its beneficial influence. A nation's character is the sum of its splendid deeds; they constitute one common patrimony, the country's inheritance. They awe foreign powers; they arouse and animate our own people. I love true glory. It is this sentiment which ought to be cherished; and, in spite of cavils, and sneers, and attempts to put it down, it will rise triumphant, and finally conduct this nation to that height, to which nature and nature's God have destined it. H. Clay.

CXXXII.

BRUTUS ON THE DEATH OF CSAR.

Romans, countrymen, and lovers! Hear me for my cause; and be silent, that you may hear. Believe me for mine honor; and have respect to mine honor, that you may believe. Censure me in your wisdom; and awake your senses, that you may be the better judge. If there be any in this assembly,—any dear friend of Csar's—to him I say, that Brutus' love to Csar was not less than his. If, then, that friend demand why Brutus rose against Csar, this is my answer: Not that I loved Csar less, but that I loved Rome more. Had you rather Csar were living, and die all slaves; than that Csar were dead, to live all freemen? As Csar loved me, I weep for him; as he was fortunate, I rejoice at it; as he was valiant, I honor him; but as he was ambitious, I slew him. There are tears for his love, joy for his fortune, honor for his valor, and death for his ambition.

Who is here so base, that would be a bondman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so rude, that would not be a Roman? If any, speak; for him have I offended. Who is here so vile, that will not love his country? If any, speak; for him have I offended. I pause for a reply,—-

None? Then none have I offended. I have done no more to Csar than you shall do to Brutus. The question of his death is enrolled in the Capitol; his glory not extenuated, wherein he was worthy; nor his offences enforced, for which he suffered death.

Here comes his body, mourned by Mark Antony, who, though he had no hand in his death, shall receive the benefit of his dying, a place in the commonwealth; as which of you shall not? With this I depart;—that, as I slew my best lover for the good of Rome, I have the same dagger for myself, when it shall please my country to need my death. Shakespeare.

CXXXIII.

HAMLET'S ADDRESS TO THE PLAYERS.

Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, grippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as life the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus; but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul, to hear a robtustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, we for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise: I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. I pray you, avoid it.

Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was, and is, to hold, as it were, the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of which one, must in your allowance o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players, that I have seen play,—and heard others praise, and that highly,—not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, Pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed, that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably. Shakespeare.

CXXXIV.

FALSTAFF'S DESCRIPTION OF HIS SOLDIERS.

If I be not ashamed of my soldiers, I am a soused gurnet. I have misused the king's press outrageously. I have got, in exchange of an hundred and fifty soldiers, three hundred and odd pounds. I press me none but good householders, yeoman's sons; inquire me out contracted bachelors, such as have been asked twice on the banns; such a commodity of warm slaves, as had as life hear the devil as a drum; such as fear the report of a culverin worse than a struck deer or a hurt wild duck. I pressed me none but such toasts in butter, with hearts in their breasts no bigger than pins' heads; and they bought out their services; and now my whole charge consists of slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth, where the glutton's dogs licked his sores; discarded, unjust serving-men, younger sons to younger brothers, revolted tapsters, and hostlers trade-fallen, the cankers of a calm world and a long peace; and such have I to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you would think, that I had an hundred and fifty tattered prodigals, lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets, and pressed the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat. Nay, and the villains march wide betwixt the legs, as if—they had gyves on; for, indeed I had the most of them out of prison. There's but a shirt and a half in all my company; and the half-shirt it is two napkins tacked together, and thrown over the shoulders like a herald's coat without sleeves; and the shirt, to say the truth, stolen from my host of St. Albans, or the red-nosed innkeeper of Daintry. But that's all one; they'll find linen enough on every hedge. Shakespeare.

CXXXV.

SOLILOQUY ON CHARACTER.

As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to them all three: but all they three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for, indeed, three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph,—he is white-livered, and red-faced; by the means whereof 'a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol,—he hath a killing tongue, and a quiet sword; by the means whereof 'a breaks words, and keeps whole weapons. For Nym,—he hath heard, that men of a few words are the best men; and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest 'a should be thought a coward; but his few bad words are matched with as few good deeds; for 'a never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post, when he was drunk. They will steal anything, and call it—purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case; bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three half-pence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching; and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel; I knew, by that piece of service, the men would carry coals. They would have me as familiar with men's pockets, as their gloves or their handkerchiefs; which makes much against my manhood, if I should take from another's pocket, to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them, and seek some better service: their villainy goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up. Shakespeare.

CXXXVI.

DEATH OF HAMILTON.

A short time since, and he who is the occasion of our sorrows, was the ornament of his country. He stood on an eminence; and glory covered him. From that eminence he has fallen—suddenly, forever, fallen. His intercourse with the living world is now ended; and those who would hereafter find him must seek him in the grave. There, cold and lifeless, and the heart which just now was the seat of friendship. There, dim and sightless is the eye, whose radiant and enlivening orb beamed with intelligence; and there, closed forever are those lips, on whose persuasive accents we have so often and so lately hung with transport.

From the darkness which rests upon his tomb there proceeds, methinks, a light in which it is clearly seen that those gaudy objects which men pursue are only phantoms. In this light how dimly shines the splendor of victory—how humble appears the majesty of grandeur. The bubble which seemed to have so much solidity has burst; and we again see that all below the sun is vanity.

True, the funeral eulogy has been pronounced. The sad and solemn procession has moved. The badge of mourning has already been decreed, and presently the sculptured marble will lift up its front, proud to perpetuate the name of Hamilton, and rehearse to the passing traveller his virtues.

Just tributes of respect! And to the living useful. But to him, mouldering in his narrow and humble habitation, what are they? How vain! how unavailing! Approach, and behold—while I lift from his sepulchre its covering. Ye admirers of his neatness, ye emulous of his talents and his fame, approach, and behold him now. How pale! how silent! No martial bands admire the adroitness of his movements. No fascinated throng weep—and melt—and tremble at his eloquence!—Amazing change. A shroud! a coffin! a narrow subterraneous cabin! This is all that now remains of Hamilton! And is this all that remains of him?—During a life so transitory, what lasting monument then can our fondest hopes erect?

My brethren! we stand on the borders of an awful gulf, which is swallowing up all things human. And is there, amidst this universal wreck, nothing stable, nothing abiding, notating immortal, on which poor, frail, dying man can fasten?

Ask the hero, ask the statesman, whose wisdom you have been accustomed to revere, and he will tell you. He will tell you, did I say? He has already told you, from his death-bed, and his illumined spirit still whispers from the heavens, with well-known eloquence, the solemn admonition.

"Mortals! hastening to the tomb, and once the companions of my pilgrimage, take warning and avoid my errors—Cultivate the virtues I have recommended—Choose the Saviour I have chosen—Live disinterestedly—Live for immortality; and would you rescue anything from final dissolution, lay it up in God." Dr. Nott.

CXXXVII.

INVECTIVE AGAINST MR. FLOOD.

It is not the slander of an evil tongue that can defame me. I maintain my reputation in public and in private life. No man who has not a bad character can ever say that I deceived; no country can call me cheat. But I will suppose such a public character. I will suppose such a man to have existence. I will begin with his character in its political cradle, and I will follow him to the last state of political dissolution. I will suppose him, in the first stage of his life, to have been intemperate; in the second, to have been corrupt; and in the last, seditious; that after an envenomed attack upon the persons and measures of a succession of viceroys, and after much declamation against their illegalities and their profusion, he took office, and became a supporter of government when the profusion of ministers had greatly increased, and their crimes multiplied beyond example. At such a critical moment, I will suppose this gentleman to be corrupted by a great sinecure office to muzzle his declamation, to swallow his invective, to give his assent and vote to the ministers, and to become a supporter of government, its measures, its embargo, and its American war. I will suppose, that with respect to the Constitution of his country that part, for instance, which regarded the Mutiny Bill, when a clause of reference was introduced, whereby the articles of war, which were, or hereafter might be, passed in England, should be current in Ireland without the interference of Parliament—when such a clause was in view, I will suppose this gentleman to have absconded. Again, when the bill was made perpetual, I will suppose him again to have absconded; but a year and a half after the bill had passed then I will suppose this gentleman to have come forward, and to say that your Constitution had been destroyed by the Perpetual Bill.

With respect to commerce, I will suppose this gentleman to have supported an embargo which lay on the country for three years, and almost destroyed it; and when an address in 1778, to open her trade, was propounded, to remain silent and inactive. In relation to three fourths of our fellow-subjects, the Catholics, when a bill was introduced to grant them rights of property and religion, I will suppose this gentleman to have come forth to give his negative to their pretensions.

With regard to the liberties of America, which were inseparable from ours, I will suppose this gentleman to have been an enemy, decided and unreserved; that he voted against her liberty, and voted, moreover, for an address to send four thousand Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans; that he called these butchers "armed negotiators," and stood with a metaphor in his mouth, and a bribe in his pocket, a champion against the rights of America, the only hope of Ireland, and the only refuge of the liberties of mankind. Thus defective in every relationship, whether to Constitution, commerce, or toleration, I will suppose this man to have added much private improbity to public crimes; that his probity was like his patriotism, and his honor on a level with his oath.

He loves to deliver panegyrics on himself. I will interrupt him, and say, "Sir, you are mistaken if you think that your talents have been as great as your life has been reprehensible. You began your parliamentary career with an acrimony and personality which could have been justified only by a supposition of virtue. After a rank and clamorous opposition you became, on a sudden, silent; you were silent for seven years; you were silent on the greatest questions; and you were silent for money! You supported the unparalleled profusion and jobbing of Lord Harcourt's scandalous ministry—the address to support the American war—the other address to send four thousand men, which you had yourself declared to be necessary for the defence of Ireland, to fight against the liberties of America, to which you had declared yourself a friend. You, sir, who manufacture stage-thunder against Mr. Eden for his anti-American principles—you, sir, whom it pleases to chant a hymn to the immortal Hampden—you, sir, approved of the tyranny exercised against America; and you, sir, voted four thousand Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans fighting for their freedom, fighting for your freedom, fighting for the great principle, Liberty! But you found, at last (and this should be an eternal lesson to men of your craft and cunning), that the King; had only dishonored you; the court had bought, but would not trust you; and, having voted for the worst measures, you remained, for seven years, the creature of salary, without the conscience of government. Mortified at the discovery, and stung by disappointment, you betake yourself to the sad expedients of duplicity. You try the sorry game of a trimmer in your progress to the acts of an incendiary. You give no honest support either to the government or the people; observing, with regard to both prince and people, the most impartial treachery and desertion, you justify the suspicion of your Sovereign, by betraying the government, as you had sold the people, until, at last, by this hollow conduct, and for some other steps, the result of mortified ambition, being dismissed, and another person put in your place, you fly to the ranks of the Volunteers and canvas, for mutiny.

"Such has been your conduct; and at such conduct every order of your fellow-subjects have a right to exclaim! The merchant may say to you—the constitutionality may say to you—the American may say to you—and I, I now say, and say to your beard, sir,—'you are not an honest man!'" H. Gratton.

CXXXVIII.

GRATTAN'S REPLY TO MR. CORRY.

Has the gentleman done? Has he completely done? He was unparliamentary from the beginning to the end of his speech. There was scarce a word he uttered that was not a violation of the privileges of the House. But I did not call him to order, why? because the limited talents of some men render it impossible for them to be severe without being unparliamentary. But before I sit down, I shall show him how to be severe and parliamentary at the same time.

On any other occasion, I should think myself justifiable in treating with silent contempt anything which might fall from that honorable member; but there are times, when the insignificance of the accuser is lost in the magnitude of the accusation. I know the difficulty the honorable gentleman labored under when he attacked me, conscious that, on a comparative view of our characters, public and private, there is nothing he could say which would injure me. The public would not believe the charge. I despise the falsehood. If such a charge were made by an honest man, I would answer it in the manner I shall do before I sit down. But I shall first reply to it when not made by an honest man.

The right honorable gentleman has called me "an unimpeached traitor." I ask why not "traitor," unqualified by any epithet? I will tell him; it was because he durst not. It was the act of a coward, who raises his arm to strike, but has not courage to give the blow. I will not call him villain, because it would be unparliamentary, and he is a privy counsellor. I will not call him fool, because he happens to be chancellor of the exchequer. But I say he is one who has abused the privilege of Parliament, and the freedom of debate, by uttering language, which, if spoken out of the House, I should answer only with a blow. I care not how high his situation, how low his character, how contemptible his speech; whether a privy counsellor or a parasite, my answer would be a blow.

He has charged me with being connected with the rebels. The charge is utterly, totally and meanly false. Does the honorable gentleman rely on the report of the House of Lords for the foundation of his assertion? If he does, I can prove to the committee there was a physical impossibility of that report being true. But I scorn to answer any man for my conduct, whether he be a political coxcomb, or whether he brought himself into power by a false glare of courage or not.

I have returned, not as the right honorable member has said, to raise another storm—I have returned to discharge an honorable debt of gratitude to my country, that conferred a great reward for past services, which, I am proud to say, was not greater than my desert. I have returned to protect that Constitution, of which I was the parent and founder, from the assassination of such men as the right honorable gentleman and his unworthy associates. They are corrupt,—they are seditious,—and they, at this very moment, are in a conspiracy against their country. I have returned to refute a libel, as false as it is malicious, given to the public under the appellation of a report of the committee of the Lords. Here I stand ready for impeachment or trial. I dare accusation. I defy the honorable gentleman; I defy the government; I defy their whole phalanx; let them come forth. I tell the ministers, I will neither give quarter nor take it. I am here to lay the shattered remains of my constitution on the floor of this House, in defence of the liberties of my country.

CXXXIX.

SPEECH OF TITUS QUINCTIUS TO THE ROMANS.

You have seen it—posterity will know it! in the fourth consulship of Titus Quinctius, our enemies came in arms, to the very gates of Rome,—and went away unchastised! But who are they that our dastardly enemies thus despise?—the consuls, or you, Romans? If we are in fault, depose us, or punish us yet more severely. If you are to blame—may neither gods nor men punish your faults! only may you repent!—No, Romans, the confidence of our enemies is not owing to their courage, or to their belief of your cowardice; they have been too often vanquished, not to know both themselves and you. Discord, discord is the ruin of this city! The eternal disputes, between the senate and the people, are the sole cause of our misfortunes. While we set no bounds to our dominion, nor you to your liberty; while you impatiently endure Patrician magistrates, and we Plebeian; our enemies take heart, grow elated, and presumptuous. In the name of the immortal gods, what is it, Romans, you would have? You desired Tribunes; for the sake of peace, we granted them. You were eager to have Decemvirs; we consented to their creation. You grew weary of these Decemvirs; we obliged them to abdicate. Your hatred pursued them when reduced to private men; and we suffered you to put to death, or banish, Patricians of the first rank in the republic. You insisted upon the restoration of the Tribuneship; we yielded; we quietly saw Consuls of your own faction elected. You have the protection of your Tribunes, and the privilege of appeal; the Patricians are subjected to the decrees of the Commons. Under pretence of equal and impartial laws, you have invaded our rights; and we have suffered it, and we still suffer it. When shall we see an end of discord? When shall we have one interest, and one common country? Victorious and triumphant, you show less temper than we, under defeat. When you are to contend with us, you can seize the Aventine hill, you can possess yourselves of the Mons Sacer.

The enemy is at our gates,—the squiline is near being taken,—and nobody stirs to hinder it! But against us you are valiant, against us you can arm with diligence. Come on, then, besiege the senate-house, make a camp of the forum, fill the jails with our chief nobles, and when you have achieved these glorious exploits, then, at last, sally out at the squiline gate, with the same fierce spirits, against the enemy. Does your resolution fail you for this? Go then, and behold from our walls your lands ravaged, your houses plundered and in flames, the whole country laid waste with fire and sword. Have you anything here to repair these damages? Will the Tribunes make up your losses to you? They will give you words as many as you please; bring impeachments in abundance against the prime men in the State; heap laws upon laws; assemblies you shall have without end; but will any of you return the richer from these assemblies? Extinguish, O Romans, these fatal divisions; generously break this cursed enchantment, which keeps you buried in a scandalous inaction. Open your eyes and consider the management of those ambitious men, who, to make themselves powerful in their party, study nothing but how they may foment divisions in the commonwealth.

CXL.

THE BOSTON MASSACRE.

Tell me, ye bloody butchers! ye villains high and low! ye wretches who contrived, as well as you who executed, the inhuman deed! do you not feel the goads and stings of conscious guilt pierce through your savage bosoms? Though some of you may think yourselves exalted to such a height that bids defiance to the arms of human justice, and others shroud yourselves beneath the mask of hypocrisy, and build your hopes of safety on the low arts of cunning, chicanery, and falsehood; yet do you not sometimes feel the gnawings of that worm which never dies? Do not the injured shades of Maverick, Gray, Caldwell, Attucks, and Carr, attend you in your solitary walks, arrest you even in the midst of your debaucheries, and fill even your dreams with terror?

Ye dark, designing knaves! ye murderers! parricides! how dare you tread upon the earth which has drank in the blood of slaughtered innocents, shed by your wicked hands? How dare you breathe that air which wafted to the ear of Heaven the groans of those who fell a sacrifice to your accursed ambition? But, if the laboring earth does not expand her jaws; if the air you breathe is not commissioned to be the minister of death; yet hear it, and tremble! the eye of Heaven penetrates the darkest chambers of the soul; traces the leading clew through all the labyrinths which your industrious folly has devised; and you, however you may have screened yourselves from human eyes, must be arraigned, must lift your hands, red with the blood of those whose deaths you have procured, at the tremendous bar of God. John Hancock.

CXLI.

ENTERPRISE OF NEW ENGLAND.

As to the wealth, Mr. Speaker, which the colonies have drawn from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely thought those acquisitions of value; for they seemed even to excite your envy; and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employment has been exercised, ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other parts, and look at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry.

Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

When I contemplate these things; when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constrains of watchful and suspicious government, but that through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty. E. Burke.

CXLII.

THE RIGHT OF ENGLAND TO TAX AMERICA.

But Mr. Speaker, "we have a right to tax America." Oh, inestimable right! Oh, wonderful, transcendent right! the assertion of which has cost this country thirteen provinces, six islands, one hundred thousand lives, and seventy millions of money. Oh, invaluable right! for the sake of which we have sacrificed our rank among nations, our importance abroad, and our happiness at home! Oh, right! more dear to us than our existence, which has already cost us so much, and which seems likely to cost us our all. Infatuated man! Miserable and undone country! not to know that the claim of right, without the power of enforcing it, is nugatory and idle. We have a right to tax America, the noble lord tells us therefore we ought to tax America. This is the profound logic which comprises the whole chain of his reasoning.

Not inferior to this was the wisdom of him who resolved to shear the wolf. What, shear a wolf! Have you considered the resistance, the difficulty, the danger of the attempt? No, says the madman, I have considered nothing but the right. Man has a right of dominion over the beasts of the forest; and therefore I will shear the wolf.

How wonderful that a nation could be thus deluded! But the noble lord deals in cheats and delusions. They are the daily traffic of his invention; and he will continue to play to his cheats on this House, so long as he thinks them necessary to his purpose, and so long as he has money enough at command to bribe gentlemen to pretend that they believe him. But a black and bitter day of reckoning will surely come; and whenever that day comes, I trust I shall be able, by a parliamentary impeachment, to bring upon the heads of the authors of our calamities the punishment they deserve. E. Burke.

CXLIII.

DESCRIPTION OF JUNIUS.

Sir,—How comes this Junius to have broken through the cobwebs of the law, and to range uncontrolled, unpunished, through the land? The myrmidons of the court have been long, and are still pursuing him in vain. They will not spend their time upon me, or you, or you. No! they disdain such vermin, when the mighty boar of the forest, that has broken through all their toils, is before them. But what will all their efforts avail? No sooner has he wounded one than he lays down another dead at his feet. For my part, when I saw his attack upon the king, I own my blood ran cold. I thought he had ventured too far, and there was an end of his triumphs. Not that he had not asserted many truths:—Yes, sir, there are in that composition many bold truths, by which a wise prince might profit. It was the rancor and venom, with which I was struck. In these aspects the North-Briton is as much inferior to him, as in strength, wit, and judgment.

But while I expected, in this daring flight, his final ruin and fall, behold him rising still higher, and coming down souse upon both Houses of Parliament. Yes, he did make you his quarry, and you still bleed from the wounds of his talons. You crouched, and still crouch, beneath his rage. Nor has he dreaded the terrors of your brow, sir; he has attacked even you—he has—and I believe you have no reason to triumph in the encounter. In short, after carrying away our royal eagle in his pounces, and dashing him against a rock, he has laid you prostrate. King, lords and commons, are but the sport of his fury.

Were he a member of this House, what might not be expected from his knowledge, his firmness, and integrity? He would be easily known by his contempt of all danger, by his penetration, by his vigor. Nothing would escape his vigilance and activity. Bad ministers could conceal nothing from his sagacity; nor could promises nor threats induce him to conceal anything from the public. E. Burke.

CXLIV.

TRUE STATESMANSHIP.

The true lawgiver ought to have a heart full of sensibility. He ought to love and respect his kind, and to fear himself. It may be allowed to his temperament to catchy his ultimate object with an intuitive glance, but his movements toward it ought to be deliberate. Political arrangement, as it is a work for social ends, is to be wrought only by social means. There mind must conspire with mind. Time is required to produce all the good we aim at. Our patience will achieve more than our force. If I might venture to appeal to what is so much out of fashion in Paris, I mean to experience, I should tell you that in my course I have known, and, according to my measure, have coperated with great men; and I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observations of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in business. By a slow but well-sustained progress the effect of each step is watched; the good or ill success of the first gives light to us in the second; and so, from light to light, we are conducted with safety through the whole series. We see that the parts of the system do not clash. The evils latent in the most promising contrivances are provided for as they arise. One advantage is as little as possible sacrificed to another. We compensate, we reconcile, we balance. We are enabled to unite into a consistent whole the various anomalies and contending principles that are found in the minds and affairs of men. From hence arises not an excellence in simplicity but one far superior, an excellence in composition. Where the great interests of mankind are concerned through a long succession of generations, that succession ought to be admitted into some share in the councils which are so deeply to affect them. If justice requires this, the work itself requires the aid of more minds than one age can furnish. It is from this view of things that the best legislators have been often satisfied with the establishment of some sure, solid, and ruling principle in government; a power like to that which some of the philosophers have called a plastic nature; and having fixed the principle, they have left it afterward to its own operation. E. Burke.

CXLV.

THE QUEEN OF FRANCE AND THE SPIRIT OF CHIVALRY.

I hear, and I rejoice to hear, that the great lady, the other object of the triumph, has borne that day (one is interested that beings made for suffering should suffer well), and that she bears all the succeeding days—that she bears the imprisonment of her husband, and her own captivity, and the exile of her friends, and the insulting adulation of addresses, and the whole weight of her accumulated wrongs, with a serene patience, in a manner suited to her rank and race and becoming the offspring of a sovereign distinguished for her piety and her courage; that, like her, she has lofty sentiments; that she feels with the dignity of a Roman matron; that in the last extremity she will save herself; and that, if she must fall, she will fall by no ignoble hand.

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in, glittering like the morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh! what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate, without emotion, that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult? But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself the spirit of an exalted freedom.

The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage while it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness. E. Burke.

CXLVI.

PERORATION OF OPENING SPEECH AGAINST HASTINGS.

In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villany upon Warren Hastings, in this last moment of my application to you.

My Lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of national justice? Do we want a cause, my Lords? You care the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms.

Do you want a criminal, my Lords? When was there so much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one? No, my Lords, you must not look to punish any other such delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent.

My Lords, is it a prosecutor you want? You have before you the Commons of Great Britain as prosecutors; and I believe my Lords, that the sun, in his beneficent progress round the world, does not behold a more glorious sight than that of men, separated from a remote people by the material bounds and barriers of nature, united by the bond of a social and moral community—all the Commons of England resenting, as their own, the indignities and cruelties, that are offered to all the people of India.

Do we want a tribunal? My Lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this. My Lords, here we see virtually, in the mind's eye, that sacred majesty of the Crown, under whose authority you sit and whose power you exercise.

We have here all the branches of the royal family, in a situation between majesty and subjection, between the sovereign and the subject—offering a pledge, in that situation, for the support of the rights of the Crown and the liberties of the people, both which extremities they touch.

My Lords, we have a great hereditary peerage here; those who have their own honor, the honor of their ancestors, and of their posterity, to guard, and who will justify as they always have justified, that provision in the Constitution by which justice is made an hereditary office.

My Lords, we have here a new nobility, who have risen, and exalted themselves by various merits, by great civil and military services, which have extended the fame of this country from the rising to the setting sun.

My Lords, you have here, also, the lights of our religion; you have the bishops of England. My Lords, you have that true image of the primitive Church in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institutions.

My Lords, these are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of the body of this House. We know them, we reckon, we rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of humanity into your hands. Therefore, it is with confidence, that, ordered by the Commons,

I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors,

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored.

I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose property he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate.

I impeach him in the name, and by virtue of those eternal laws of Justice which he has violated.

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation and condition of life. E. Burke.

CXLVII.

PERORATION OF CLOSING SPEECH AGAINST HASTINGS.

My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, and surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing generations between which, as a link in the great chain of eternal order, we stand.—We call this Nation, we call the world to witness, that the Commons have shrunk from no labor; that we have been guilty of no prevarication, that we have made no compromise with crime; that we have not feared any odium whatsoever, in the long warfare which we have carried on with the crimes—with the vices—with the exorbitant wealth—with the enormous and overpowering influence of Eastern corruption.

My Lords, your House yet stands; it stands as a great edifice; but let me say, that it stands in ruins that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever convulsed and shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in such a state that we appear every moment to be on the verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation; that which existed before the world, and will survive the fabric of the world itself,—I mean justice; that justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us, given us for our guide in regard to ourselves, and with regard to others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when He comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.

My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with yon? Lordships; there is nothing sinister which can happen to you, in which we shall not be involved; and, if it should so happen, that we shall be subjected to some of those frightful changes which we have seen; if it should happen that your Lordships, stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human society, should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those scaffolds and machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious queens have shed their blood, amidst the prelates, amidst the nobles, amidst the magistrates, who supported their thrones,—may you in those moments feel that consolation which I am persuaded they felt in the critical moments of their dreadful agony!

My Lords, there is a consolation, and a great consolation it is, which often happens to oppressed virtue and fallen dignity; it often happens that the very oppressors and persecutors themselves are forced to bear testimony in its favor. The Parliament of Paris had an origin very, very similar to that of the great court before which I stand; the Parliament of Paris continued to have a great resemblance to it in its Constitution, even to its fall; the Parliament of Paris, my Lords,—was; it is gone! It has passed away; it has vanished like a dream! It fell pierced by the sword of the Compte de Mirabeau. And yet that man, at the time of his inflicting the death-wound of that Parliament, produced at once the shortest and the grandest funeral oration that ever was or could be made upon the departure of a great court of magistracy. When he pronounced the death sentence upon that Parliament, and inflicted the mortal wound, he declared that his motives for doing it were merely political, and that their hands were as pure as those of justice itself, which they administered—a great and glorious exit, my Lords, of a great and glorious body!

My Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! But, if you stand, and stand I trust you will, together with the fortunes of this ancient monarchy—together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and illustrious kingdom, may you stand as unimpeached in honor as in power; may you stand, not as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of virtue, as a security for virtue; may you stand long, and long stand the terror of tyrants; may you stand the refuge of afflicted Nations; may you stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual residence of an inviolable justice! E. Burke.

CXLVIII.

THE CRISIS OF THE NATION.

Lay hold on this opportunity of our salvation, Conscript Fathers,—by the Immortal Gods I conjure you!—and remember that you are the foremost men here, in the council chamber of the whole earth. Give one sign to the Roman people that even as now they pledge their valor—so you pledge your wisdom to the crisis of the State. But what need that I exhort you? Is there one so insensate as not to understand that if we sleep over an occasion such as this, it is ours to bow our necks to a tyranny not proud and cruel only, but ignominious—but sinful? Do ye not know this Antony? Do ye not know his companions? Do ye not know his whole house—insolent—impure—gamesters—drunkards? To be slaves to such as he, to such as these, were it not the fullest measure of misery conjoined with the fullest measure of disgrace? If it be so—may the gods avert the omen—that the supreme hour of the republic has come, let us, the rulers of the world, rather fall with honor, than serve with infamy! Born to glory and to liberty, let us hold these bright distinctions fast, or let us greatly die! Be it, Romans, our first resolve to strike down the tyrant and the tyranny. Be it our second to endure all things for the honor and liberty of our country. To submit to infamy for the love of life can never come within the contemplation of a Roman soul! For you, the people of Rome—you whom the gods have appointed to rule the world—for you to own a master, is impious.

You are in the last crisis of nations. To be free or to be slaves—that is the question of the hour. By every obligation of man or States it behooves you in this extremity to conquer-as your devotion to the gods and your concord among yourselves encourage you to hope—or to bear all things but slavery. Other nations may bend to servitude; the birthright and the distinction of the people of Rome is liberty. Cicero.

CXLIX.

EXTRACT FROM DEMOSTHENES.

Yes, Athenians, I repeat it, you yourselves are the contrivers of your own ruin. Lives there a man who has confidence enough to deny it? Let him arise, and assign, if he can, any other cause of the success and prosperity of Philip. "But," you reply, "what Athens may have lost in reputation abroad, she has gained in splendor at home. Was there ever a greater appearance of prosperity? a greater face of plenty? Is not the city enlarged? Are not the streets better paved, houses repaired and beautified?" Away with such trifles! Shall I be paid with counters? An old square new vamped up! a fountain! an aqueduct! are these acquisitions to brag of? Cast your eye upon the magistrate under whose ministry you boast these precious improvements. Behold the despicable creature, raised all at once from dirt to opulence; from the lowest obscurity to the highest honors. Have not some of these upstarts built private houses and seats, vying with the most sumptuous of our public palaces? And how have their fortunes and their power increased, but as the commonwealth has been ruined and impoverished?

To what are we to impute these disorders, and to what cause assign the decay of a State so powerful and flourishing in past times? The reason is plain. The servant is now become the master. The magistrate was then subservient to the people: all honors, dignities, and preferments, were disposed by the voice and favor of the people; but the magistrate, now, has usurped the right of the people, and exercises an arbitrary authority over his ancient and natural lord. You, miserable people! the meanwhile, without money, without friends,—from being the ruler, are become the servant; from being the master, the dependent: happy that these governors, into whose hands you have thus resigned your own power, are so good and so gracious as to continue your poor allowance to see plays.

Believe me, Athenians, if, recovering from this lethargy, you would assume the ancient spirit and freedom of your fathers if you would be your own soldiers and own commanders, confiding no longer your affairs in foreign or mercenary hands—if you would charge yourselves with your own defense, employing abroad, for the public, what you waste in unprofitable pleasures at home, the world might once more behold you making a figure worthy of Athenians. "You would have us, then, (you say,) do service in our armies in our own persons; and, for so doing, you would have the pensions we receive in time of peace, accepted as pay in time of war. Is it thus we are to understand you?" Yes, Athenians, 't is my plain meaning. I would make it a standing rule, that no person, great or little, should be the better for the public money, who would grudge to employ it for the public service. Are we in peace? the public is charged with your subsistence. Are we in war, or under a necessity, as at this time, to enter into a war? let your gratitude oblige you to accept, as pay in defence of your benefactors, what you receive, in peace, as mere bounty. Thus, without any innovation—without altering or abolishing anything but pernicious novelties, introduced for the encouragement of sloth and idleness—by converting only for the future, the same funds, for the use of the serviceable, which are spent, at present, upon the unprofitable, you may be well served in your armies—your troops regularly paid—justice duly administered—the public revenues reformed and increased—and every member of the commonwealth rendered useful to his country according to his age and ability without any further burden to the State.

This, O men of Athens, is what my duty prompted me to represent to you upon this occasion.—May the gods inspire you to determine upon such measures, as may be most expedient, for the particular and general good of our country!

CL.

EXTRACT FROM DEMOSTHENES ON THE CROWN.

Athens never was once known to live in a slavish, though a secure obedience to unjust and arbitrary power. No; our whole history is one series of noble contests for preminence; the whole period of our existence hath been spent in braving dangers, for the sake of glory and renown. And so highly do you esteem such conduct, so consonant to the Athenian character that those of your ancestors who were most distinguished in the pursuit of it, are ever the most favorite objects of your praise—and with reason. For who can reflect without astonishment upon the magnanimity of those men, who resigned their lands, gave up their city and embarked in their ships, to avoid the odious state of subjection?—who chose Themistocle, the adviser of this conduct, to command their forces and, when Cyrsilus proposed that they should yield to the terms prescribed, stoned him to death? Nay the public indignation was not yet allayed. Your very wives inflicted the same vengeance on his wife. For the Athenians of that day looked out for no speaker, no general to procure them a state of prosperous slavery. They had the spirit to reject even life, unless they were allowed to enjoy that life in freedom. Should I then attempt to assert that it was I who inspired you with sentiments worthy of your ancestors, I should meet the just resentment of every hearer. No; it is my point to show, that such sentiments are properly your own—that they were the sentiments of my country, long before my days. I claim but my share of merit, in having acted on such principles, in every part of my administration. He, then, who condemns every part of my administration, he who directs you to treat me with severity, as one who hath involved the State in terrors and dangers, while he labors to deprive me of present honor, robs you of the applause of all posterity. For, if you now pronounce, that, as my public conduct hath not been right, Ctesiphon must stand condemned it must be thought that you yourselves have acted wrong, not that you owe your present state to the caprice of fortune. But it cannot be! No, my countrymen! it cannot be you have acted wrong, in encountering danger bravely, for the liberty and the safety of all Greece. No! by those generous souls of ancient times, who were exposed at Marathon! By those who stood arrayed at Plata! By those who encountered the Persian fleet at Salamis! Who fought at Artemisium! No! by all those illustrious sons of Athens, whose remains lie deposited in the public monuments.

CLI.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

The reign of Queen Elizabeth may be considered as the opening of the modern history of England, especially in its connection with the modern system of Europe, which began about that time to assume the form that it preserved till the French Revolution. It was a very memorable period, of which the maxims ought to be engraven on the head and heart of every Englishman. Philip the Second, at the head of the greatest empire then in the world openly was aiming at universal domination. To the most extensive and opulent dominions, the most numerous and disciplined armies, the most renowned captains, the greatest revenue, he added also the most formidable power over opinion. Elizabeth was among the first objects of his hostility. That wise and magnanimous princess placed herself in the front of the battle for the liberties of Europe. Though she had to contend at home with his fanatical faction, which almost occupied Ireland, which divided Scotland, and was not of contemptible strength in England, she aided the oppressed inhabitants of the Netherlands in their just and glorious resistance to his tyranny; she aided Henry the Great in suppressing the abominable rebellion which anarchical principles had excited and Spanish arms had supported in France, and after a long reign of various fortune, in which she preserved her unconquered spirit through great calamities and still greater dangers, she at length broke the strength of the enemy, and reduced his power within such limits as to be compatible with the safety of England and of all Europe. Her great heart inspired her with a higher and a nobler wisdom—which disdained to appeal to the low and sordid passions of her people even for the protection of their low and sordid interests, because she knew, or, rather, she felt that there are effeminate, creeping, cowardly, short-sighted passions, which shrink from conflict, even in defence of their own mean objects. In a righteous cause she roused those generous affections of her people, which alone teach boldness, constancy, and foresight, and which are therefore the only safe guardians of the lowest as well as the highest interests of a nation. In her memorable address to the army, when the invasion of her kingdom was threatened by Spain, this woman of heroic spirit disdained to speak to them of their ease and their commerce, and their wealth and their safety. No! She touched another chord—she spoke of their national honor, of their dignity as Englishmen, of "the foul scorn that Parma or Spain should dare to invade the borders of her realms." She breathed into them those grand and powerful sentiments, which exalt vulgar men into heroes which led them into the battle of their country armed with holy and irresistible enthusiasm; which ever cover with their shield all the ignoble interests that base calculation, and cowardly selfishness tremble to hazard, but shrink from defending. J. Mackintosh.

CLII.

THE FREE PRESS.

Gentlemen, there is one point of view in which this case seems to merit your most serious attention. The real prosecutor is the master of the greatest empire the world ever saw; the defendant is a defenseless, proscribed exile. I consider this case, therefore, as the first of a long series of conflicts between the greatest power in the world and the only Free Press remaining in Europe. Gentlemen, this distinction of the English Press is new—it is a proud and melancholy distinction. Before the great earthquake of the French Revolution had swallowed up all the asylums of free discussion on the Continent, we enjoyed that privilege, indeed, more fully than others; but we did not enjoy it exclusively. It existed, in fact, where it was not protected by law; and the wise and generous connivance of governments was daily more and more secured by the growing civilization of their subjects. In Holland, in Switzerland, in the imperial towns of Germany, the press was either legally or practically free. Holland and Switzerland are no more; and, since the commencement of this prosecution, fifty imperial towns have been erased from the list of independent States by one dash of the pen. Three or four still preserve a precarious and trembling existence. I will not say by what compliances they must purchase its continuance. I will not insult the feebleness of States, whose unmerited fall I do most bitterly deplore.

One asylum of free discussion is still inviolate. There is still one spot in Europe where man can fully exercise his reason on the most important concerns of society, where he can boldly publish his judgment on the acts of the proudest and most powerful tyrants. The Press of England is still free. It is guarded by the free Constitution of our forefathers. It is guarded by the hearts and arms of Englishmen; and, I trust I may venture to say that if it be to fall, it will fall only under the ruins of the British Empire. It is an awful consideration, gentlemen. Every other monument of European liberty has perished. That ancient fabric which has been gradually raised by the wisdom and virtues of our fathers still stands. It stands, thanks be to God! solid and entire—but it stands alone, and it stands amid ruins. Believing, then, as I do, that we are on the eve of a great struggle—that this is only the first of a long series of conflicts between reason and power that you have now in your hands committed to your trust, the protection of the only Free Press remaining in Europe, now confined to this kingdom; and addressing you therefore as the guardians of the most important interests of mankind—convinced that the unfettered exercise of reason depends more on your present verdict than on any other that was ever delivered by a jury,—I trust I may rely with confidence on the issue—I trust that you will consider yourselves as the advanced guard of Liberty—as having this day to fight the first battle of free discussion against the most formidable enemy that it ever encountered! J. Mackintosh.

CLIII.

THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

The liberty of the press, on general subjects, comprehends and implies as much strict observance of positive law as is consistent with perfect purity of intention, and equal and useful society. What that latitude is, cannot be promulgated in the abstract, but must be judged in the particular instance, and consequently, upon this occasion, must be judged of by you without forming any possible precedent for any other case.

If gentlemen, you are firmly persuaded of the singleness and purity of the author's intentions, you are not bound to subject him to infamy, because in the zealous career of a just and animated composition, he happens to have tripped with his pen into an intemperate expression in one or two instances of a long work. If this severe duty were binding on your conscience, the liberty of the press would be an empty sound, and no man could venture to write on any subject, however pure his purpose, without an attorney at one elbow and a counsel at the other.

From minds thus subdued by the terrors of punishment, there could issue no works of genius to expand the empire of human reason, nor any masterly compositions on the general nature of government, by the help of which the great commonwealths of mankind have founded their establishments; much less any of those useful applications of them to critical conjunctures, by which, from time to time, our own Constitution, by the exertion of patriot citizens, has been brought back to its standard. Under such terrors, all the great lights of science and civilization must be extinguished; for men cannot communicate their free thoughts to one another with a lash held over their heads. It is the nature of everything that is great and useful both in the animate and inanimate world, to be wild and irregular, and we must be contented to take them with the alloys which belong to them, or live without them. Genius breaks from the fetters of criticism, but its wanderings are sanctioned by its majesty and wisdom when it advances in its path: subject it to the critic, and you tame it into dulness. Mighty rivers break down their banks in the winter, sweeping away to death the flocks which are fattened on the soil that they fertilize in the summer: the few may be saved by embankments from drowning, but the flock must perish for hunger. Tempests occasionally shake our dwellings and dissipate our commerce; but they scourge before them the lazy elements, which without them would stagnate into pestilence. In like manner, Liberty herself, the last and best gift of God to his creatures, must be taken Just as she is: you might pare her down into bashful regularity, and shape her into a perfect model of severe, scrupulous law, but she would then be Liberty no longer; and you must be content to die under the lash of this inexorable justice which you had exchanged for the banners of Freedom. Lord Erskine.

CLIV.

BRITISH TYRANNY IN INDIA.

I am driven in the defence of my client, to remark, that it is mad and preposterous to bring to the standard of justice and humanity the exercise of a dominion founded upon violence and terror. It may and must be true that Mr. Hastings has repeatedly offended against the rights and privileges of Asiatic government, if he was the faithful deputy of a power which could not maintain itself for an hour without trampling upon both. He may and must have offended against the laws of God and nature, if he was the faithful viceroy of an empire wrested in blood from the people to whom God and nature had given it. He may and must have preserved that unjust dominion over timorous and abject nations by a terrifying overbearing, insulting superiority, If he was the faithful administrator of your government, which, leaving no root in consent or affection no foundation in similarity of interests—no support from any one principle which cements men together in society, could only be upheld by alternate stratagem and force. The unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by the knavery and strength of civilization, still occasionally start up in all the vigor and intelligence of insulted nature. To be governed at all, they must be governed with a rod of iron; and our empire in the East would, long since, have been lost to Great Britain, if civil skill and military prowess had not united their efforts to support an authority—which Heaven never gave—by means which it never can sanction.

Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of considering the subject, and I can account for it. I have not been considering it through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself among reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the Governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. "Who is it," said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure—"who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to in; and by this title we will defend it," said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and depend upon it, nothing but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection.

If England, from a lust of ambition and dominion, will insist on maintaining despotic rule over distant and hostile nations, beyond all comparison more numerous and extended than herself, and gives commission to her viceroys to govern them with no other instructions than to preserve them, and to secure permanently their revenues, with what color of consistency or reason can she place herself in the moral chair, and affect to be shocked at the execution of her own orders; adverting to the exact measure of wickedness and injustice necessary to their execution, and, complaining only of the excess as the immorality, considering her authority as a dispensation for breaking the commands of God, and the breach of them as only punishable when contrary to the ordinances of man? Such a proceeding, gentlemen, begets serious reflection. It would be better, perhaps, for the masters and the servants of all such governments to join in supplication, that the great Author of violated humanity may not confound them together in one common judgment. Lord Erskine.

CLV.

DECLARATION OF RIGHT.

I might as a constituent, come to your bar and demand my liberty. I do call upon you by the laws of the land, and their violation; by the instructions of eighteen counties; by the arms, inspiration, and providence of the present moment—tell us the rule by which we shall go; assert the law of Ireland; declare the liberty of the land! I will not be answered by a public lie, in the shape of an amendment; nor, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, unless it be to break your chain and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking to his rags. He may be naked,—he shall not be in irons. And I do see the time at hand; the spirit is gone forth; the Declaration of Right is planted; and though great men should fall off, yet the cause shall live; and though he who utters this should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the humble organ who conveys it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man will not die with the prophet, but survive him. H. Grattan.

CLVI.

POLITICS AND RELIGION.

That religion has, in fact, nothing to do with the politics of many who profess it, is a melancholy truth. But that it has of right, no concern with political transactions, is quite a new discovery. If such opinions, however, prevail, there is no longer any mystery in the character of those whose conduct in political matters violates every precept and slanders every principle of the religion of Christ. But what is politics? Is it not the science and the exercise of civil rights and civil duties? And what is religion? Is it not an obligation to the service of God, founded on his authority, and extending to all our relations, personal and social? Yet religion has nothing to do with politics? Where did you learn this maxim? The Bible is full of directions for your behavior as citizens. It is plain, pointed; awful in its injunctions on ruler and ruled as such: yet religion has nothing to do with politics! You are commanded "in all your ways to acknowledge Him." In everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, to let your requests be made known unto God "And whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." Yet religion has nothing to do with politics! Most astonishing! And is there any part of your conduct in which you are, or wish to be, without law to God, and not under the law of Jesus Christ? Can you persuade yourselves that political men and measures are to undergo no review in the judgment to come? That all the passion and violence, the fraud and falsehood and corruption, which pervade the system of party, and burst out like a flood at the public elections, are to be blotted from the catalogue of unchristian deeds, because they are politics? Or that a minister of the gospel may see his people, in their political career, bid defiance to their God in breaking through every moral restraint, and keep a guiltless silence, because religion has nothing to do with politics? I forbear to press the argument farther; observing only that many of our difficulties and sins may be traced to this pernicious notion. Yes, if our religion had had more to do with our politics; if, in the pride of our citizenship, we had not forgotten our Christianity; if we had prayed more and wrangled less about the affairs of our country, it would have been infinitely better for us at this day J. M. Mason

STANDARD SELECTIONS.

POETRY

CLVII.

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming— Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming! And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say, does that Star-spangled Banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

On that shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses! Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines on the stream: 'T is the Star-spangled Banner!—O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where are the foes who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion, A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood hath washed out their foul footsteps' pollution! No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave; And the Star-spangled Banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

O, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a Nation Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto—"In God is our trust;" And the Star-spangled Banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! F. S. Key.

CLVIII.

ASPIRATIONS OF YOUTH

Higher, higher, will we climb, Up the mount of glory, That our names may live through time In our country's story; Happy, when her welfare calls, He who conquers, he who falls.

Deeper, deeper, let us toil, In the mines of knowledge; Nature's wealth, and learning's spoil, Win from school and college; Delve we then for richer gems Than the stars of diadems.

Onward, onward, may we press Through the path of duty; Virtue is true happiness, Excellence true beauty. Minds are of celestial birth; Make we then a heaven of earth.

Closer, closer, let us knit Hearts and hands together, Where our fireside comforts sit, In the wildest weather; O! they wander wide who roam For the joys of life from home! J. Montgomery.

CLIX.

THE L0VE OF COUNTRY AND OF HOME.

There is a land, of every land the pride, Beloved by Heaven o'er all the world beside; Where brighter suns dispense serener light, And milder moons imparadise the night; A land of beauty, virtue, valor, truth, Time-tutored age, and love-exalted youth.

The wandering mariner, whose eye explores The wealthiest isles, the most enchanting shores, Views not a realm so bountiful and fair, Nor breathes the spirit of a purer air; In every clime, the magnet of his soul, Touched by remembrance, trembles to that pole; For in this land of Heaven's peculiar grace, The heritage of Nature's noblest race, There is a spot of earth supremely blest, A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest, Where man, creation's tyrant, casts aside His sword and sceptre, pageantry and pride, While, in his softened looks, benignly blend The sire, the son, the husband, brother, friend.

Here woman reigns; the mother, daughter, wife, Strews with fresh flowers the narrow way of life! In the clear heaven of her delightful eye, An angel-guard of loves and graces lie; Around her knees domestic duties meet, And fireside pleasures gambol at her feet. Where shall that land, that spot of earth be found? Art thou a man?—a patriot?—look around; O! thou shalt find, however thy footsteps roam, That land thy country, and that spot thy home! J. Montgomery.

CLX.

THE BELLS

Hear the sledges with the bells— Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that over sprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells bells, bells— From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Hear the mellow wedding bells— Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, All in time, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! O, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells, How it dwells On the future! how it tells Of rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

Hear the loud alarum bells— Brazen bells! What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of time, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor, Now—now to sit, or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. O, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear, it fully knows, By the twanging And the clanging, How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells— Of the bells Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

Hear the tolling of the bells— Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people—ah, the people— They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who, tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone They are neither man nor woman— They are neither brute nor human They are Ghouls; And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A paean from the bells! And his merry bosom swells with the paean of the bells! And he dances, and he yells; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the paean of the bells— Of the bells: Keeping time, time, time In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells— To the sobbing of the bells; Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells; To the tolling of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells, bells; Bells, bells, bells— To the moaning and the groaning of the bells! E. A. Poe.

CLXI.

THE RAVEN.

Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "'T is some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door— Only this, and nothing more."

Ah! distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow; From my books, surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore— For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore— Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating, "'T is some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; This it is, and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or madam truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"—here I opened wide the door;— Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken and the darkness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore!" This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" Merely this, and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon I heard again a tapping somewhat louder than before. "Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore— Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;— 'T is the wind, and nothing more!"

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore: Not the least obeisance made he; not an instant stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door,— Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door,— Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the Nightly shore— Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door— Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door— With such a name as "Nevermore."

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour. Nothing further then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered— Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before— On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before." Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster Followed fast, and followed faster, till his songs one burden bore Till the dirges of his Hope the melancholy burden bore— Of 'Nevermore'—'Nevermore'"

But the Raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust, and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore— What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking, "Nevermore."

Thus I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing To the fowl, whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er, She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen Censor, Swung by angels whose faint foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, O quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet," said I, "thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil! By that heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore— Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aiden, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore— Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore." Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!" I shrieked, upstarting— "Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from of my door!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon that is dreaming, And the lamp-light, o'er him streaming, throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow, that lies floating on the floor— Shall be lifted—nevermore! E. A. Poe.

CLXII.

SPIRIT OF PATRIOTISM.

Breathes there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said,— "This is my own,—my native land!" Whose heart hath never within him burned, As home his footsteps he hath turned, From wandering on a foreign strand? If such there breathe, go mark him well,— For him,—no minstrel raptures swell! High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; Despite those titles, power, and pelf, The wretch concentered all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung, Unwept, unhonored and unsung! Sir W. Scott.

CLXIII.

LOCHINVAR.

Young Lochinvar is come out of the West! Through all the wide Border his steed is the best; And save his good broadsword he weapon had none;— He rode all unarmed, and he rode all alone. So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war, There never was knight like the young Lochinvar!

He staid not for brake, and he stopped not for stone; He swam the Eske river where ford there was none;— But, ere he alighted at Netherby gate, The bride had consented—the gallant came late; For a laggard in love, and a dastard in war, Was to wed the fair Ellen of brave Lochinvar!

So boldly he entered the Netherby Hall, Among tribesmen, and kinsmen, and brothers, and all. Then spoke the bride's father, his hand on his sword— For the poor craven bridegroom said never a word— "O come ye in peace here, or come ye in war?— Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?"

"I long wooed your daughter;—my suit you denied: Love swells like the Solway, but ebbs like its tide! And now I am come, with this lost love of mine, To lead but one measure—drink one cup of wine. There be maidens in Scotland, more lovely by far, That would gladly be bride to the young Lochinvar!"

The bride kissed the goblet; the knight took it up— He quaffed off the wine, and he threw down the cup! She looked down to blush, and she looked up to sigh,— With a smile on her lip, and a tear in her eye. He took her soft hand, ere her mother could bar;— "Now tread we a measure!" said young Lochinvar.

So stately his form, and so lively her face, That never a hall such a galliard did grace! While her mother did fret, and her father did fume, And the bridegroom stood dangling his bonnet and plume, And the bridemaidens whispered, "'T were better, by far, To have matched our fair cousin with young Lochinvar!"

One touch to her hand, and one word in her ear— When they reached the hall door, where the charger stood near; So light to the croup the fair lady he swung, So light to the saddle before her he sprung!— "She is won!—we are gone, over bank, bush, and scaur; They'll have fleet steeds that follow!" cried young Lochinvar.

There was mounting 'mong Grmes of the Netherby clan; Fosters, Fenwicks, and Musgraves, they rode and they ran; There was racing, and chasing, on Cannobie lea! But the lost bride of Netherby ne'er did they see!— So daring in love, and so dauntless in war, Have ye e'er heard of gallant like young Lochinvar! Sir W. Scott.