The American Union Speaker Part 23

By those who stood arrayed at Plataea! By those who encountered the Persian fleet at Salamis! Who fought at Artemisium! No! by all those ill.u.s.trious sons of Athens, whose remains lie deposited in the public monuments.

CLI.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

The reign of Queen Elizabeth may be considered as the opening of the modern history of England, especially in its connection with the modern system of Europe, which began about that time to a.s.sume the form that it preserved till the French Revolution. It was a very memorable period, of which the maxims ought to be engraven on the head and heart of every Englishman.

Philip the Second, at the head of the greatest empire then in the world openly was aiming at universal domination. To the most extensive and opulent dominions, the most numerous and disciplined armies, the most renowned captains, the greatest revenue, he added also the most formidable power over opinion. Elizabeth was among the first objects of his hostility.

That wise and magnanimous princess placed herself in the front of the battle for the liberties of Europe. Though she had to contend at home with his fanatical faction, which almost occupied Ireland, which divided Scotland, and was not of contemptible strength in England, she aided the oppressed inhabitants of the Netherlands in their just and glorious resistance to his tyranny; she aided Henry the Great in suppressing the abominable rebellion which anarchical principles had excited and Spanish arms had supported in France, and after a long reign of various fortune, in which she preserved her unconquered spirit through great calamities and still greater dangers, she at length broke the strength of the enemy, and reduced his power within such limits as to be compatible with the safety of England and of all Europe. Her great heart inspired her with a higher and a n.o.bler wisdom--which disdained to appeal to the low and sordid pa.s.sions of her people even for the protection of their low and sordid interests, because she knew, or, rather, she felt that there are effeminate, creeping, cowardly, short-sighted pa.s.sions, which shrink from conflict, even in defence of their own mean objects. In a righteous cause she roused those generous affections of her people, which alone teach boldness, constancy, and foresight, and which are therefore the only safe guardians of the lowest as well as the highest interests of a nation. In her memorable address to the army, when the invasion of her kingdom was threatened by Spain, this woman of heroic spirit disdained to speak to them of their ease and their commerce, and their wealth and their safety. No! She touched another chord--she spoke of their national honor, of their dignity as Englishmen, of "the foul scorn that Parma or Spain should dare to invade the borders of her realms." She breathed into them those grand and powerful sentiments, which exalt vulgar men into heroes which led them into the battle of their country armed with holy and irresistible enthusiasm; which ever cover with their s.h.i.+eld all the ign.o.ble interests that base calculation, and cowardly selfishness tremble to hazard, but shrink from defending.

J. Mackintosh.

CLII.

THE FREE PRESS.

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

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

J. Mackintosh.

CLIII.

THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.

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

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

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

Lord Erskine.

CLIV.

BRITISH TYRANNY IN INDIA.

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

Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of considering the subject, and I can account for it. I have not been considering it through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself among reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the Governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. "Who is it," said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure--"who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean?

Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to in; and by this t.i.tle we will defend it," said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation.

These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and depend upon it, nothing but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection.

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

Lord Erskine.

CLV.

DECLARATION OF RIGHT.

I might as a const.i.tuent, come to your bar and demand my liberty. I do call upon you by the laws of the land, and their violation; by the instructions of eighteen counties; by the arms, inspiration, and providence of the present moment--tell us the rule by which we shall go; a.s.sert the law of Ireland; declare the liberty of the land! I will not be answered by a public lie, in the shape of an amendment; nor, speaking for the subjects'

freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, unless it be to break your chain and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking to his rags. He may be naked,--he shall not be in irons. And I do see the time at hand; the spirit is gone forth; the Declaration of Right is planted; and though great men should fall off, yet the cause shall live; and though he who utters this should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the humble organ who conveys it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man will not die with the prophet, but survive him.

H. Grattan.

CLVI.

POLITICS AND RELIGION.

That religion has, in fact, nothing to do with the politics of many who profess it, is a melancholy truth. But that it has of right, no concern with political transactions, is quite a new discovery. If such opinions, however, prevail, there is no longer any mystery in the character of those whose conduct in political matters violates every precept and slanders every principle of the religion of Christ. But what is politics? Is it not the science and the exercise of civil rights and civil duties? And what is religion? Is it not an obligation to the service of G.o.d, founded on his authority, and extending to all our relations, personal and social? Yet religion has nothing to do with politics? Where did you learn this maxim?

The Bible is full of directions for your behavior as citizens. It is plain, pointed; awful in its injunctions on ruler and ruled as such: yet religion has nothing to do with politics! You are commanded "in all your ways to acknowledge Him." In everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, to let your requests be made known unto G.o.d "And whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." Yet religion has nothing to do with politics! Most astonis.h.i.+ng! And is there any part of your conduct in which you are, or wish to be, without law to G.o.d, and not under the law of Jesus Christ? Can you persuade yourselves that political men and measures are to undergo no review in the judgment to come? That all the pa.s.sion and violence, the fraud and falsehood and corruption, which pervade the system of party, and burst out like a flood at the public elections, are to be blotted from the catalogue of unchristian deeds, because they are politics? Or that a minister of the gospel may see his people, in their political career, bid defiance to their G.o.d in breaking through every moral restraint, and keep a guiltless silence, because religion has nothing to do with politics? I forbear to press the argument farther; observing only that many of our difficulties and sins may be traced to this pernicious notion. Yes, if our religion had had more to do with our politics; if, in the pride of our citizens.h.i.+p, we had not forgotten our Christianity; if we had prayed more and wrangled less about the affairs of our country, it would have been infinitely better for us at this day J. M. Mason

STANDARD SELECTIONS.

POETRY

CLVII.

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming-- Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming!

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say, does that Star-spangled Banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

On that sh.o.r.e, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses!

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now s.h.i.+nes on the stream: 'T is the Star-spangled Banner!--O long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where are the foes who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion, A home and a country should leave us no more?

Their blood hath washed out their foul footsteps' pollution!

No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave; And the Star-spangled Banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

O, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!

Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a Nation Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto--"In G.o.d is our trust;"

And the Star-spangled Banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

F. S. Key.

CLVIII.

ASPIRATIONS OF YOUTH

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

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

Onward, onward, may we press Through the path of duty; Virtue is true happiness, Excellence true beauty.