Chapter I: The Noble Purposes of Eloquence (1)

If we consider the noble purposes to which Eloquence may be made subservient, we at once perceive its prodigious import ance to the best interests of mankind. The greatest masters of the art have concurred, upon the greatest occasions of its display, in pronouncing that its estimation depends on the virtuous and rational use made of it.

It is but reciting the common praises of the Art of Persuasion, to remind you how sacred truths may be most ardently promulgated at the altar--the cause of oppressed innocence be most woefully defended--the march of wicked rulers be most triumphantly resisted--defiance the most terrible be hurled at the oppressor's head. In great convulsions of public affairs, or in bringing about salutary changes, every one confesses how important an ally eloquence must be. But in peaceful times, when the progress of events is slow and even as the silent and unheeded pace of time, and the jars of a mighty tumult in foreign and domestic concerns can no longer be heard, then, too, she flourishes--protectress of liberty--patroness of improvement--guardian of all the blessings that can be showered upon the mass of human kind;--nor is her form ever seen but on ground consecrated to free institutions.

To me, calmly revolving these things, such pursuits seem far more noble objects of ambition than any upon which the vulgar herd of busy men lavish prodigal their restless exertions. To diffuse useful information, to further intellectual refinement, sure forerunner of moral improvement,--to hasten the coming of the bright day when the dawn of general knowledge shall chase away the lazy, lingering class, even from the base of the great social pyramid;--this indeed is a high calling, in which the most splendid talents and consummate virtue may well press onward, eager to bear a part. Lord Brougham.

II.

ROLLA TO THE PERUVIANS.

My brave associates--partners of my toil, my feelings, and my fame! Can Rolla's words add vigor to the virtuous energies which inspire your hearts?--No! You have judged, as I have, the foulness of the crafty plea, by which these bold invaders would delude you. Your generous spirit has compared, as mine has, the motives which, in a war like this, can animate their minds and ours.

They, by a strange frenzy driven, fight for power, for plunder, and extended rule;--we, for our country, our altars, and our homes. They follow an adventurer whom they fear, and obey a power which they hate;--we serve a monarch whom we love,--a God whom we adore. Wherever they move in anger, desolation tracks their progress. Wherever they pause in amity, affliction mourns their friendship.

They boast they come but to improve our state, enlarge our thoughts, and free us from the yoke of error! Yes;--they will give enlightened freedom to our minds, who are themselves the slaves of passion, avarice, and pride. They offer us their protection! Yes, such protections as vultures give to lambs,--covering and devouring them! They call on us to barter all the good we have inherited and proved, for the desperate chance of something better, which they promise!

Be our plain answer this: The throne we honor is the People's choice,--the laws we reverence are our brave fathers' legacy,--the faith we follow teaches us to live in bonds of charity with all mankind, and die with hope of bliss beyond the grave. Tell your invaders this; and tell them too, we seek no change; and, least of all, such change as they would bring us! R. B. Sheridan.

III.

INVECTIVE AGAINST WARREN HASTINGS.

If, my Lords, a stranger had at this time gone into the province of Oude, ignorant of what had happened since the death of Sujah Dowlah--that prince who with a savage heart had still great lines of character, and who, with all his ferocity in war, had, with a cultivating hand, preserved to his country the wealth which it derived from benignant skies and a prolific soil--if, ignorant of all that had happened in the short interval, and observing the wide and general devastation of fields unclothed and brown; of vegetation burned up and extinguished; of villages depopulated and in ruins; of temples unroofed and perishing; of reservoirs broken down and dry, this stranger should ask, "what has thus laid waste this beautiful and opulent land; what monstrous madness has ravaged with wide-spread war; what desolating foreign foe; what civil discords; what disputed succession; what religious zeal; what fabled monster has stalked abroad, and, with malice and mortal enmity to man, withered by the grasp of death every growth of nature and humanity, all means of delight, and each original, simple principle of bare existence?" the answer would have been, not one of these causes! No wars have ravaged these lands and depopulated these villages! No desolating foreign foe! No domestic broils! No disputed succession! No religious super-serviceable zeal! No poisonous monster! No affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged us, cut off the sources of resuscitation! No! This damp of death is the mere effusion of British amity! We sink under the pressure of their support! We writhe under their perfidious gripe! They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo! these are the fruits of their alliance!

What then, my Lords, shall we bear to be told that, under such circumstances, the exasperated feelings of a whole people, thus spurred on to clamor and resistance, were excited by the poor and feeble influence of the Begums? After hearing the description given by an eye-witness of the paroxysm of fever and delirium into which despair threw the natives when on the banks of the polluted Ganges, panting for breath, they tore more widely open the lips of their gaping wounds, to accelerate their dissolution; and while their blood was issuing, presented their ghastly eyes to heaven, breathing their last and fervent prayer that the dry earth might not be suffered to drink their blood, but that it might rise up to the throne of God, and rouse the eternal Providence to avenge the wrongs of their country,--will it be said that all this was brought about by the incantations of these Begums in their secluded Zenana; or that they could inspire this enthusiasm and this despair into the breasts of a people who felt no grievance, and had suffered no torture?

What motive, then, could have such influence in their bosom? What motive! That which nature, the common parent, plants in the bosom of man; and which, though it may be less active in the Indian than in the Englishman, is still congenial with, and makes a part of his being. That feeling which tells him that man was never made to be the property of man; but that, when in the pride and insolence of power, one human creature dares to tyrannize over another, it is a power usurped, and resistance is a duty. That principle which tells him that resistance to power usurped is not merely a duty which he owes to himself and to his neighbor, but a duty which he owes to his God, in asserting and maintaining the rank which he gave him in his creation--that God, who, where he gives the form of man, whatever may be the complexion, gives also the feelings and the rights of man. That principle which neither the rudeness of ignorance can stifle, nor the enervation of refinement extinguish! That principle which makes it base for a man to suffer when he ought to act; which, tending to preserve to the species the original designations of Providence, spurns at the arrogant distinctions of man, and indicates the independent quality of his race. R. B. Sheridan.

IV.

THE BIBLE THE BEST CLASSIC

The Bible is the only book which God has ever sent, and the only one he ever will send into the world. All other books are frail and transient as time, since they are only the registers of time; but the Bible is as durable as eternity, for its pages contain the records of eternity. All other books are weak and imperfect, like their author, man; but the Bible is a transcript of infinite power and perfection. Every other volume is limited in its usefulness and influence; but the Bible came forth conquering and to conquer,--rejoicing as a giant to run his course,--and like the sun, "there is nothing hid from the heat thereof." The Bible only, of all the myriads of books the world has seen, is equally important and interesting to all mankind. Its tidings, whether of peace or of woe, are the same to the poor, the ignorant, and the weak as to the rich, the wise, and the powerful.

Among the most remarkable of its attributes, is justice; for it looks with impartial eyes on kings and on slaves, on the hero and the soldier, on philosophers and peasants, on the eloquent and the dumb. From all, it exacts the same obedience to its commandments: to the good, it promises the fruits of his labors; to the evil, the reward of his hands. Nor are the purity and holiness, the wisdom, benevolence, and truth of the Scriptures less conspicuous than their justice. In sublimity and beauty, in the descriptive and pathetic, in dignity and simplicity of narrative, in power and comprehensiveness, in depth and variety of thought, in purity and elevation of sentiment, the most enthusiastic admirers of the heathen classics have conceded their inferiority to the Scriptures.

The Bible, indeed, is the only universal classic, the classic of all mankind, of every age and country of time and eternity; more humble and simple than the primer of a child, more grand and magnificent than the epic and the oration, the ode and the dramas when genius, with his chariot of fire, and his horses of ire, ascends in whirlwind into the heaven of his own invention. It is the best classic the world has ever seen, the noblest that has ever honored and dignified the language of mortals!

If you boast that the Aristotles and the Platos, and the Tullies of the classic age, "dipped their pens in intellect," the sacred authors dipped theirs in inspiration. If those were the "secretaries of nature," these were the secretaries of the very Author of nature. If Greece and Rome have gathered into their cabinet of curiosities the pearls of heathen poetry and eloquence, the diamonds of pagan history and philosophy, God himself has treasured up in the Scriptures, the poetry and eloquence, the philosophy and history of sacred law-givers, of prophets and apostles, of saints, evangelists, and martyrs. In vain you may seek for the pure and simple light of universal truth in the Augustan ages of antiquity. In the Bible only, is the poet's wish fulfilled,-- "And like the sun be all one boundless eye." T. S. Grimké.

V.

WHAT WE OWE TO THE SWORD.

To the question, "What have the People ever gained but by Revolution?" I answer, boldly, If by revolution be understood the law of the sword, Liberty has lost far more than she ever gained by it. The sword was the destroyer of the Lycian Confederacy and the Achæan League. The sword alternately enslaved and disenthralled Thebes and Athens, Sparta, Syracuse, and Corinth. The sword of Rome conquered every other free State, and finished the murder of Liberty in the ancient world, by destroying herself. What but the sword, in modern times, annihilated the Republics of Italy, the Hanseatic Towns, and the primitive independence of Ireland, Wales, and Scotland? What but the sword partitioned Poland, assassinated the rising liberty of Spain, banished the Huguenots from France, and made Cromwell the master, not the servant, of the People? And what but the sword of Republican France destroyed the independence of half of Europe, deluged the continent with tears, devoured its millions upon millions, and closed the long catalogue of guilt, by founding and defending to the last, the most powerful, selfish, and insatiable of military despotisms?

The sword, indeed, delivered Greece from the Persian invader, expelled the Tarquins from Rome, emancipated Switzerland and Holland, restored the Prince to his throne, and brought Charles to the scaffold. And the sword redeemed the pledge of the Congress of '76 when they plighted to each other "their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." And yet, what would the redemption of that pledge have availed towards the establishment of our present government, if the spirit of American institutions had not been both the birthright and the birth-blessing of the Colonies? The Indians, the French, the Spaniards, and even England herself, warred in vain against a people, born and bred in the household, at the domestic altar of Liberty herself They had never been slaves, for they were born free. The sword was a herald to proclaim their freedom, but it neither created nor preserved it. A century and a half had already beheld them free in infancy, free in youth, free in early manhood. Theirs was already the spirit of American institutions; the spirit of Christian freedom of a temperate, regulated freedom, of a rational civil obedience. For such a people the sword, the law of violence, did and could do nothing but sever the bonds which bound her colonial wards to their unnatural guardian. They redeemed their pledge, sword in hand; but the sword left them as it found them, unchanged in character, freemen in thought and in deed, instinct with the immortal spirit of American institutions. T. S Grimké.

VI.

DUTY OF LITERARY MEN TO THEIR COUNTRY.

We cannot honor our country with too deep a reverence; we cannot love her with an affection too pure and fervent; we cannot serve her with an energy of purpose or a faithfulness of zeal too steadfast and ardent. And what is our country? It is not the East, with her hills and her valleys, with her countless sails and the rocky ramparts of her shores. It is not the North, with her thousand villages, and her harvest-home, with her frontiers of the lake and the ocean. It is not the West, with her forrest-sea and her inland-isles, with her luxuriant expanses, clothed in the verdant corn, with her beautiful Ohio and her majestic Missouri. Nor is it yet the South, opulent in the mimic snow of the cotton, in the rich plantations of the rustling cane, and in the golden robes of the rice-field. What are these but the sister families of one greater, better, holier family,--our country?

I come not here to speak the dialect, or to give the counsels of the patriot-statesman. But I come, a patriot scholar, to vindicate the rights and to plead for the interests of American Literature. And be assured, that we cannot, as patriot-scholars, think too highly of that country, or sacrifice too much for her. And let us never forget, let us rather remember with a religious awe,--that the union of these States is indispensable to our literature, as it is to our national independence and civil liberties,--to our prosperity, happiness, and improvement.

If, indeed, we desire to behold a literature like that which has sculptured with so much energy of expression, which has painted so faithfully and vividly, the crimes, the vices, the follies of ancient and modern Europe;--if we desire that our land should furnish for the orator and the novelist, for the painter and the poet, age after age, the wild and romantic scenery of war; the glittering march of armies, and the revelry of the camp; the shrieks and blasphemies, and all the horrors of the battle-field; the desolation of the harvest, and the burning cottage; the storm, the sack, and the ruin of cities;--if we desire to unchain the furious passions of jealousy and selfishness, of hatred, revenge, and ambition, those lions that now sleep harmless in their den;--if we desire that the lake, the river, the ocean, should blush with the blood of brothers; that the winds should waft from the land to the sea, from the sea to the land, the roar and the smoke of battle, that the very mountain-tops should become altars for the sacrifice of brothers;--if we desire that these, and such as these,--the elements, to an incredible extent, of the literature of the Old World,--should be the elements of our literature; then, but then only, let us hurl from its pedestal the majestic statue of our Union, and scatter its fragments over all our land.

But, if we covet for our country the noblest, purest, loveliest literature the world has ever seen,--such a literature as shall honor God, and bless mankind,--a literature, whose smiles might play upon an angel's face, whose tears "would not stain an angel's cheek,"--then let us cling to the Union of these State's with a patriot's love, with a scholar's enthusiasm, with a Christian's hope.

In her heavenly character, as a holocaust self-sacrificed to God; at the height of her glory, as the ornament of a free, educated, peaceful Christian people, American Literature will find that THE INTELLECTUAL SPIRIT IS HER VERY TREE OF LIFE, AND THE UNION HER GARDEN OF PARADISE. T. S. Grimké.

VII.

AMERICA'S OBLIGATIONS TO ENGLAND.

The honorable member has asked--"And now will these Americans, children planted by our care, nourished up by our indulgence and protected by our arms,--will they grudge to attribute their mite?" They planted by your care! No; your oppressions planted them in America! They fled from your tyranny to a then uncultivated and inhospitable country, where they exposed themselves to almost all the hardships to which human nature is liable; and, among others, to the cruelties of a savage foe the most subtle, and I will take upon me to say the most formidable, of any people upon the face of the earth; and yet, actuated by principles of true English liberty our American brethren met all the hardships with pleasure, compared with those they steered in their own country from the hands of those that should have been their friends.

They nourished by your indulgence! They grew by your neglect of them! As soon as you began to care about them, that care was exercised in sending persons to rule them, in one department and another, who were, perhaps, the deputies of deputies to some members of this House, sent to spy out their liberties, to misrepresent their actions, and to prey upon them;--men whose behavior, on many occasions, has caused the blood of those sons of liberty to recoil within them; men promoted to the highest seats of justice,--some who, to my knowledge, were glad by going to a foreign country, to escape being brought to the bar of a court of justice in their own.

They protected by your arms! They have nobly taken up arms in your defence;--have exerted a valor, amid their constant and laborious industry, for the defence of a country whose frontier was drenched in blood, while its interior parts yielded all its little savings to your emolument. And, believe me,--remember I this day told you so,--that same spirit of freedom which actuated that people at first will accompany them still; but prudence forbids me to explain myself further.

Heaven knows I do not at this time speak from motives of party heat. What I deliver are the genuine sentiments of my heart. However superior to me, in general knowledge and experience, the respectable body of this House may be, yet I claim to know more of America than most of you, having seen that country and been conversant with its affairs. The people, I believe, are as truly loyal as any subjects the king has; but they are a people jealous of their liberties, and who, if those liberties should ever be violated, will vindicate them to the last drop of their blood. Isaac Barré.

VIII.

WEBSTER'S PLEA FOR DARTMOUTH COLLEGE.

The Supreme Court of the United States held its session that winter in a mean apartment of moderate size--the Capitol not having been built after its destruction in 1814. The audience, when the case came on, was therefore small, consisting chiefly of legal men, the élite of the profession throughout the country. Mr. Webster entered upon his argument in the calm tone of easy and dignified conversation. His matter was so completely at his command that he scarcely looked at his brief, but went on for more than four hours with a statement so luminous, and a chain of reasoning so easy to be understood, and yet approaching so nearly to absolute demonstration, that he seemed to carry with him every man of his audience without the slightest effort or weariness on either side. It was hardly eloquence, in the strict sense of the term; it was pure reason. Now and then, for a sentence or two, his eye flashed and his voice swelled into a bolder note, as he uttered some emphatic thought; but he instantly fell back into the tone of earnest conversation, which ran throughout the great body of his speech.

The argument ended. Mr. Webster stood for some moments silent before the court, while every eye was fixed intently upon him. At length, addressing the chief justice, Marshall, he proceeded thus:--

"This, Sir, is my case! It is the case, not merely of that humble institution, it is the case of every college in our land. It is more. It is the case of every eleemosynary institution throughout the country,--of all those great charities founded by the piety of our ancestors to alleviate human misery; and scatter blessings along the pathway of life. It is more! It is, in some sense, the case of every man among us who has property of which he may be stripped; for the question is simply this: Shall our State legislatures be allowed to take that which is not their own, to turn it from its original use, and apply it to such ends or purposes as they, in their discretion, shall see fit?

"Sir, you may destroy this little institution; it is weak; it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the literary horizon of our country. You may put it out. But if you do so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish one after another, all those great lights of science which, for more than a century, have thrown their radiance over our land!

"It is, Sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet, there are those who love it----."

Here the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down, broke forth. His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion; his eyes were filled with tears, his voice choked, and he seemed struggling to the utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself which might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling. I will not attempt to give you the few broken words of tenderness in which he went on to speak of his attachment to the college. The whole seemed to be mingled throughout with the recollections of father, mother, brother, and all the trials and privations through which he had made his way into life. Every one saw that it was wholly unpremeditated, a pressure on his heart, which sought relief in words and tears.

The court-room during these two or three minutes presented an extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall and gaunt figure, bent over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the deep furrows of his cheek expanded with emotion, and eyes suffused with tears. Mr. Justice Washington at his side,--with his small and emaciated frame, and countenance more like marble than I ever saw on any other human being,--leaning forward with an eager, troubled look; and the remainder of the court, at the two extremities, pressing, as it were, toward a single point, while the audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath the bench to catch each look and every movement of the speaker's face. If a painter could give us the scene on canvas,--those forms and countenances, and Daniel Webster as he then stood in the midst,--it would be one of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence. One thing it taught me, that the pathetic depends not merely on the words uttered, but still more on the estimate we put upon him who utters them. There was not one among the strong-minded men of that assembly who could think it unmanly to weep, when he saw standing before him the man who had made such an argument, melted into the tenderness of a child.

Mr. Webster had now recovered his composure, and fixing his keen eye on the Chief Justice, said in that deep tone with which he sometimes thrilled the heart of an audience,--

"Sir, I know not how others feel, (glancing at the opponents of the college before him,) but, for myself when I see my Alma Mater surrounded, like Caesar in the senate-house, by those who are reiterating stab upon stab, I would not, for my right hand, have her turn to me, and say Et tu quoque, mi fili! And thou, too, my son!"

He sat down. There was a deathlike stillness throughout the room for some moments; every one seemed to be slowly recovering himself and coming gradually back to his ordinary range of thought and feeling. C. A. Goodrich.

IX.

THE FOUNDERS OF BOSTON.

On this occasion, it is proper to speak of the founders of Our city, and of their glory. Now in its true acceptation, the term glory expresses the splendor which emanates from virtue, in the act of producing general and permanent good. Right conceptions, then, of the glory of our ancestors, are to be obtained only by analyzing their virtues. These virtues, indeed, are not seen charactered in breathing bronze, or in living marble. Our ancestors have left no Corinthian temples on our hills, no Gothic cathedrals on our plains, no proud pyramid, no storied obelisk, in our cities. But mind is there. Sagacious enterprise is there. An active, vigorous, intelligent, moral population throng our cities, and predominate in our fields;--men, patient of labor, submissive to law, respectful to authority, regardful of right, faithful to liberty. These are the monuments of our ancestors. They stand immutable and immortal, in the social, moral, and intellectual condition of their descendants. They exist in the spirit which their precepts instilled, and their example implanted.

It was to this spot, during twelve successive years, that the real body of those just settlers emigrated. In this place, they either fixed permanently their abode, or took their departure from it, for the coast or the interior. Whatever honor devolves on this metropolis, from the events connected with its first settlement, is not solitary or exclusive; it is shared with Massachusetts; with New England; in some sense, with the whole United States. For what part of this wide empire, be it sea or shore, lake or river, mountain or valley, have the descendants of the first settlers of New England not traversed; what depth of forest not penetrated? what danger of nature or man not defied? Where is the cultivated field, in redeeming which from the wilderness, their vigor has not been displayed? Where, amid unsubdued nature, by the side of the first log-hut of the settler, does the school-house stand, and the church-spire rise, unless the sons of New England are there? Where does improvement advance, under the active energy of willing hearts and ready hands, prostrating the moss-covered monarch of the wood, and from their ashes, amid their charred roots, bidding the green sward and the waving harvest to unspring, and the spirit of the fathers of New England is not seen, hovering and shedding around the benign influences of sound, social, moral, and religious institutions, stronger and more enduring than knotted oak or tempered steel? The swelling tide of their descendants has spread upon our coasts, ascended our rivers, taken possession of our plains. Already it encircles our lakes. At this hour, the rushing noise of the advancing wave startles the wild beast in his lair among the prairies of the West. Soon it shall be seen climbing the Rocky Mountains, and, as it dashes over their cliffs, shall be hailed by the dwellers on the Pacific, as the harbinger of the coming blessings of safety, liberty, and truth. Pres. Quincy.

X.

THE AMERICAN SAILOR.

Look to your history--that part of it which the world knows by heart,--and you will find on its brightest page the glorious achievements of the American sailor. Whatever his country has done to disgrace him, and break his spirit, he has never disgraced her;--he has always been ready to serve her; he always has served her faithfully and effectually. He has often been weighed in the balance, and never found wanting. The only fault ever found with him is, that he sometimes fights ahead of his orders. The world has no match for him, man for man; and he asks no odds, and he cares for no odds, when the cause of humanity or the glory of his country calls him to fight.

Who, in the darkest days of our Revolution, carried your flag into the very chops of the British Channel, bearded the lion in his den, and woke the echoes of old Albion's hills by the thunders of his cannon, and the shouts of his triumph? It was the American sailor. And the names of John Paul Jones, and the Bon Homme Richard, will go down the annals of time forever. Who struck the first blow that humbled the Barbary flag--which, for a hundred years, had been the terror of Christendom,--drove it from the Mediterranean, and put an end to the infamous tribute it had been accustomed to extort? It was the American sailor, and the name of Decatur and his gallant companions will be as lasting as monumental brass.

In the year 1812, when your arms on shore were covered by disaster,--when Winchester had been defeated, when the army of the Northwest had surrendered, and when the feeling of despondency hung like a cloud over the land,--who first relit the fires of national glory, and made the welkin ring with the shouts of victory? It was the American sailor. And the names of Hull and the Constitution will be remembered as long as we have left anything worth remembering.

The wand of British invincibility was broken when the flag of the Guerrière came down. That one event was worth more to the Republic than all the money which has ever been expended for the navy. Since that day the navy has had no stain upon its escutcheon, but has been cherished as your pride and glory. And the American sailor has established a reputation throughout the world,--in peace and in war, in storm and in battle,--for heroism and prowess unsurpassed. He shrinks from no danger, he dreads no foe, he yields to no superior. No shoals are too dangerous, no seas too boisterous, no climate too rigorous for him. The burning sun of the tropic cannot make him effeminate, nor can the eternal winter of the polar seas paralyze his energies. R. F. Stockton.

XI.

MORALITY, THE FOUNDATION OF NATIONAL GREATNESS.

When we look forward to the probable growth of this country; when we think of the millions of human beings who are to spread over our present territory; of the career of improvement and glory open to this new people; of the impulse which free institutions, if prosperous, may be expected to give to philosophy, religion, science, literature, and arts; of the vast field in which the experiment is to be made, of what the unfettered powers of man may achieve; of the bright page of history which our fathers have filled, and of the advantages under which their toils and virtues have placed us for carrying on their work;--when we think of all this, can we help, for a moment, surrendering ourselves to bright visions of our country's glory before which all the glories of the past are to fade away?

Is it presumption to say that, if just to ourselves and all nations, we shall be felt through this whole continent, that we shall spread our language, institutions, and civilization, through a wider space than any nation has yet filled with a like beneficent influence? And are we prepared to barter these hopes, this sublime moral empire, for conquests by force? Are we prepared to sink to the level of unprincipled nations, to content ourselves with a vulgar, guilty greatness, to adopt in our youth maxims and ends which must brand our future with sordidness, aggression, and shame? This country cannot, without peculiar infamy, run the common race of national rapacity. Our origin, institutions, and position are peculiar, and all favor an upright honorable course.

Why cannot we rise to noble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel, that our work as a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a noble form of human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember, that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders; and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us, will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this new world? I am not prophet enough to read our fate. I believe, indeed, that we are to make our futurity for ourselves. I believe, that a nation's destiny lies in its character, in the principles which govern its policy, and bear rule in the hearts of its citizens. I take my stand on God's moral and eternal law. A nation, renouncing and defying this, cannot be free, cannot be great. W. E. Channing.

XII.

INTEMPERANCE.

Among the evils of intemperance, much importance is given to the poverty of which it is the cause. But this evil, great as it is, is yet light, in comparison with the essential evil of intemperance. What matters it, that a man be poor, if he carry into his poverty the spirit, energy, reason, and virtues of a man? What matters it, that a man must, for a few years, live on bread and water? How many of the richest are reduced, by disease, to a worse condition than this? Honest, virtuous, noble-minded poverty, is comparatively a light evil. The ancient philosopher chose it, as a condition of virtue. It has been the lot of many a Christian.

The poverty of the intemperate man owes its great misery to its cause. He who makes himself a beggar, by having made himself a brute, is miserable indeed. He who has no solace, who has only agonizing recollections and harrowing remorse, as he looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his ragged children, has indeed to bear a crushing weight of woe. That he suffers, is a light thing. That he has brought on himself this suffering by the voluntary extinction of his reason, that is the terrible thought, the intolerable curse.

Intemperance is to be pitied and abhorred for its own sake, much more than for its outward consequences. These owe their chief bitterness to their criminal source. We speak of the miseries which the drunkard carries to his family. But take away his own brutality, and how lightened would be these miseries! We talk of his wife and children in rags. Let the rags continue; but suppose them to be the effects of an innocent cause. Suppose his wife and children bound to him by a strong love, which a life of labor for their support, and of unlearned kindness has awakened; suppose them to know that his toils for their welfare had broken down his frame; suppose him able to say, "We are poor in this world's goods, but rich in affection and religious trust. I am going from you; but I leave you to the Father of the fatherless, and to the widow's God." Suppose this; and how changed these rags!--how changed the cold, naked room! The heart's warmth can do much to withstand the winter's cold;--and there is hope, there is honor, in this virtuous indigence.

What breaks the heart of the drunkard's wife? It is not that he is poor, but that he is a drunkard. Instead of that bloated face, now distorted with passion, now robbed of every gleam of intelligence, if the wife could look on an affectionate countenance, which had, for years, been the interpreter of a well-principled mind and faithful heart, what an overwhelming load would be lifted from her! It is a husband, whose touch is polluting, whose infirmities are the witness of his guilt, who has blighted all her hopes, who has proved false to the vow which made her his; it is such a husband who makes home a hell,--not one whom toil and disease and Providence have cast on the care of wife and children.

We look too much at the consequences of vice,--too little at the vice itself. It is vice which is the chief weight of what we call its consequences,--vice, which is the bitterness in the cup of human woe. W. E. Channing.

XIII.

INCONSISTENT EXPECTATIONS.

This world may be considered as a great mart of commerce, where fortune exposes to our view various commodities,--riches, ease, tranquillity, fame, integrity, knowledge. Everything is marked at a settled price,--our time, our labor, our ingenuity, is so much ready money, which we are to lay out to the best advantage. Examine, compare, choose, reject; but stand to your own judgment, and do not, like children, when you have purchased one thing, repine that you do not possess another which you did not purchase.

Such is the force of well-regulated industry that a steady and vigorous exertion of our faculties, directed to one end, will generally insure success. Would you, for instance, be rich? Do you think that single point worth the sacrifice of everything else? You may then be rich. Thousands have become so, from the lowest beginnings, by toil, and patient diligence, and attention to the minutest articles of expense and profit. But you must give up the pleasures of leisure, of mental ease, of a free, unsuspicious temper. If you preserve your integrity, it must be a coarse-spun and vulgar honesty. Those high and lofty notions of morals which you brought with you from the schools, must be considerably lowered, and mixed with the baser alloy of a jealous and worldly-minded prudence. You must learn to do hard, lf not unjust things; and as for the nice embarrassments of a delicate and ingenuous spirit, it is necessary to get rid of them as fast as possible. You must shut your heart against the Muses, and be content to feed your understanding with plain household truths. In short, you must not attempt to enlarge your ideas, or polish your taste, or refine your sentiments, but must keep on in one beaten track, without turning aside either to the right or to the left. "But you say, I cannot submit to drudgery like this; I feel a spirit above it." 'Tis well, be above it then; only do not repine that you are not rich.

Is knowledge the pearl of price in your estimation? That, toy may be purchased by steady application, and long solitary study and reflection. Bestow these, and you shall be learned. "But," says the man of letters, "what a hardship is it, that many an illiterate fellow, who cannot construe the motto of the arms on his coach, shall raise a fortune and make a figure, while I have little more than the common conveniences of life!" Was it, then, to raise a fortune, that you consumed the sprightly hours of youth in study and retirement? Was it to be rich that you grew pale over the midnight lamp, and distilled the sweetness from the Greek and Roman springs? You have then mistaken your path, and ill employed your industry. "What reward have I then, for all my labor?" What reward! A large, comprehensive soul, well purged from vulgar fears, and perturbations, and prejudices; able to comprehend and interpret the works of man,--of God; a rich, flourishing, cultivated mind, furnished with inexhaustible stores of entertainment and reflection; a perpetual spring of fresh ideas, and the conscious dignity of superior intelligence. Good Heaven! What other reward can you ask besides!

"But is it not some reproach upon the economy of Providence, that such a one, who is a mean, dirty fellow, should have amassed wealth enough to buy half a nation?" Not in the least. He made himself a mean, dirty fellow for that very end. He has paid his health, his conscience, his liberty for it; and will you envy him his bargain? Will you hang your head and blush in his presence, because he outshines you in equipage and show? Lift up your brow with a noble confidence, and say to yourself "I have not these things, it is true; but it is because I have not sought, because I have not desired them; it is because I possess something better. I have chosen my lot; I am content and satisfied." The characteristic mark of a great and noble mind is to choose some high and worthy object, and pursue that object through life. Mrs. Barbauld.

XIV.

THE PATRIOT'S SWORD VINDICATED.

But my Lord, I dissented from the resolutions before us, for other reasons. I dissented from them, because I felt that my giving them my assent, I should have pledged myself to the unqualified repudiation of physical force in all countries, at all times, and under every circumstance. This I could not do. For, my Lord, I do not abhor the use of arms in the vindication of national rights. There are times, when arms will alone suffice, and when political ameliorations call for a drop of blood, and many thousand drops of blood. Opinion, I admit, will operate against opinion. But, as the honorable member for Kilkenny has observed, force must be used against force. The soldier is proof against an argument, but he is not proof against a bullet The man that will listen to reason, let him be reasoned with. But it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone prevail against battalioned despotism.

Then, my Lord, I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral, nor do I conceive it profane to say that the King of Heaven--the Lord of Hosts! the God of Battles!--bestows his benediction upon those who unsheathe the sword in the hour of a nation's peril. From that evening, on which, in the valley of Bethulia, he nerved the arm of the Jewish girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, down to our day in which he has blessed the insurgent chivalry of the Belgian priest, his almighty hand hath ever been stretched forth from his Throne of Light, to consecrate the flag of freedom--to bless the patriot's sword! Be it in the defense, or be it in the assertion of a people's liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred weapon; and if, my Lord, it has sometimes taken the shape of the serpent and reddened the shroud of the oppressor with too deep a dye, like the anointed rod of the High Priest, it has at other times, and as often, blossomed into celestial flowers to deck the freeman's brow.

Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my Lord, for, in the passes of the Tyrol, it cut to pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and, through those cragged passes, struck a path to fame for the present insurrectionist of Inspruck!

Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my Lord; for at its blow, a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and by its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of its crimson light, the crippled Colony sprang into the attitude of a proud Republic--prosperous, limitless, and invincible!

Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my Lord; for it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium--scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps--and knocked their flag and scepter, their laws and bayonets into the sluggish waters of the Scheldt.

My Lord, I learned that it was the right of a nation to govern herself--not in this hall, but upon the ramparts of Antwerp. This, the first article of a nation's creed, I learned upon those ramparts, where freedom was justly estimated, and the possession of the precious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood.

My Lord, I honor the Belgians, I admire the Belgians, I love the Belgians for their enthusiasm, their courage, their success; and I, for one, will not stigmatize, for I do not abhor the means by which they obtained a citizen king, a chamber of deputies. T. F. Meagher.

XV.

ON BEING FOUND GUILTY OF TREASON.

A jury of my countrymen have found me guilty of the crime for which I stood indicted. For this I entertain not the slightest feeling of resentment towards them. Influenced, as they must have been, by the charge of the lord chief justice, they could have found no other verdict. What of that charge? Any strong observations on it I feel sincerely would ill befit the solemnity of this scene; but I would earnestly beseech of you, my Lord,--you who preside on that bench,--when the passions and prejudices of this hour have passed away, to appeal to your own conscience, and to ask of it, was your charge as it ought to have been, impartial and indifferent between the subject and the crown?

My Lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and perhaps it will seal my fate. But I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may cost; I am here to regret nothing I have ever done--to retract nothing I have ever said. I am here to crave, with no lying lip the life I consecrate to the liberty of my country. Far from it, even here--here, where the thief the libertine, the murderer, have left their footprints in the dust; here on this spot, where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an appointed soil opened to receive me--even here, encircled by these terrors, the hope which has beckoned me to the perilous sea upon which I have been wrecked still consoles, animates, enraptures me.

No; I do not despair of my poor old country--her peace, her liberty, her glory. For that country I can do no more than bid her hope. To lift this island up,--to make her a benefactor to humanity, instead of being the meanest beggar in the world; to restore her to her native powers and her ancient constitution,--this has been my ambition, and this ambition has been my crime. Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains this crime, and justifies it. Judged by that history, I am no criminal, I deserve no punishment. Judged by that history the treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt, is sanctioned as a duty, will be ennobled as a sacrifice. With these sentiments, my Lord, I await the sentence of the court.

Having done what I felt to be my duty,--having spoken what I felt to be the truth, as I have done on every other occasion of my short career,--I now bid farewell to the country of my birth, my passion, and my death; the country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies; whose factions I have sought to still; whose intellect I have prompted to a lofty aim; whose freedom has been my fatal dream. I offer to that country, as a proof of the love I bear her, and the sincerity with which I thought and spoke and struggled for her freedom, the life of a young heart, and with that life all the hopes, the honors the endearments, of a happy and an honored home. Pronounce, then, my Lords, the sentence which the laws direct, and I will be prepared to hear it. I trust I shall be prepared to meet its execution. I hope to be able, with a pure heart and perfect composure, to appear before a higher tribunal--a tribunal where a judge of infinite goodness as well as of justice will preside, and where, my Lords, many, many of the judgments of this world will be reversed. T. F. Meagher.

XVI.

ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN TROOPS BEFORE THE BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND.

The time is now near at hand, which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of a brave resistance or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or to die. Our own, our country's honor, calls upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion; and, if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us, then, rely on the goodness of our cause and the aid of the Supreme Being, in whose hands victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble actions. The eyes of all our countrymen are now upon us; and we shall have their blessings and praises, if happily we are the instrument of saving them from the tyranny meditated against them. Let us, therefore, animate and encourage each other, and allow the whole world that a freeman contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.

Liberty, property, life, and honor, are all at stake. Upon your courage and conduct rest the hopes of our bleeding and insulted country. Our wives, children, and parents expect safety from us only; and they have every reason to believe that Heaven will crown with success so just a cause. The enemy will endeavor to intimidate by show and appearance; but remember they have been repulsed on various occasions by a few brave Americans. Their cause is bad,--their men are conscious of it; and, if opposed with firmness and coolness on their first onset, with our advantage of works, and knowledge of the ground, the victory is most assuredly ours. Every good soldier will be silent and attentive, wait for orders, and reserve his fire until he is sure of doing execution. Washington.

XVII.

CHARACTER OF CHATHAM.

The secretary stood alone; modern degeneracy had not reached him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character had the hardihood of antiquity. His august mind overawed majesty; and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so impaired in his presence, that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved from his superiority. No state chicanery, no narrow system of vicious polities, no idle contest for ministerial victories, sunk him to the vulgar level of the great; but, overbearing, persuasive, and impracticable, his object was England, his ambition was fame.

Without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he made a venal age unanimous. France sunk beneath him. With one hand he smote the house of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite; and his schemes were to affect, not England, not the present age only, but Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these schemes were accomplished,--always seasonable, always adequate, the suggestions of an understanding animated by ardor, and enlightened by prophecy.

The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and indolent, were unknown to him. No domestic difficulties, no domestic weakness, reached him; but, aloof from the sordid occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel, and to decide. A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age; and the treasury trembled at the name of Chatham, through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country, and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her.

Nor were his political abilities his only talents; his eloquence was an era in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. He did not, like Murray, conduct the understanding through the painful subtlety of argumentation; nor was he, like Townshend, forever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed. Upon the whole, there was in this man something that would create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder; something to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish, or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world, that should resound through the universe. H. Grattan.

XVIII.

THE PRESS AND THE UNION.