Chapter I: The Noble Purposes of Eloquence (2)

It were good for us to remember that nothing which tends, however distantly, however imperceptibly, to hold these States together, is beneath the notice of a considerate patriotism. It were good to remember that some of the institutions and devices by which former confederacies have been preserved, our circumstances wholly forbid us to employ. The tribes of Israel and Judah came up three times a year to the holy and beautiful city, and united in prayer and praise and sacrifice, in listening to that thrilling poetry, in swelling that matchless song, which celebrated the triumphs of their fathers by the Red Sea, at the fords of Jordan, and on the high places of the field of Barak's victory. But we have no feast of the Passover, or of the Tabernacles, or of the Commemoration. The States of Greece erected temples of the gods by a common contribution, and worshiped in them. They consulted the same oracle; they celebrated the same national festival: mingled their deliberations in the same amphictyonic and subordinate assemblies, and sat together upon the free benches to hear their glorious history read aloud, in the prose of Heroditus, the poetry of Homer and of Pindar. We have built no national temples but the Capitol; we consult no common oracle but the Constitution. We can meet together to celebrate no national festival. But the thousand tongues of the press--clearer far than the silver trumpet of the jubilee,--louder than the voice of the herald at the games,--may speak and do speak to the whole people, without calling them from their homes or interrupting them in their employments. Happy if they should speak, and the people should hear, those things which pertain at least to their temporal and national salvation! R. Choate.

XIX.

AMERICAN LITERATURE AND THE UNION.

In leaving this subject, I cannot help suggesting, at the hazard of being thought whimsical, that a literature of such writings as these, embodying the romance of the whole revolutionary and ante-revolutionary history of the United States, might do something to perpetuate the Union itself. The influence of a rich literature of passion and fancy upon society must not be denied merely because you cannot measure it by the yard or detect it by the barometer. Poems and romances which shall be read in every parlor, by every fireside, in every school-house, behind every counter, in every printing-office, in every lawyer's office, at every weekly evening club, in all the States of this confederacy, must do something, along with more palpable if not more powerful agents, towards moulding and fixing that final, grand, complex result,--the national character. A keen, well instructed judge of such things said, if he might write the ballads of a people, he cared little who made its laws. Let me say, if a hundred men of genius would extract such a body of romantic literature from our early history as Scott has extracted from the history of England and Scotland, and as Homer extracted from that of Greece, it perhaps would not be so alarming if demagogues should preach, or governors practice, or executives tolerate nullification. Such a literature would be a common property of all the States,--a treasure of common ancestral recollections,--more noble and richer than our thousand million acres of public land; and, unlike that land, it would be indivisible. It would be as the opening of a great fountain for the healing of the nations. It would turn back our thoughts from these recent and overrated diversities of interest,--these controversies about negro-cloth, coarse-wooled sheep, and cotton bagging,--to the day when our fathers walked hand in hand together through the valley of the Shadow of Death in the War of Independence. Reminded of our fathers, we should remember that we are brethren. The exclusiveness of State pride,--the narrow selfishness of a mere local policy and the small jealousies of vulgar minds, would be merged in an expanded comprehensive, constitutional sentiment of old, family, fraternal regard. It would reässemble, as it were, the people of America in one vast congregation. It would rehearse in their hearing all things which God had done for them in the old time; it would proclaim the law once more; and then it would bid them join in that grandest and most affecting solemnity,--a national anthem of thanksgiving for the deliverance, of honor for the dead, of proud prediction for the future! R. Choate.

XX.

THE LOVE OF READING.

Let the case of a busy lawyer testify to the priceless value of the love of reading. He comes home, his temples throbbing, his nerves shattered, from a trial of a week; surprised and alarmed by the charge of the judge, and pale with anxiety about the verdict of the next morning, not at all satisfied with what he has done himself, though he does not yet see how he could have improved it; recalling with dread and self-disparagement, if not with envy, the brilliant effort of his antagonist, and tormenting himself with the vain wish that he could have replied to it,--and altogether a very miserable subject, and in as unfavorable a condition to accept comfort from a wife and children as poor Christian in the first three pages of the "Pilgrim's Progress." With a superhuman effort he opens his book, and in the twinkling of an eye he is looking into the full "orb of Homeric or Miltonic song;" or he stands in the crowd--breathless, yet swayed as forests or the sea by winds--hearing and to judge the pleadings for the crown; or the philosophy which soothed Cicero or Boethius in their afflictions, in exile, prison, and the contemplation of death, breathes over his petty cares like the sweet south; or Pope or Horace laughs him into good humor; or he walks with Æneas and the Sibyl in the mild light of the world of the laurelled dead; and the court-house is as completely forgotten as the dreams of a pre-adamite life. Well may he prize that endeared charm, so effectual and safe, without which the brain had long ago been chilled by paralysis, or set on fire of insanity! R. Choate.

XXI.

ELOQUENCE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.

Men heard that eloquence in 1776, in that manifold and mighty appeal by the genius and wisdom of that new America, to persuade the people to take on the name of nation, and begin its life. By how many pens and tongues that great pleading was conducted; through how many months before the date of the actual Declaration, it went on, day after day; in how many forms, before how many assemblies, from the village newspaper, the more careful pamphlet, the private conversation, the town-meeting, the legislative bodies of particular colonies, up to the hall of the immortal old Congress, and the master intelligences of lion heart and eagle eye, that ennobled it,--all this you know. But the leader in that great argument was John Adams, of Massachusetts. He, by concession of all men, was the orator of that Revolution,--the Revolution in which a nation was born. Other and renowned names, by written or spoken eloquence, coöperated effectively, splendidly, to the grand result,--Samuel Adams, Samuel Chase, Jefferson, Henry James Otis in an earlier stage. Each of these, and a hundred more, within circles of influence wider or narrower, sent forth, scattering broadcast, the seed of life in the ready virgin soil. Each brought some specialty of gift to the work: Jefferson, the magic of style, and the habit and the power of delicious dalliance with those large, fair ideas of freedom and equality, so dear to man, so irresistible in that day; Henry, the indescribable and lost spell of the speech of the emotions, which fills the eye, chills the blood, turns the cheek pale,--the lyric phase of eloquence, the "fire-water," as Lamartine has said, of the Revolution, instilling into the sense and the soul the sweet madness of battle; Samuel Chase, the tones of anger, confidence, and pride, and the art to inspire them. John Adams's eloquence alone seemed to have met every demand of the time; as a question of right, as a question of prudence, as a question of immediate opportunity, as a question of feeling, as a question of conscience, as a question of historical and durable and innocent glory, he knew it all through and through; and in that mighty debate, which, beginning in Congress as far back as March or February; 1776, had its close on the second and on the fourth of July, he presented it in all its aspects, to every passion and affection,--to the burning sense of wrong, exasperated at length beyond control by the shedding of blood; to grief, anger, self-respect; to the desire of happiness and of safety; to the sense of moral obligation, commanding that the duties of life are more than life; to courage, which fears God, and knows no other fear; to the craving of the colonial heart, of all hearts, for the reality and the ideal of country, and which cannot be filled unless the dear native land comes to be breathed on by the grace, clad in the robes, armed with the thunders, admitted an equal to the assembly of the nations; to that large and heroical ambition which would build States: that imperial philanthropy which would open to liberty an asylum here, and give to the sick heart, hard fare, fettered conscience of the children of the Old World, healing, plenty, and freedom to worship God,--to these passions, and these ideas, he presented the appeal for months, day after day, until, on the third of July, 1776, he could record the result, writing thus to his wife: "Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America; and a greater, perhaps, never was, nor will be, among men."

Of that series of spoken eloquence all is perished; not one reported sentence has come down to us. The voice through which the rising spirit of a young nation sounded out its dream of life is hushed. The great spokesman, of an age unto an age, is dead.

And yet, of those lost words is not our whole America one immortal record and reporter? Do ye not read them, deep cut, defying the tooth of time, on all the marble of our greatness? How they blaze on the pillars of our Union! How is their deep sense unfolded and interpreted by every passing hour! How do they come to life, and grow audible, as it were, in the brightening rays of the light he foresaw, as the fabled invisible heart gave out its music to the morning!

Yes, in one sense, they are perished. No parchment manuscript, no embalming printed page, no certain traditions of living or dead, have kept them. Yet, from out and from off all things around us,--our laughing harvests, our songs of labor, our commerce on all the seas, our secure homes, our school-houses and churches, our happy people, our radiant and stainless flag,--how they come pealing, pealing, Independence now, and Independence forever! R. Choate.

XXII.

TRIBUTE TO WEBSTER.

They say he was ambitious! Yes, as Ames said of Hamilton, "there is no doubt that he desired glory; and that, feeling his own force, he longed to deck his brow with the wreath of immortality." But I believe he would have yielded his arm, his frame to be burned, before he would have sought to grasp the highest prize of earth by any means, by any organization, by any tactics, by any speech, which in the least degree endangered the harmony of the system.

They say, too, he loved New England! He did love New Hampshire--that old granite world--the crystal hills, gray and cloud-topped; the river, whose murmur lulled his cradle; the old hearthstone; the grave of father and mother. He loved Massachusetts, which adopted and honored him--that sounding sea-shore, that charmed elm-tree seat, that reclaimed farm, that choice herd, that smell of earth, that dear library, those dearer friends; but the "sphere of his duties was his true country." Dearly he loved you, for he was grateful for the open arms with which you welcomed the stranger and sent him onwards and upwards.

But when the crisis came, and the winds were let lose, and that sea of March "wrought and was tempestuous," then you saw that he knew even you only as you were, American citizens; then you saw him rise to the true nature and stature of American citizenship; then you read on his brow only what he thought of the whole Republic; then you saw him fold the robes of his habitual patriotism around him, and counsel for all--for all. So, then, he served you--"to be pleased with his service was your affair, not his."

And now what would he do, what would he be if he were here to-day? I do not presume to know. But what a loss we have in him! I have read that in some hard battle, when the tide was running against him, and his ranks were breaking, some one in the agony of a, need of generalship exclaimed, "Oh for an hour of Dundee!" So say I, Oh for an hour of Webster now! Oh for one more roll of that thunder inimitable! One more peal of that clarion! One more grave and bold counsel of moderation! One more throb of American feeling! One more Farewell Address! And then might he ascend unhindered to the bosom of his Father and his God. R. Choate.

XXIII.

THE FRUITS OF SKILFUL LABOR AND CULTIVATED INTELLECT.

Perhaps as striking an illustration on a large scale as could be desired, of the connection between the best directed and most skilful labor and the most cultivated and most powerful intellect, is afforded by the case of England. British industry as a whole, is among the most splendid and extraordinary things in the history of man. When you consider how small a work-bench it has to occupy altogether, a little stormy island bathed in almost perpetual fogs, without silk, or cotton, or vineyards, or sunshine, and then look at that agriculture, so scientific and so rewarded, that vast net-work of internal intercommunication, the docks, merchant-ships, men-of-war, the trade encompassing the globe, the flag on which the sun never sets,--when you look, above all, at that vast body of useful and manly art, not directed, like the industry of France,--the industry of vanity,--to making pier-glasses and air-balloons and gobelin tapestry and mirrors, to arranging processions and chiselling silver and twisting gold into filigrees, but to clothing the people, to the manufacture of woolen, cotton, and linen cloth, of railroads and chain-cables and canals and anchors and achromatic telescopes, and chronometers to keep the time at sea,--when you think of the vast aggregate mass of their manufacturing and mechanical production, which no statistics can ex-press, and to find a market for which she is planting colonies under every constellation, and by intimidation, by diplomacy, is knocking at the door of every market-house upon the earth,--it is really difficult to restrain our admiration of such a display of energy, labor, and genius, winning bloodless and innocent triumphs everywhere, giving to the age we live in the name of the age of the industry of the people. Now, the striking and the instructive fact is, that exactly in that island workshop, by this very race of artisans, of coal-heavers and woollen manufacturers of machinists and blacksmiths and ship-carpenters, there has been produced and embodied forever, in words that will outlast the mountains as well as the pyramids, a literature which, take it for all in all, is the richest, most profound, most instructive, combining more spirituality with more common sense, springing from more capacious souls, conveying in better wisdom, more conformable to the truth in man, in nature, and in human life, than the literature of any nation that ever existed. That same race, side by side with the unparalleled growth of its industry produces Shakspeare, Milton, Bacon, and Newton, all four at the summit of human thought,--and then, just below these unapproachable fixed lights, a whole firmament of glories, lesser than they, as all created intelligence must be, yet in whose superior rays the age of Augustus, of Leo X., of Louis XIV., all but the age of Pericles, the culture of Greece, pale and fade. And yet the literature of England is not the only, scarcely the most splendid, fruit or form of the mental power and the energetic character of England. That same race, along with their indus try, along with their literature, has built up a jurisprudence which is for substance our law to-day,--has constructed the largest mercantile and war navy, and the largest commercial empire with its pillars encircling the globe, that men ever saw,--has gained greater victories on sea and land than any power in the world,--has erected the smallest spot to the most imperial ascendency recorded in history. The administrative triumphs of her intellect are as conspicuous as her imaginative and her speculative triumphs.

Such is mental power. Mark its union with labor and with all greatness; deduce the law; learn the lesson; see how you, too, may grow great. Such an industry as that of England demanded such an intellect as that of England. Sic vobis etian itur ad astra! That way to you, also, glory lies! R. Choate.

XXIV.

THE EMPIRE OF MIND.

Knowledge is power as well as fame. Think of that subtle, all-embracing, plastic, mysterious, irresistible thing called public opinion, the god of this lower world, and consider what a State, or a cluster of States, of marked and acknowledged literary and intellectual lead might do to color and shape that opinion to their will. Consider how winged are words; how electrical, light-like the speed of thought; how awful human sympathy. Consider how soon a wise, a beautiful thought uttered here,--a sentiment of liberty perhaps, or word of succor to the oppressed, of exhortations to duty, to patriotism, to glory, the refutation of a sophism, the unfolding of a truth for which the nation may be better,--how soon a word fitly or wisely spoken here is read on the Upper Mississippi and beneath the orange-groves of Florida, all through the unequalled valley; how vast an audience it gains, into how many bosoms it has access, on how much good soil the seed may rest and spring to life, how easily and fast the fine spirit of truth and beauty goes all abroad upon the face of the world.

There is an influence which I would rather see Massachusetts exert on her sisters of this Union, than see her furnish a President every twelve years or command a majority on any division in Congress; and that is such an influence as Athens exerted on the taste and opinion first of Greece, then of Rome, then of the universal modern world; such as she will exert while the race of man exists. This, of all the kinds of empire, was most grateful and innocent and glorious and immortal. This was won by no bargain, by no fraud, by no war of the Peloponnesus, by the shedding of no human blood. It would rest on admiration of the beautiful, the good, the true, in art, in poetry, in thought; and it would last while the emotions, its object, were left in a human soul. It would turn the eye of America hitherwards with love, gratitude and tears, such as those with which we turn to the walk of Socrates beneath the plane-tree, now sere, the summer hour of Cicero, the prison into which philosophy descended to console the spirit of Boethius,-- that room through whose opened window came into the ear of Scott, as he died, the murmur of the gentle Tweed,--love, gratitude, and tears, such as we all yield to those whose immortal wisdom, whose divine verse, whose eloquence of heaven, whose scenes of many-colored life, have held up the show of things to the insatiate desires of the mind, have taught us how to live and how to die! Herein were power, herein were influence, herein were security. Even in the madness of civil war it might survive for refuge and defence! R. Choate.

XXV.

THE CITY OF OUR LIBERTY.

But now that our service of commemoration is ended, let us go hence and meditate on all that it has taught us. You see how long the holy and beautiful city of our liberty and our power has been in building, and by how many hands, and at what cost. You see the towering and steadfast height to which it has gone up, and how its turrets and spires gleam in the rising and setting sun. You stand among the graces of some--your townsmen, your fathers by blood, whose names you bear, whose portraits hang up in your homes, of whose memory you are justly proud--who helped in their day to sink those walls deep in their beds, where neither frost nor earthquake might heave them,--to raise aloft those great arches of stone,--to send up those turrets and spires into the sky. It was theirs to build; remember it is yours, under Providence, to keep the city,--to keep it from the sword of the invader,--to keep it from licentiousness and crime and irreligion, and all that would make it unsafe or unfit to live in,--to keep it from the fires of faction, of civil strife, of party spirit, that might burn up in a day the slow work of a thousand years of glory. Happy, if we shall so perform our duty that they who centuries hence shall dwell among our graces may be able to remember, on some such day as this, in one common service of grateful commemoration, their fathers of the first and the second age of America,--those who through martyrdom and tempest and battle sought liberty, and made her their own,--and those whom neither ease nor luxury, nor the fear of man, nor the worship of man, could prevail on to barter her away! R. Choate.

XXVI.

SPECIMEN OF THE ELOQUENCE OF JAMES OTIS.

England may as well dam up the wafers of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. Arbitrary principles, like those against which we now contend, have cost one king of England his life, another his crown; and they may yet cost a third his most flourishing colonies.

We are two millions--one fifth fighting men. We are bold and vigorous, and we call no man master. To the nation, from whom we are proud to derive our origin, we ever were, and we ever will be, ready to yield unforced assistance; but it must not, and it never can be extorted.

Some have sneeringly asked, "Are the Americans too poor to pay a few pounds on stamped paper?" No! America, thanks to God and herself is rich. But the right to take ten pounds, implies the right to take a thousand; and what must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust? True, the spectre is now small; but the shadow he casts before him is huge enough to darken all this fair land. Others, in sentimental style, talk of the immense debt of gratitude which we owe to England. And what is the amount of this debt? Why, truly, it is the same that the young lion owes to the dam, which has brought it forth on the solitude of the mountain, or left it amid the winds and storms of the desert.

We plunged into the wave with the great charter of freedom in our teeth, because the fagot and the torch were behind us. We have waked this New World from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path; towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the tropics, and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than the increase of our wealth and population. And do we owe all this to the kind succor of the mother-country? No! We owe it to the tyranny that drove us from her, to the pelting storms which invigorated our helpless infancy.

But perhaps others will say, "We ask no money from your gratitude--we only demand that you should pay your own expenses." And who, I pray, is to judge of their necessity? Why, the king--(and with all due reverence to his sacred majesty, he understands the real wants of his distant subjects as little as he does the language of the Choctaws.) Who is to judge concerning the frequency of these demands? The ministry. Who is to judge whether the money is properly expended? The cabinet behind the throne. In every instance, those who take are to judge for those who pay. If this system is suffered to go into operation, we shall have reason to esteem it a great privilege, that rain and dew do not depend upon parliament; otherwise they would soon be taxed and dried.

But, thanks to God, there is freedom enough left upon earth to resist such monstrous injustice. The flame of liberty is extinguished in Greece and Rome, but the light of its glowing embers is still bright and strong on the shores of America. Actuated by its sacred influence, we will resist unto death. But we will not countenance anarchy and misrule. The wrongs that a desperate community have heaped upon their enemies, shall be amply and speedily repaired. Still, it may be well for some proud men to remember that a fire is lighted in these colonies which one breath of their king may kindle into such fury that the blood of all England cannot extinguish it. Mrs. M. L. Child.

XXVII.

WEBSTER IN THE DARTMOUTH COLLEGE CASE.

The Dartmouth College case forms an important era in Mr, Webster's life His argument in that case stands out among his other arguments, as his speech in reply to Mr. Hayne, among his other speeches. No better argument has been spoken in the English tongue in the memory of any living man, nor is the child that is born to-day likely to live to hear a better. Its learning is ample but not ostentatious; its logic irresistible; its eloquence vigorous and lofty. Judge Story often spoke with great animation of the effect he then produced upon the court "For the first hour," said he, "we listened to him with perfect astonishment; for the second hour, with perfect delight; and for the third hour with perfect conviction." It is not too much to say that he entered the court on that day a comparatively unknown name, and left it with no rival but Pinkney. All the words he spoke on that occasion have not been recorded. When he had exhausted the resources of learning and logic, his mind passed naturally and simply into a strain of feeling not common to the place. Old recollections and early associations came over him, and the vision of his youth rose up.

The genius of the institution where he was nurtured seemed standing by his side in weeds of mourning, with a countenance of sorrow. With suffused eyes, and faltering voice, he broke into an unpremeditated strain of emotion, so strong and so deep, that all who heard him were borne along with it. Heart answered to heart as he spoke, and, when he ceased, the silence and tears of the impassive bench, as well as of the excited audience were a tribute to the truth and power of the feeling by which he had been inspired. G. S. Hillard.

XXVIII.

THE AMBITION OF WEBSTER.

Mr. Webster was an ambitious man. He desired the highest office in the gift of the people. But on this subject, as on all others, there was no concealment in his nature. And ambition is not a weakness unless it be disproportional to the capacity. To have more ambition than ability is to be at once weak and unhappy. With him it was a noble passion, because it rested upon noble powers. He was a man cast in a heroic mould. His thoughts, his wishes, his passions, his aspirations, were all on a grander scale than those of other men. Unexercised capacity is always a source of rusting discontent. The height to which men may rise is in proportion to the upward force of their genius, and they will never be calm till they have attained their predestined elevation. Lord Bacon says, "as in nature things move violently to their place and calmly in their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, in authority, settled and calm." Mr. Webster had a giant's brain and a giant's heart, and he wanted a giant's work. He found repose in those strong conflicts and great duties which crush the weak and madden the sensitive. He thought that, if he were elevated to the highest place, he should so administer the government as to make the country honored abroad, and great and happy at home. He thought, too, that he could do something to make us more truly one people. This, above everything else, was his ambition. And we, who knew him better than others, felt that it was a prophetic ambition, and we honored and trusted him accordingly. G. S. Hillard.

XXIX.

THE DANGER OF EXCLUSIVE DEVOTION TO BUSINESS.

This is a world of inflexible compensations. Nothing is ever given away, but everything is bought and paid for. If, by exclusive and absolute surrender of ourselves to material pursuits, we materialize the mind, we lose that class of satisfactions of which the mind is the region and the source. A young man in business, for instance, begins to feel the exhilarating glow of success, and deliberately determines to abandon himself to its delirious whirl. He says to himself, I will think of nothing but business till I shall have made so much money, and then I will begin a new life. I will gather round me books and pictures and friends. I will have knowledge, taste, and cultivation,--the perfume of scholarship, and winning speech, and graceful manners. I will see foreign countries, and converse with accomplished men. I will drink deep of the fountains of classic lore. Philosophy shall guide me, history shall instruct, and poetry shall charm me. Science shall open to me her world of wonders. I shall remember my present life of drudgery as one recalls a troubled dream when the morning has dawned.

He keeps his self-registered vow. He bends his thoughts downward and nails them to the dust. Every power, every affection, every taste, except those which his particular occupa tion calls into play, is left to starve. Over the gates of his mind he writes in letters which he who runs may read, "No admittance except on business." In time he reaches the goal of his hopes; but now insulted Nature begins to claim her revenge. That which was once unnatural is now natural to him. The enforced constraint has become a rigid deformity. The spring of his mind is broken. He can no longer lift his mind from the ground. Books and knowledge and wise discourse, and the amenities of it, and the cordial of friendship, are like words in a strange tongue. To the hard, smooth surface of his soul, nothing genial, graceful, or winning will cling; he cannot even purge his voice of its fawning tone, or pluck from his face the mean, money-getting mask which the child does not look at without ceasing to smile. Amid the graces and ornaments of wealths, he is like a blind man in a picture-gallery. That which he has done he must continue to do. He must accumulate riches which he cannot enjoy and contemplate the dreary prospect of growing old without anything to make age venerable or attractive; for age without wisdom and without knowledge is the winter's cold without the winter's fire G. S. Hillard.

XXX.

SPEECH OF PATRICK HENRY, IN THE CONVENTION OF DELEGATES OF VIRGINIA, MARCH,
1775.

Mr. President, It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in the great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know, what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry, for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss! Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations, which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation! Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love! Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation,--the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministers have been so long forging.

And what have we to oppose to them?--Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer on the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light, of which if is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned,--we have remonstrated,--we have supplicated,--we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical bands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned from the foot of the throne.

In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free,--if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending,--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of or contest shall be obtained,--we must fight; I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

XXXI.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

They tell us, sir, that we are weak,--unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed; and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?

Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone,--it is to the active, the vigilant, the brave. Besides sir we have no election! If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat,--but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard in the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable,--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry peace! peace!--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Heaven!--I know not what course others may take, but as for me,--give me liberty, or give me death!

XXXII.

REPLY TO THE DUKE OF GRAFTON.

My Lords, I am amazed; yes, my Lords, I am amazed at his Grace's speech. The noble Duke cannot look before him, behind him, or on either side of him, without seeing some noble peer who owes his seat in this House to his successful exertion in the profession to which I belong. Does he not feel that it is as honorable to owe it to these, as to being the accident of an accident? To all these noble Lords, the language of the noble Duke is as applicable and insulting as it is to myself But I do not fear to meet it single and alone. No one venerates the peerage more than I do; but, my Lords, I must say, that the peerage solicited me, not I the peerage.

Nay, more; I can say and will say that as a Peer of Parliament, as a Speaker of this right honorable House, as Keeper of the Great Seal, as Guardian of his Majesty's conscience, as Lord High Chancellor of England,-nay, even in that character alone, in which the noble Duke would think it an affront to be considered but which character none can deny me,--as a MAN,--I am, at this moment, as respectable,--I beg to leave add, I am as much respected,--as the proudest peer I now look down upon. Lord Thurlow.

XXXIII.

THE PROSPECTS OF CALIFORNIA.

Judging from the past, what have we not a right to expect in the future. The world has never witnessed anything equal or similar to our career hitherto. Scarcely two years ago California was almost an unoccupied wild. With the exception of a præsidium, a mission a pueblo, or a lonely ranch, scattered here and there, at tiresome distances, there was nothing to show that the uniform stillness had ever been broken by the footsteps of civilized man. The agricultural richness of her valley remained unimproved; and the wealth of a world lay entombed in the bosom of her solitary mountains, and on the banks of her unexplored streams. Behold the contrast! The hand of agriculture is now busy in every fertile valley and its toils are remunerated with rewards which in no other portion of the world can be credited. Enterprise has pierced every hill, for hidden treasure, and has heaped up enormous gains. Cities and villages dot the surface of the whole State. Steamers dart along our rivers, and innumerable vessels spread their white wings over our bays. Not Constantinople, upon which the wealth of imperial Rome was lavished,--not St. Petersburg, to found which the arbitrary Czar sacrificed thousands of his subjects, would rival, in rapidity of growth, the fair city which lies before me. Our state is a marvel to ourselves, and a miracle to the rest of the world. Nor is the influence of California confined within her own borders. Mexico, and the islands nestled in the embrace of the Pacific, have felt the quickening breath of her enterprise. With her golden wand, she has touched the prostrate corpse of South American industry, and it has sprung up in the freshness of life. She has caused the hum of busy life to be heard in the wilderness "where rolls the Oregon," and but recently heard no sound, "save its own dashings." Even the wall of Chinese exclusiveness has been broken down, and the children of the sun have come forth to view the splendor of her achievements.

But, flattering as has been the past, satisfactory as is the present, it is but a foretaste of the future. It is a trite saying, that we live in an age of great events. Nothing can be more true. But the greatest of all events of the present age is at hand. It needs not the gift of prophecy to predict, that the course of the world's trade is destined soon to be changed. But a few years can elapse before the commerce of Asia and the islands of the Pacific, instead of pursuing the ocean track, by way of Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, or even taking the shorter route of the Isthmus of Darien, or the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, will enter the Golden Gate of California, and deposit its riches in our own city. Hence, on bars of iron, and propelled by steam, it will ascend the mountains and traverse the desert; and having again reached the confines of civilization, will be distributed, through a thousand channels, to every portion of the Union and of Europe. New York will then become what London now is,-the great central point of exchange, the heart of trade, the force of whose contraction and expansion will be felt throughout every artery of the commercial world; and San Francisco will then stand the second city of America. Is this visionary? Twenty years will determine.

The world is interested in our success; for a fresh field is opened to its commerce, and a new avenue to the civilization and progress of the human race. Let us, then, endeavor to realize the hopes of Americans, and the expectations of the world. Let us not only be united amongst ourselves, for our own local welfare, but let us strive to cement the common bonds of brother-hood of the whole Union. In our relations to the Federal Government, let us know no South, no North, no East, no West. Wherever American liberty flourishes, let that be our common country! Wherever the American banner waves, let that be our home! Nathaniel Bennett.

XXXIV.

IN PROSPECT OF WAR

Go forth, defenders of your country, accompanied with every auspicious omen; advance with alacrity into the field, when God himself musters the hosts to war. Religion is too much interested in your success not to lend you her aid. She will shed over your enterprise her selectest influence. While you are engaged in the field, many will repair to the closet, many to the sanctuary; the faithful of every name will employ that prayer which has power with God; the feeble hands which are unequal to any other weapon, will grasp the sword of the Spirit; and from myriad of humble, contrite hearts, the voice of intercession, supplication, and weeping, will mingle, in its ascent to heaven, with the shouts of battle and the shock of arms.

While you have everything to fear from the success of the enemy, you have every means of preventing that success; so that it is next to impossible for victory not to crown your exertions The extent of your resources, under God, is equal to the justice of your cause. But, should Providence determine otherwise,--should you fall in this struggle, should the nation fall,--you will have the satisfaction (the purest allotted to man), of having performed your part; your names will be enrolled with the most illustrious dead, while posterity, to the end of time, as often as they revolve the events of this period (and they will incessantly revolve them), will turn to you a reverential eye, while they mourn over the freedom which is entombed in your sepulchre.

I cannot but imagine the virtuous heroes, legislators, and patriots of every age and country, are bending from their elevated seats to witness this contest, as if they were incapable, till it be brought to a favorable issue, of enjoying their eternal repose. Enjoy that repose, illustrious immortals! Your mantle fell when you ascended; and thousands, inflamed with your spirit, and impatient to tread in your steps, are ready to swear by Him that sitteth on the throne, and liveth forever and ever, that they will protect freedom in her last asylum, and never desert her cause, which you sustained by your labors, and cemented with your blood! Robert Hall.

XXXV.

THE AMERICAN INDIANS.

If the Indians had the vices of savage life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their country, their friends, and their homes. If they forgave not injury, neither did they forget kindness. If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. Their love, like their hate, stopped not on this side of the grave. But where are they? Where are the villages, and warriors, and youth? The sachems and the tribes? The hunters and their families? They have perished. They are consumed. The wasting pestilence has not alone done the mighty work. No,--nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power, a moral canker, which hath eaten into their heart-cores,--a plague which the touch of the white man communicated,--a poison, which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. The winds of the Atlantic fan not a single region which they may now call their own. Already the last feeble remnants of the race are preparing for their journey beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave their miserable homes,--the aged, the helpless, the women, and the warriors, "few and faint, yet fearless still." The ashes are cold on their native hearths. The smoke no longed curls round their lowly cabins. They move on with a slow, unsteady step. The white man is upon their heels, for terror or dispatch; but they heed him not. They turn to take a last look of their deserted villages. They cast a last glance upon the graves of their fathers They shed no tears; they utter no cries; they heave no groans. There is something in their hearts which passes speech. There is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both; which chokes all utterance; which has no aim or method. It is courage absorbed in despair. They linger but for a moment. Their look is onward. They have passed the fatal stream. It shall never be repassed by them,--no, never. Yet there lies not between us and them an impassible gulf. They know and feel, that for them there is still one remove farther, not distant, nor unseen. It is the general burying-ground of their race. J. Story.

XXXVI.

CLASSICAL LEARNING.

The importance of classical learning to professional education is so obvious, that the surprise is, that it could ever have become matter of disputation. I speak not of its power in reining the taste, in disciplining the judgment, in invigorating the understanding, or in warming the heart with elevated sentiments; but of its power of direct, positive, necessary instruction. There is not a single nation from the north to the south of Europe, from the bleak shores of the Baltic to the bright plains of immortal Italy, whose literature is not embedded in the very elements of classical learning. The literature of England is, in an emphatic sense, the production of her scholars; of men who have cultivated letters in her universities, and colleges, and grammar-schools; of men who thought any life too short, chiefly because it left some relic of antiquity unmastered, and any other fame too humble, because it faded in the presence of Roman and Grecian genius.

He who studies English literature without the lights of classical learning, loses half the charms of its sentiments and style, of its force and feelings, of its delicate touches, of its delightful allusions, of its illustrative associations. Who that reads the poetry of Gray, does not feel that it is the refinement of classical taste which gives such inexpressible vividness and transparency to his diction? Who that reads the concentrated sense and melodious versification of Dryden and Pope, does not perceive in them the disciples of the old school, whose genius was inflamed by the heroic verse, the terse satire, and the playful wit of antiquity? Who that meditates over the strains of Milton does not feel that he drank deep at

"Siloa's brook, that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God,--"

that the fires of his magnificent mind were lighted by coals from ancient altars?

It is no exaggeration to declare, that he who proposes to abolish classical studies, proposes to render, in a great measure, inert and unedifying, the mass of English literature for three centuries; to rob us of the glory of the past, and much of the instruction of future ages; to blind us to excellencies which few may hope to equal, and none to surpass; to annihilate associations which are interwoven with our best sentiments, and give to distant times and countries a presence and reality, as if they were in fact his own. J. Story.

XXXVII.

AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF PATRIOTISM AND LOYALTY.

I call upon you, fathers, by the shades of your ancestors, by the dear ashes which repose in this precious soil, by all you are, and all you hope to be; resist every object of disunion, resist every encroachment upon your liberties, resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish your system of public instruction.

I call upon you, mothers, by that which never fails in woman,--the love of your offspring,--teach them as they climb your knees, or lean on your bosoms, the blessings of liberty. Swear them at the altar, as with their baptismal vows, to be true to their country, and never to forget or forsake her.

I call upon you young men, to remember whose sons you are; whose inheritance you possess. Life can never be too short which brings nothing but disgrace and oppression. Death never comes too soon, if necessary in defence of the liberties of your country. I call upon you, old men, for your counsels, and your prayers, and your benedictions. May not your gray hairs go down in sorrow to the grave, with the recollection that you have lived in vain. May not your last sun sink in the west upon a nation of slaves.

No;--I read in the destiny of my country far better hopes, far brighter visions. We, who are now assembled here, must soon be gathered to the congregation of other days. The time of our departure is at hand to make way for our children upon the theatre of life. May God speed them and theirs. May he, who at the distance of another century shall stand here to celebrate this day, still look round upon a free, happy, and virtuous people. May he have reason to exult as we do. May he, with all the enthusiasm of truth as well as poetry exclaim that here is still his country. J. Story.

XXXVIII.

OUR DUTIES TO THE REPUBLIC.

The Old World has already revealed to us, in its unsealed books, the beginning and end of all its own marvelous struggles in the cause of liberty. Greece, lovely Greece,

"The land of scholars and the nurse of arms,"