These are the lines, O, heaven-commanded Toil, 4. O, gracious mother, whose benignant breast HOLMES. SUCH, O, men of Athens! were your ancestors: so glorious in the eye of the world; so bountiful and munificent to their country; so sparing, so modest, so self-denying, to themselves. What resemblance can we find, in the present generation, to these great men? At a time when your ancient competitors have left you a clear stage, when the Lacedemonians are disabled, the Thebans employed in troubles of their own, when no other state whatever is in a condition to rival or molest you, in short, when you are at full liberty, when you have the opportunity and the power to become once more the sole arbiters of Greece,you permit, patiently, whole provinces to be wrested from you; you lavish the public money in scandalous and obscure uses; you suffer your allies to perish in time of peace, whom you preserved in time of war; and, to sum up all, you, yourselves, by your mercenary court, and servile resignation to the will and pleasure of designing, insidious leaders, abet, encourage, and strengthen, the most dangerous and formidable of your enemies. Yes, Athenians, I repeat it, you yourselves are the contrivers of your own ruin. Lives there a man who has confidence enough to deny it? Let him arise and assign, if he can, any other cause of the success and prosperity of Philip. "But," you reply, "what Athens may have lost in reputation abroad she has gained in splendor at home. Was there ever a greater appearance of prosperity and plenty? Is not the city enlarged? Are not the streets better paved, houses repaired and beautified?" Away with such trifles! Shall I be paid with counters? An old square new vamped up! a fountain! an aqueduct !-Are these acquisitions to boast of? Cast your eyes upon the magistrate under whose ministry you boast these precious improvements. Behold the despicable creature, raised all at once from dirt to opulence, from the lowest obscurity to the highest honors. Have not some of these upstarts built private houses and seats vying with the most sumptuous of our public palaces? And how have their fortunes and their power increased, but as the Commonwealth has been ruined and impoverished? Had I not, by deeply pondering the precepts of philosophy, and the lessons of the historian and the poet, imbued my mind with an early and intimate conviction that nothing in life is worthy of strenuous pursuit but honor and renown, and that, for the attainment of these, the extremes of bodily torture, and all the terrors of exile and of death, ought to be regarded as trifles, never should I have engaged in such a series of deadly conflicts for your safety, nor have exposed myself to these daily machinations of the most profligate of mankind. But the literature, the wisdom, the consentaneous voice of antiquity, all teem with glorious examples examples which would have been forever buried in oblivion, but for the redeeming light of letters. How many instances of heroic daring and devotedness are pictured on the Greek and Roman page, not for our study only, but for our imitation! With these illustrious models incessantly before my eyes, I have labored to form my mind and character by intense meditation on their excellence. 3. ON TAXING THE AMERICAN COLONIES, 1775.- Lord Chatham. What foundation have we for our claims over America? What is our right to persist in such cruel and vindictive measures against that loyal, respectable people? They say you have no right to tax them without their consent. They say truly. Representation and taxation must go together. Repeal, therefore, my lords. But bare repeal will not be enough. What! repeal a bit of paper! repeal a piece of parchment! That alone will not do, my lords. You must go through the work; you must declare you have no right to tax the colonists; you must repeal their fears and resentments; - then they may trust you; then you may hope for their love and gratitude. All attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can, not when we must. Avoid the humiliating, the disgraceful necessity. Make the first advances towards peace. There is no time to be lost. Every moment is big with dan gers. While I am speaking the decisive blow may be struck, and millions involved in the consequence. The very first drop will make a wound which years, perhaps ages, may not heal. I would not encourage America to proceed beyond the right line. I reprobate all acts of violence. But, when her inherent constitutional rights are invaded, then I own myself an American, and, feeling myself such, I shall, to the verge of my life, vindicate those rights against all men who would trample on or deny them. 4. JUSTICE. Sheridan. The majesty of Justice, in the eyes of Mr. Hastings, is an object "not to be approached without solicitation;" an object to be propitiated with offerings and worshipped with sacrifices. But Justice is not this halt and miserable object. It is not an Indian pagod. It is not the portentous phantom of despair. It is not like any fabled monster, formed in the eclipse of reason, and found in some unhallowed grove of superstitious darkness and political dismay. No, my lords; in the happy reverse of all these, I turn from the disgusting caricature to the real image! Justice I have now before me, august' and pure, the abstract idea of all that would be perfect in the spirit and aspirings of men; where the mind rises, where the heart expands; where the countenance is ever placid and benign; where her favorite attitude is to stoop to the unfortunate, to hear their cry and to help them, to succor and to save, to rescue and relieve; majestic from its mercy, venerable from its utility, uplifted without pride, firm without obduracy, beneficent in each preference, lovely though in her frown. On that justice I rely. 5. IMPEACHMENT OF HASTINGS.— Burke. I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and mis demeanors. I impeach him, in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, in parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed. I impeach him, in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored. I impeach him, in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties, he has subverted; whose properties he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate. I impeach him, in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated. I impeach him, in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly out raged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life. 6. THE IMPRACTICABLE UNDESIRABLE. Burke. I know it is common for men to say that such and such things are perfectly right, - very desirable, but that, unfortunately, they are not practicable. O, no, sir, no! Those things which are not practicable are not desirable. There is nothing in the world really beneficial that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well-directed pursuit. There is nothing that God has judged good for us that he has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world. If we cry, like children, for the moon, like children we must cry on. Nothing in the history of mankind is like their progress. For my part, I never cast an eye on their flourishing commerce and their cultivated and commodious life, but they seem to me rather ancient nations grown to perfection through a long series of fortunate events, and a train of successful industry, accumulating wealth in many centuries, than the colonies of yesterday, than a set of miserable outcasts, a few years ago, not so much sent as thrown out, on the bleak and barren shore of a desolate wilderness, three thousand miles from all civilized intercourse. 8. THE SCHOOLMASTER IS ABROAD. - Lord Brougham. There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that "the soldier was abroad." That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. There is another person abroad,- a less important person in the eyes of some, an insignificant person, whose labors have tended to produce this state of things. The schoolmaster is abroad! And I trust more to him, armed with his primer, than I do to the soldier in full military array, for upholding and extending the liberties of the country. The adversaries of improvement are wont to make themselves merry with what is termed the "march of intellect," and here, as far as the phrase goes, they are in the right. The conqueror moves in a march. He stalks onward with the "pride, pomp, and circumstance" of war, banners flying, shouts rending the air, guns thundering, and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks of the wounded, and the lamentations for the slain. Not thus the schoolmaster, in his peaceful vocation. Не quietly advances in his humble path, laboring steadily till he has opened to the light all the recesses of ignorance, and torn up by the roots the weeds of vice. His is a progress not to be compared with anything like a march; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels more imperishable than the destroyer of his species, the scourge of the world, ever won. Such men -men deserving the glorious title of Teachers of Mankind- I have found, laboring conscientiously, though, perhaps, obscurely, in their blessed vocation, wherever I have gone. Their calling is high and holy; their renown will fill the earth in after ages, in proportion as it sounds not far off in their own times. 9. REPLY TO M. DE BRÉZÉ.* Mirabeau. The CommonsEI of France have resolved to deliberate. We have heard the intentions that have been attributed to the king; and you, sir, who cannot be recognized as his organ in the National Assembly,—you, who have here neither place, voice, nor right to speak, you are not the person to bring to us a message of his. Go, say to those who sent you, that we are here by the power of the people, and that we will not be driven hence save by the power of the bayonet. 10. MEN MORE POWERFUL THAN MEASURES. -Canning. Look at France, and see what we have to cope with, and consider what has made her what she is. A man. You will tell me that she was great, and powerful, and formidable, before the days of Bonaparte's government; that he found in her great physical and moral resources; that he had but to turn them to account. True, and he did so. Compare the situation in which he founds France with that to which he has raised her. I am no panegyrist of Bonaparte; but I cannot shut my eyes to the superiority of his talents, to the amazing ascendency of his genius. Tell me not of his measures and his policy. It is his genius, his character, that keeps the world in awe. Sir, to meet, to check, to curb, to stand up against him, we want arms of the same kind. I am far from objecting to the large military establishments which are proposed to you. I vote for them, with all my heart. But, for the purpose of coping with Bonaparte, one great commanding spirit is worth them all. On the occasion of his communicating to the National Assembly of France, June 23d, 1789, an order from the king for their dispersion. |