PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING A TEXT-BOOK FOR COLLEGES AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS S. H. CLARK A F. M. BLANCHARD THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO . - . . . CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS KFW VORJT IOOT e A Of THE UNIVERSITY COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY NEW YORK CONTENTS MM INTRODUCTION.., ix part ne. THE FUNDAMENTALS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING. CHAPTER I DIRECTNESS 3 The Call to Arms Patrick Henry 5 The Eloquence of John Adams Daniel Webster 10 Speech on a Motion for an Ad- dress to the Throne Lord Chatham 18 America's Duty to Greece Henry Clay 29 CHAPTER II. EARNESTNESS 33 Affairs in Cuba John M. Thurston 35 Against Centralization Henry W. Orady 41 Speech on the War of 1812 Henry Clay 47 Impeachment of Warren Hastings . . Edmund Burke 65 CHAPTER III. DIGNITY 69 Second Inaugural Address Abraham Lincoln 61 The Martyr President Henry Ward Beecher. . . 64 Speech at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettys- burg Abraham Lincoln 71 Oration at the Laying of the Cor- ner-Stone of the Bunker Hill Monument. . . . Daniel Webster . . 73 97523 CONTENTS part THE STUDY OP DETAIL. Ml CHAPTER IV. MOODS .................................... 85 Reply to Hayne .................. Daniel Webster ........ 87 CHAPTER V. IMPRESSFVENESS ............................. 97 The Wonders of the Dawn ....... Edward Everett. ....... 98 Avalanches of the Jungfrau ....... O. B. Cheever ......... 100 The First View of the Heavens . . . . O. M. Mitchel .......... 103 Regulus to the Carthaginians ...... E. Kellogg ............ 105 CHAPTER VI. CONTRAST ................................. 109 Tact and Talent ................. London Allot .......... 110 Rome and Carthage .............. Victor Hugo ........... 112 Spartacus to the Gladiators ........ E. Kellogg ............ 114 CHAPTER VII. CLIMAX ................................... 118 Cassius's Complaint of Cseaar ...... Shakespeare ........... 121 Liberty and Union ................ Daniel Webster ........ 123 part Ubree. STYLES OP DELIVERY. CHAPTER VIII. THE COLLOQUIAL STYLE A j7 Hamlet's Advice to the Players Shakespeare 127 Eloquence of O'Connell >//,/, // /'I, i7/i/ . . . The Homes of the People Henry W. Grady . Paul Revere's Ride George William Curtis CHAPTER IX. THE ELEVATED STYLE 138 A Reminiscence of Lexington Theodore Parker Death of Garfield James O. Maine 141 Plymouth Rock Daniel Webster . . 143 CONTENTS Yii PAOB CHAPTER X THE IMPAHSIONED STTLB 146 Hotspur to Worcester. . Shakespeare 147 Sbjlock fur the .U-w* . Shakespeare 147 Against Curtailing the Right of Suffrage .Victor Hugo 149 On the Irish Disturbance Hill. . .Darnel O'Co**eU .. .161 part four. THE FORMS OF DISCOURSE. CHATTER XL THE FORMS or DISCOURSE 155 The Burning of Moscow ./. T. /ftadJfy 156 The Battle of Waterloo. . Ffctor Hugo . . 168 Waterloo Vietor Hugo American Taxation . Edmund Burke 182 Henry's Speech before Aginconrt. . Skakufmn 194 An Appeal for Liberty Joseph Story .. 196 Plea for the Old South Church, Boston.. .WtndfU PhiUipt 198 part r ire. ORATIONa Pnu'iJuXII OKVTI..NS o (j:; Repeal of the Union. . Danitl O'ConntU 904 Defence of the Kennistons Danitl Wcbttir 216 Reply to Flood iry Gratlan 241 ^b New South I/enry W. Orady 248 Against Search- WarrmnU for Sea- men ..LordChaiham 261 Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. .John Bright . 270 The Nature of Christ Henry Ward Beeehtr . . . 284 INTRODUCTION DURING the past few years there has developed a marked increase of interest in public speaking. Near- ly all the leading institutions of learning have estab- lished chairs of oratory, or forensics, and many high- schools and normal schools are devoting considerable attention to the subject. The groat number of inter- rollrgiate and inter-preparatory school contests in so many of the States is an additional sign of the growth of interest in public speaking. The reason for this increased attention is not far to seek. Educators have come to recognize that the training derived from this study is not only practical, but in the highest degree educational. Such train- ing results in the undoubted advantage that comes to one who can expre j/ himself forcibly in public ; and, further, it gives the unique culture that can be derived only from actual contact with the thought of the great statesmen and orators of the past. In the burning words of Patrick Henry, we recognize the very spirit of the Revolution ; and what view of anti- slavery days can we get clearer than that which ap- pears in the speeches of Stephen Douglas and Wen- dell Phillips ? Furthermore, the study of oratory in X INTRODUCTION its larger aspect cannot fail to develop the jpgical acumen of the pupil. And lastly, we must not over- look the value of oratorical training in developing the emotional side of the student. The modern scientific spirit oftentimes leads us to believe that the expres- sion of emotion belongs only to the uncultured. The arrangement of the modern curriculum precludes the development of the emotional nature. Tllfif^ 01 '^! ft 1 ** work in Dublicspeakin^ comes \n as a legitimate and necessary corrective for the too narrow applications! the scientific spirit in education! ]Etr>tlifl o44uil to oGtain the best results in public speaking many methods have been tried. A large number of these have been successful, but none has seemed entirely to satisfy the needs of high-school and college students, perhaps because they are either too detailed and technical or lacking altogether in specific direction. In other words, they are not adapted to the conditions which surround the teach- ing of public speaking in our higher institutions of learning. One year is the average time given to the teaching of this subject in our colleges, a period much too brief in which to cover even partially the entire field of vocal expression. After careful experiment with college classes, the authors have prepared the present work with the view to giving the student the largest amount of practical training with a minimum of theory. In the arrangement of the steps in this book, the endeavor has been made to conform to sound psycho- logical principles. The fundamentals are studied INTRODUCTION xi before the details, and the student's attention is directed to but one principle at a time. The various extracts are chosen with great care. It is true that the perfect rendering of every extrac^equires the fastery of all the elements that go to make effective speaking, but in this book each selection is particu- larly adapted for practice on the principle discussed in the chapter in which it is found. Every teacher will have his own method of train- students. Nevertheless, without presuming to atize on the subject, the authors would present briefly the plan which they endeavor to follow in their own classes. Whenever possible, there should not be more than twenty students in each class, ; u id they should meet twice a week for an eiitiro school year. Less than two meetings a week would not hold the interest of the class, and where there are but sixty or seventy recitation periods in the course, it is not advisable to have them too close together, since by so doing there would hardly be sufficient time between classes for the student to assimilate the instruction and prepare the lessons. As far as possible, it should be the aim to have every student appear before the class at every reci- tation. Many students are unused to the sound of their own voices in public, and require much prac- tice before their real power begins to manifest itself. A brief portion or paragraph should be assigned to each student, and some care should be exercised, in order that he may get that portion best fitted to afford the practice he most needs. In delivering the xii INTRODUCTION part assigned to him, the student should never leave out of inind the purpose of the entire speech, so that when the speech is concluded it may affect the audi- ence as if it had all been delivered by a single in- dividual. The amount of time to be devoted to each* step is a question each teacher must decide for him- self. Unquestionably, a great deal must be put upon the first : Directness. However, when the majority of the class have grasped the spirit of a chapter, it would be well to pass on to the next, keeping well in mind that each step may afford the opportunity for carrying into practice all the principles that have preceded it. Occasionally, certain students may be kept at one step while the rest of the class pass on to the next. However, this will not often be neces- sary, inasmuch as they may be given prescriptive work, upon which they may practise and at the same time go forward with advance steps with the remain- der of the class. It is impossible to lay too much stress upon the Necessity for constructive, positive, encouraging criti- Without in any way misleading the student as to his shortcomings, the teacher will obtain far better results by telling him what to do, what to strive for, than by continually harping on what he must not do. Occasionally, negative, destructive criticism may be necessary ; but as a rule, and espe- cially in the earlier stages, such criticism will destroy the student's spontaneity and perhaps permanently alienate his interest in the subject. So helpful is the constructive criticism that students who have INTRODUCTION xiii had no interest in public speaking and others who have not appeared to possess the least talent for the work have become interesting, forceful, and even powerful speakers. Directions for voice culture and training in gest- ure are purposely omitted from this book. Both of these branches require great care on the part of the teacher. If he has had the preparation necessary to give instruction in these, he will not need the advice of the authors ; if he has not, such advice would be as likely to hinder as to assist him. Thjs much, how- ever, may be stated : if the method herein laid down is carefully followed, voice and gesture will be materi- ally improved through the expression of thought and feeling. For instance, if a student's delivery is monot- onous, variety may be secured through the study of Moods and Colloquial utterance ; if his voice is thin, it may be enlarged by practice on the extracts under Dignity and Elevated Feeling. As for gestures, verjr_ few are necessary in public speaking. With a body rendered responsive through exercises familiar to every teacher, it will be found that nearly all gestures will develop of themselves, through an appreciation of the spirit of the selections in this book. At first, the student should be encouraged to move about and to gesticulate freely. Later, with the study of Dig- nity, the gestures will become fewer, more relevant, and more significant Awkwardness and repression are generally signs of mental awkwardness, and soon disappear under the training here suggested. Care should be used in commenting on gesture, inasmuch xiv INTRODUCTION as too much criticism may result in constricting th action of the pupil, or in making it affected. A prolific source of error in public speaking grow >ut of the failure to distinguish between thought an< (feeling. Let the student analyze the selection wit] a view to discover, first, the thought of the speakei and then, the feeling. I To assist in the latter task le him continually ask himself: How did the speake feel when he said this ? What effect did the orato desire to produce in his audience ? This simple d: rection is of far-reaching consequence to the begin ner, in that it will lead him to avoid coldness on th one hand, and undue excitement on the other. Th analysis for thought and feeling will also help him t avoid the very common habit of emotional drifting which finds expression in what is sometimes callei " singing." The monotone is a legitimate feature c expression; but when the motive which induced i passes away, the persistence of the monotone cannc but seriously, mar the orator's effect. As a rule it i the highly emotional speaker who is in the greateg danger of falling into the " singing " delivery. H is so deeply moved by the purpose of his address a a whole, so carried away by the desire to convinc or persuade, that he loses sight of fact and argi: ment, the understanding of which would prepare hi audience to agree with him in feeling and in pui pose. The question is often raised, whether it is bette to begin the study of oratory with original work c through the analysis and declamation of selection INTRODUCTION XV rom oratorical masterpieces. Much may be said n favor of the former method, especially when ap- )lied to work in colleges ; but the latter plan seems o have the advantage. The exclusive use of original vork confines the student to a narrow field of experi- ence, and emphasizes too strongly his idiosyncrasies n thought and expression ; but a study of the great >rators will give him a wider oratorical horizon, and end to eradicate objectionable mannerisms. By eading and declaiming the speeches of such men is Chatham, Burke, Webster, and Clay, the student s led into oratorical habits of mind ; he is taught by )ractical illustration the difference between the style )f the essay and that of the oration ; and, best of all, le learns that true oratory does not consist in " fine vriting," but in sound logic, and simple, forceful, lonest expression. There is the further reason, that he student does not have the time to compose the >riginal work, and, generally, he has not the ability o write in the styles necessary for the development )f his power as a speaker. But he has both time ind ability to analyze and declaim the works of the nasters. From such study there will come not only )ower as a speaker, but an awakening of those emo- ions that are the basis of genuine oratorical style. SVhen such a style has been developed, a combina- ion of both declamation and original work will prove rery effective, especially when the work in public jpeaking is done in co-operation with the depart- nent of rhetoric. What has been said above should 3e an effective answer to those who object to decla- Xvi INTRODUCTION mation on the ground that they do not desire to be- come reciters, but orators. In conclusion, it may be repeated that this book is not intended for an exhaustive treatise on vocal ex- pression. It is prepared to supply the needs of a particular class of students working under particular circumstances. Should it be desired to pursue fur- ther the study of expression, to appreciate more fully the philosophy and pedagogy of the subject, a com- plete treatment will be found in Chamberlain and Clark's Principles of Vocal Expression and Literary Interpretation (Chicago). THE UNIVERSITY OP CHICAGO, June 15, 1899. part THE FUNDAMENTALS OF PUBLIC SPEAKING CHAPTEE I DIRECTNESS THE first essential for the public speaker, that element which lies at the basis of his power, is directness. The orator must talk to. his . audience to convince them of the truth of whdt 'he has tc say. Hence, the object of the drill upon 'the setecpons m this chapter is to develop the spirit of directness. Let the pupil express himself in any way he may ; let him gesticulate as freely and as wildly as the spirit moves him to do ; in fact, the average student may even be encouraged to exaggerate his action at this stage ; but let one purpose and one alone domi- nate : the purpose to influence his audience. It will be observed that the selections present the speaker as replying to arguments that must be over- thrown. His whole heart is in his theme. Great issues are at stake. If the opinion of his opponents should prevail it would mean ruin. The student should conceive these conditions, and talk to con- vince. Practice of the kind here prescribed will stimulate the imagination, give virility to the voice, vitalize the gestures, and, above all, free the channels of expression. Inasmuch as this lesson will probably be the 3 4 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING student's first definite drill in expression, he may feel awkward, nervous, and self-conscious. The class as well as the teacher may do much to assist him ; and their encouragement will soon create a bright, cheerful class-room atmosphere, in which self-con- sciousness will rapidly disappear. Criticism should be pointed, brief, and stimulating, and directed to one sole end : the development of directness. THE CALL TO AEMS PATKICK HENEY Richmond, Va., March 28, 1775 [On March 20, 1775, Virginia's second Revolutionary Convention met. Three days later, Patrick Henry offered, in the convention, a resolution that " the Colony of Virginia be immediately put into a posture of defence." Violent debate followed, in the midst of which was given the following speech, which has been called Patrick Henry's individual declaration of war against Great Britain.] MB. PKESIDENT No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the house. But different men often see the same sub- ject in different lights ; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen, if, entertaining, as I do, opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the house is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of free- dom or slavery ; and in proportion to the magni- tude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfil the great responsibil- ity which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offence, I should consider myself as 5 6 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING guilty of treason toward my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. Mr. President, it is natural to 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 a great and arduous struggle for liberty ? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who, having eyes, see not, and hav- ing ears, hear not, the things which so nearly con- cern their temporal salvation ? For my part, what- ever 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 yourself 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 recon- ciled, 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, PATRICK HENEY 7 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 Brit- ish ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argu- ment ? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it 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 peti- tioned ; we have remonstrated ; we have supplicated ; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyran- nical hands 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, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we in- dulge 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 aban- don the noble struggle in which we have been so 8 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING- long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our 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 ! 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 dis- armed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house ? Shall we gather strength by irreso- lution 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 our battles 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 vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to de- sire 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 on the plains of Boston ! The war is inevita- ble and let it come ! I repeat it, sir, let it come ! It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentle- men may cry, Peace, peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun ! The next gale that PATRICK HENRY 9 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, Al- mighty God ! I know not what course others may take ; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death ! THE ELOQUENCE OF JOHN ADAMS DANIEL WEBSTEE Boston^ August 2, 1826 THE eloquence of Mr. Adams resembled his gen- eral character, and formed, indeed, a part of it. It was bold, manly, and energetic ; and such the crisis required. yiVhen public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake and strong passions excited, nothing is valua- ble, in speech, further than it is connected, with high intellectual and moral endowments. (/Clearness, force, and earnestness are the qualities which pro- duce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it ; but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way ; but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the out- breaking of a fountain from the earth, or the burst- ing forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, origi- nal, native force. ,; The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments, and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. 10 DANIEL WEBSTER 11 Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent ; then self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deduction of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, in- forming every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward, to his object this, this is eloquence ; or, rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence it is action, noble, sub- lime, godlike action. "In July, 1776, the controversy had passed the stage of argument. An appeal had been made to force, and opposing armies were in the field. Con- gress then was to decide whether the tie which had so long bound us to the parent state, was to be sev- ered at once, and severed forever. All the colonies had signified their resolution to abide by this de- cision, and the people looked for it with the most intense anxiety. And surely, fellow-citizens, never, never were men called to a more important political deliberation. If we contemplate it from the point where they then stood, no question could be more full of interest ; if we look at it now, and judge of its importance by its effects, it appears in still greater magnitude. Let us, then, bring before us the assembly, which was about to decide a question thus big with the fate of empire. Let us open their doors and look in upon their deliberations. Let us survey the anxious and care-worn countenances ; or, let us hear the firm-toned voices of this band of patriots. Hancock presides over this solemn sitting ; and 12 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING one of those not yet prepared to pronounce for ab- solute independence is on the floor, and is urging his reasons for dissenting from the declaration. " Let us pause ! This step, once taken, cannot be retraced. This resolution, once passed, will cut off all hope of reconciliation. If success attend the arms of England, we shall then be no longer colo- nies, with charters, and with privileges. These will all be forfeited by this act ; and we shall be in the condition of other conquered people at the mercy of the conquerors. For ourselves, we may be ready to run the hazard ; but are we ready to carry the country to that length ? Is success so probable as to justify it? Where is the military, where the naval, power, by which we are to resist the whole strength of the arm of England ? for she will exert that strength to the utmost. Can we rely on the constancy and perseverance of the people ? or will they not act as the people of other countries have acted, and, wearied with a long war, submit in the end to a worse oppression ? While we stand on our old ground, and insist on redress of grievances, we know we are right, and are not answerable for con- sequences. Nothing, then, can be imputable to us. But if we now change our object, carry our preten- sions farther, and set up for absolute independence, we shall lose the sympathy of mankind. We shall no longer be defending what we possess, but strug- gling for something which we never did possess, and which we have solemnly and uniformly dis- claimed all intention of pursuing, from the very outset of the troubles. Abandoning thus our old ground of resistance only to arbitrary acts of oppres- sion, the nations will believe the whole to have been mere pretence, and they will look on us, not as in- DANIEL WEBSTER 13 jured, but as ambitious, subjects. I shudder before this responsibility. It will be on us, if, relinquish- ing the ground we have stood on so long, and stood on so safely, we now proclaim independence, and carry on the war for that object, while these cities burn, these pleasant fields whiten and bleach with the bones of their owners, and these streams run blood. It will be upon us, it will be upon us, if failing to maintain this unseasonable and ill-judged declaration, a sterner despotism, maintained by mil- itary power, shall be established over our posterity, when we ourselves, given up by an exhausted, a harassed, a misled people, shall have expiated our rashness and atoned for our presumption on the scaffold." It was for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. We know his opinions, and we know his character. He would commence with his accustomed directness and earnestness. " Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that in the beginning we aimed not at inde- pendence. But there's a divinity that shapes our ends. The injustice of England has driven us to arms ; and, blinded to her own interest, for our good, she has obstinately persisted, till independence is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the dec- laration ? Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconciliation with England, which shall leave either safety to the country and its liberties, or safety to his own life and his own honor ? Are not you, sir, who sit in that chair is not he, our venerable col- league near you are you not both already the pro- scribed and predestined objects of punishment and 14 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING of vengeance ? Cut off from all hope of royal clem- ency, what are you, what can you be, while the pow- er of England remains, but outlaws ? If we postpone independence, do we mean to carry on, or to give up, the war ? Do we mean to submit to the measures of Parliament, Boston port-bill and all ? Do we mean to submit, and consent that we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and our country and its rights trodden down in the dust ? I know we do not mean to submit. We never shall submit. Do we intend to violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by men that plighting, before God, of our sacred honor to Washington, when, putting him forth to incur the dangers of war, as well as the po- litical hazards of the times, we promised to adhere to him in every extremity with our fortunes and our lives ? I know there is not a man here who would not rather see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that plighted faith fall to the ground. For myself, having, twelve months ago, in this place, moved you, that George Washington be appointed commander of the forces, raised or to be raised, for defence of American liberty, may my right hand for- get her cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I give him. The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. And, if the war must go on, why put off longer the declaration of independence? That measure will strengthen us. It will give us character abroad. The nations will then treat with us, which they never can do while we acknowledge ourselves subjects in arms against our sovereign. Nay, I maintain that England herself will sooner treat for peace with us on the footing of indepen- DANIEL WEBSTER 15 dence, than consent, by repealing her acts, to acknowl edge that her whole conduct toward us has been a course of injustice and oppression. Her pride will be less wounded, by submitting to that course of things, which now predestinates our independence, than by yielding the points in controversy to her rebellious subjects. The former, she would regard as the result of fortune ; the latter, she would feel as her own deep disgrace. Why, then why, then, sir, do we not, as soon as possible, change this from a civil to a national war ? And, since we must fight it through, why not put ourselves in a state to enjoy all the benefits of victory, if we gain the victory ? " If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not fail. The cause will raise up armies : the cause will create navies. The people the people, if we are true to them, will carry us, and will carry themselves, gloriously through the struggle. I care not how fickle other people have been found I know the people of these colonies, and I know that resistance to British aggression is deep and settled in their hearts and cannot be eradicated. Every colony, indeed, has expressed its willingness to fol- low, if we but take the lead. Sir, the declaration will inspire the people with increased courage. In- stead of a long and bloody war for restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances, for chartered immunities, held under a British king, set before them the glorious object of entire independence, and it will breathe into them anew the breath of life. Read this declaration at the head of the army ; every sword will be drawn from its scabbard, and the sol- emn vow uttered, to maintain it, or to perish on the bed of honor. Publish it from the pulpit ; religion will approve it, and the love of religious liberty will 16 PEAOTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING cling- round it, resolved to stand with it, or fall with it. Send it to the public halls ; proclaim it there ; let them hear it, who heard the first roar of the en- emy's cannon ; let them see it, who saw their broth- ers and their sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its support. " Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affairs, but I see, I see clearly, through this day's business. You and I, indeed, may rue it. We may not live to the time when this declaration shall be made good. We may die ; die, colonists ; die, slaves ; die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaffold. Be it so. Be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the victim shall be ready, at the appointed hour of sacrifice, come when that hour may. But, while I do live, let me have a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free country. " But, whatever may be our fate, be assured, be as- sured, that this declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood ; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present I see the brightness of the future as the sun in heaven. We shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires and illuminations. On its annual re- turn they will shed tears, copious, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude, and of joy. Sir, be- fore God, I believe the hour has come. My judg- ment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that DANIEL WEBSTER 17 I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it ; and I leave off, as I began, that, live or die, survive or perish, I am for the declaration. It is my living sentiment, and, by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment; independence now, and independence forever." SPEECH ON A MOTION FOE AN ADDEESS TO THE THEONE LOED CHATHAM House of Lords, November S, 1777 [This was the greatest effort of the Elder Pitt. Though an old man, he seems filled with all the fire of youth. A prominent critic has said, " It would be difficult to find in the whole range of parlia- mentary history a more splendid blaze of genius, at once rapid, vigorous, and sublime."] I BISE, my Lords, to declare my sentiments on this most solemn and serious subject. It has imposed a load upon my mind, which, I fear, nothing can re- move, but which impels me to endeavor its allevia- tion, by a free and unreserved communication of my sentiments. In the first part of the address, I have the honor of heartily concurring with the noble Earl who moved it. No man feels sincerer joy than I do ; none can offer more genuine congratulations on every accession of strength to the Protestant succession. I therefore join in every congratulation on the birth of another princess, and the happy recovery of her Majesty. But I must stop here. My courtly complaisance will carry me no farther. I will not join in con- gratulation on misfortune and disgrace. I cannot concur in a blind and servile address, which ap- proves, and endeavors to sanctify the monstrous 18 LORD CHATHAM 19 measures which have heaped disgrace and mis- fortune upon us. This, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment ! It is not a time for adulation. The smoothness of flattery cannot now avail can- not save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the Throne in the lan- guage of truth. We must dispel the illusion and the darkness which envelop it, and display, in its full danger and true colors, the ruin that is brought to our doors. This, my Lords, is our duty. It is the proper function of this noble assembly, sitting, as we do, upon our honors in this House, the hereditary council of the Crown. Who is the minister where is the minister, that has dared to suggest to the Throne the contrary, unconstitutional language this day delivered from it ? The accustomed language from the Throne has been application to Parliament for advice, and a reliance on its constitutional advice and assistance. As it is the right of Parliament to give, so it is the duty of the Crown to ask it. But on this day, and in this extreme momentous exi- gency, no reliance is reposed on our constitutional counsels ! no advice is asked from the sober and enlightened care of Parliament! but the Crown, from itself and by itself, declares an unalterable determination to pursue measures and what meas- ures, my Lords ? The measures that have produced the imminent perils that threaten us ; the measures that have brought ruin to our doors. Can the minister of the day now presume to ex- pect a continuance of support in this ruinous in- fatuation ? Can Parliament be so dead to its dignity and its duty as to be thus deluded into the loss of the one and the violation of the other ? To give 20 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING an unlimited credit and support for the steady per- severance in measures not proposed for our parlia- mentary advice, but dictated and forced upon us in measures, I say, my Lords, which have reduced this late flourishing empire to ruin and contempt ! " But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world : now none so poor to do her reverence." 1 I use the words of a poet ; but, though it be poetry, it is no fiction. It is a shameful truth, that not only the power and strength of this country are wasting away and expiring, but her well-earned glories, her true honor, and substantial dignity are sacrificed. France, my Lords, has insulted you; she has encouraged and sustained America; and, whether America be wrong or right, the dignity of this coun- try ought to spurn at the officious insult of French interference. The ministers and embassadors of those who are called rebels and enemies are in Paris ; in Paris they transact the reciprocal interests of America and France. Can there be a more mor- tifying insult ? Can even our ministers sustain a more humiliating disgrace ? Do they dare to resent it ? Do they presume "even to hint a vindication of their honor, and the dignity of the state, by requir- ing the dismission of the plenipotentiaries of Amer- ica ? Such is the degradation to which they have reduced the glories of England ! The people whom they affect to call contemptible rebels, but whose growing power has at last obtained the name of ene- mies ; the people with whom they have engaged this country in war, and against whom they now 1 " But yesterday the word of Caesar might Have stood against the world ; now lies he there, And none so poor to do him reverence." Julius Ctesar, Act III., Sc. 6. LOED CHATHAM 21 command our implicit support in every measure of desperate hostility this people, despised as rebels, or acknowledged as enemies, are abetted against you, supplied with every military store, their inter- ests consulted, and their embassadors entertained, by your inveterate enemy ! and our ministers dare not interpose with dignity or effect. Is this the honor of a great kingdom ? Is this the indignant spirit of England, who, " but yesterday " gave law to the house of Bourbon ? My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we cannot act with success, nor suffer with honor, calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of majesty from the delusions which surround it. The desperate state of our arms abroad is in part known. No man thinks more highly of them than I do. I love and honor the English troops. I know their virtues and their valor. I know they can achieve anything except impossibilities ; and I know that the conquest of English America is an impossibility. You cannot, I venture to say it, you cannot conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst ; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. You may swell every expense and every ef- fort still more extravagantly ; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow ; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a for- eign prince ; your efforts are forever vain and impo- tent doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely ; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting 22 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING them and their possessions to the rapacity of hire- ling cruelty ! If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms never never never ! But, my Lords, who is the man that, in addition to these disgraces and mischiefs of our army, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage ? to call into civilized alliance the wild and inhuman savage of the woods ; to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the hor- rors of his barbarous war against our brethren ? My Lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. Unless thoroughly done away, it will be a stain on the national character. It is a viola- tion of the Constitution. I believe it is against law. You cannot conciliate America by your present measures. You cannot subdue her by your present or by any measures. What, then, can you do ? You cannot conquer ; you cannot gain ; but you can ad- dress ; you can lull the fears and anxieties of the moment into an ignorance of the danger that should produce them. But, my Lords, the time demands the language of truth. We must not now apply the flattering unction of servile compliance or blind complaisance. In a just and necessary war, to main- tain the rights or honor of my country, I would strip the shirt from my back to support it. But in such a war as this, unjust in its principle, impracticable in its means, and ruinous in its consequences, I would not contribute a single effort nor a single shilling. I do not call for vengeance on the heads of those who have been guilty ; I only recommend to them to make their retreat. Let them walk off ; and let LORD CHATHAM 23 them make haste, or they may be assured that speedy and condign punishment will overtake them. My Lords, I have submitted to you, with the free- dom and truth which I think my duty, my sentiments on your present awful situation. I have laid before you the ruin of your power, the disgrace of your reputation, the pollution of your discipline, the con- tamination of your morals, the complication of ca- lamities, foreign and domestic, that overwhelm your sinking country. Your dearest interests, your own liberties, the Constitution itself, totters to the foun- dation. All this disgraceful danger, this multitude of misery, is the monstrous offspring of this unnat- ural war. We have been deceived and deluded too long. Let us now stop short. This is the crisis the only crisis l of time and situation, to give us a possibility of escape from the fatal effects of our de- lusions. But if, in an obstinate and infatuated per- severance in folly, we slavishly echo the peremptory words this day presented to us, nothing can save this devoted country from complete and final ruin. We madly rush into multiplied miseries and " con- fusion worse confounded." Is it possible, can it be believed, that ministers are yet blind to this impending destruction ? I did hope, that instead of this false and empty vanity, this overweening pride, engendering high conceits and presumptuous imaginations, ministers would 1 It cannot hare escaped observation, says Chapman, with what urgent anxiety the noble speaker has pressed this point throughout his speech ; the critical necessity of instantly treating with Amer- ica. But the warning voice was heard in vain; the address tri- umphed; Parliament adjourned: ministers enjoyed the festive recess of a long Christmas, and America ratified her alliance with France. 24 PEACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING have humbled themselves in their errors, would have confessed and retracted them, and by an active, though a late repentance, have endeavored to re- deem them. But, my Lords, since they had neither sagacity to foresee, nor justice nor humanity to shun these oppressive calamities since not even severe experience can make them feel, nor the imminent ruin of their country awaken them from their stupe- faction, the guardian care of Parliament must inter- pose. I shall, therefore, my Lords, propose to you an amendment of the address to his Majesty, to be inserted immediately after the two first paragraphs of congratulation on the birth of a princess, to rec- ommend an immediate cessation of hostilities, and the commencement of a treaty to restore peace and liberty to America, strength and happiness to Eng- land, security and permanent prosperity to both countries. This, my Lords, is yet in our power ; and let not the wisdom and justice of your Lord- ships neglect the happy, and, perhaps, the only op- portunity. By the establishment of irrevocable law, founded on mutual rights and ascertained by treaty, these glorious enjo3^ments may be firmly perpetu- ated. And let me repeat to your Lordships, that the strong bias of America, at least of the wise and sounder parts of it, naturally inclines to this happy and constitutional reconnection with you. My Lords, to encourage and confirm that innate inclination to this country, founded on every prin- ciple of affection, as well as consideration of inter- est ; to restore that favorable disposition into a per- manent and powerful reunion with this country ; to revive the mutual strength of the empire ; again to awe the house of Bourbon, instead of meanly truck- ling, as our present calamities compel us, to every LOKD CHATHAM 25 insult of French caprice and Spanish punctilio ; to re-establish our commerce; to reassert our rights and our honor ; to confirm our interests and renew our glories forever a consummation most devoutly to be endeavored ! and which, I trust, may yet arise from reconciliation with America I have the honor of submitting to you the following amendment, which I move to be inserted after the two first para- graphs of the address : " And that this House does most humbly advise and supplicate his Majesty to be pleased to cause the most speedy and effectual measures to be taken for restoring peace in America ; and that no time may be lost in proposing an immediate cessation of hostilities there, in order to the opening of a treaty for the final settlement of the tranquillity of these invaluable provinces, by a removal of the unhappy causes of this ruinous civil war, and by a just and adequate security against the return of the like ca- lamities in times to come. And this House desire to offer the most dutiful assurances to his Majesty, that they will, in due time, cheerfully co-operate with the magnanimity and tender goodness of his Majesty, for the preservation of his people, by such explicit and most solemn declarations, and provi- sions of fundamental and irrevocable laws, as may be judged necessary for the ascertaining and fixing forever the respective rights of Great Britain and her colonies." [In the course of this debate, Lord Suffolk, secre- tary for the northern department, undertook to de- fend the employment of the Indians in the war. His Lordship contended that, besides its policy and ne- cessity r , the measure was also allowable on principle ; for that " it was perfectly justifiable to use all the means that God and nature put into our hands ! "] 26 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING I am astonished ! [exclaimed Lord Chatham, as he rose] shocked ! to hear such principles confessed to hear them avowed in this House, or in this coun- try: principles equally unconstitutional, inhuman, and unchristian ! My Lords, I did not intend to have encroached again upon your attention, but I cannot repress my indignation. I feel myself impelled by every duty. My Lords, we are called upon as members of this House, as men, as Christian men, to protest against such notions standing near the Throne, polluting the ear of Majesty. " That God and nature put into our hands ! " I know not what ideas that Lord may entertain of God and nature, but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to re- ligion and humanity. What ! to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife to the cannibal savage tort- uring, murdering, roasting, and eating literally, my Lords, eating the mangled victims of his barbar- ous battles ! Such horrible notions shock every precept of religion, divine or natural, and every generous feeling of humanity. And, my Lords, they shock every sentiment of honor ; they shock me as a lover of honorable war, and a detester of murder- ous barbarity. These abominable principles, and this more abom- inable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend bench, those holy ministers of the Gospel, and pious pas- tors of our Church I conjure them to join in the holy work, and vindicate the religion of their God. I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned bench, to defend and support the justice of their country. I call upon the Bishops to interpose the LORD CHATHAM 27 unsullied sanctity of their lawn ; upon the learned Judges, to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honor of your Lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the Constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls the immortal ancestor of this noble Lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his coun- try. 1 In vain he led your victorious fleets against the boasted Armada of Spain ; in vain he defended and established the honor, the liberties, the religion the Protestant religion of this country, against the arbitrary cruelties of popery and the Inquisi- tion, if these more than popish cruelties and inquisi- torial practices are let loose among us to turn forth into our settlements, among our ancient connec- tions, friends, and relations, the merciless cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child ! to send forth the infidel savage against whom ? against your Protestant brethren ; to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war hell-hounds, I say, of savage war ! Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate the wretched natives of America, and we improve on the inhuman example even of Spanish cruelty ; we turn loose these savage hell-hounds against our brethren and countrymen in America, of the same language, laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity. 1 The tapestry of the House of Lords represented the English fleet led by the ship of the lord-admiral, Eftiiigham Howard (ancei- tor of Suffolk), to engage the Spanish Armada. 28 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING My Lords, this awful subject, so important to our honor, our Constitution, and our religion, demands the most solemn and effectual inquiry. And I again call upon your Lordships, and the united powers of the state, to examine it thoroughly and decisively, and to stamp upon it an indelible stigma of the pub- lic abhorrence. And I again implore those holy prelates of our religion to do away these iniquities from among us. Let them perform a lustration; let them purify this House, and this country, from this sin. My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present un- able to say more ; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles. AMERICA'S DUTY TO GREECE HENKY CLAY U". S. House of Representatives, January 23^ 1824 [On December 8, 1824, Daniel Webster submitted for considera- tion the following : Resolved, That provision ought to be made, by law, for defraying the expense incident to the appointment of an agent, or commis- sioner, to Greece, whenever the President shall deem it expedient to make such appointment. In the debate that ensued, Mr. Clay expressed himself, in part, as follows :] ME. CHAIRMAN The resolution proposed provid- ing the means to defray the expense of a mission, whenever the President, who knows, or ought to know, the dispositions of all the European Powers, Turkish or Christian, shall deem it proper to send one. The amendment goes to withhold any appro- priation, and to make a public declaration of our sympathy with the Greeks, and our good wishes for their cause. And how, sir, has this simple, modest, unpretending, this harmless proposition been treat- ed ? It has been argued, as if it proposed aid to the Greeks ; as if it proposed the recognition of their government ; as an act of unjustifiable interference ; as a measure of war. And those who thus argue the question, while they themselves give unbounded range to their imagination, in conceiving and setting in array the monstrous consequences which are to 30 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING grow out of so simple a proposal, impute to us who are its advocates, Quixotism ! Quixotism ! While they are taking 1 the most extravagant and unlimited range, and arguing anything and everything but the question before the House, they accuse us of enthu- siasm, of giving the reins to feeling, of being carried away by our imagination. No, sir, the proposition on your table is no proposition for aid, nor for recog- nition, nor for interference, nor for war. It has been said that the proposed measure will be a departure from our uniform policy with respect to foreign nations that it will provoke the ire of the Holy Alliance and will, in effect, be a repetition of their offence, by an unwarrantable interference with the domestic concerns of other Powers. If gentlemen are afraid to act rashly on such a subject, suppose, Mr. Chairman, that we draw an humble petition addressed to their majesties, asking them that of their condescension they would allow us to express something on the subject. How, sir, shall it begin ? " We, the Representatives of the free people of the United States of America, humbly ap- proach the Thrones of your Imperial and Royal Majesties, and supplicate that of your Imperial and Royal clemency " I will not go through the disgust- ing recital ; my lips have not yet learned the syco- phantic language of a degraded slave. Are we so low, so base, so despicable, that we may not express our horror, articulate our detestation, of the most brutal and atrocious war that ever stained earth, or shocked high heaven, with the ferocious deeds of a brutal soldierly, set on by the clergy and followers of a fanatical and inimical religion, rioting in excess of blood and butchery, at the mere details of which the heart sickens ? If the HENRY CLAY 31 great mass of Christendom can look coolly and calmly on, while all this is perpetrated on a Christian peo- ple, in their own vicinity, in their very presence, let us, at least, show that, in this distant extremity, there is still some sensibility and sympathy for Christian wrongs and sufferings ; that there are still feelings which can kindle into indignation at the oppression of a people endeared to us by every ancient recollection and every modern tie. But, sir, it is not first and chiefly for Greece that I wish to see this measure adopted. It will give her but little aid, and that aid purely of a moral kind. It is, indeed, soothing and solacing, in dis- tress, to hear the accents of a friendly voice. We know this as a people. But, sir, it is principally and mainly for America herself, for the credit and character of our common country, that I hope to see this resolution pass ; it is for our own unsullied name that I feel. What appearance, sir, on the page of history, would a record like this make : " In the month of January, in the year of our Lord and Saviour 1824, while all European Christendom beheld, with cold, unfeeling apathy, the unexampled wrongs and inex- pressible misery of Christian Greece, a proposition was made in the Congress of the United States almost the sole, the last, the greatest repository of human hope and of human freedom, the representa- tives of a nation capable of bringing into the field a million of bayonets while the freemen of that nation were spontaneously expressing its deep- toned feeling, its fervent prayer, for Grecian success ; while the whole continent was rising, by one simul- taneous motion, solemnly and anxiously supplicat- ing and invoking the aid of heaven to spare Greece, 32 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING and to invigorate her arms: while temples and senate-houses were all resounding with one burst of generous sympathy ; in the year of our Lord and Saviour, that Saviour alike of Christian Greece and of us, a proposition was offered in the American Congress to send a messenger to Greece, to inquire into her state and condition, with an expression of our good wishes and our sympathies, and it was rejected ! " Go home, if you dare, go home, if you can, to your constituents, and tell them that you voted it down! Meet, if you dare, the appalling counte- nances of those who sent you here, and tell them that you shrank from the declaration of your own senti- ments ; that, you cannot tell how, but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some indefinable danger, affrighted you ; that the spectres of cimeters, and crowns and crescents, gleamed before you, and alarmed you ; and that you suppressed all the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberality, by national independence, and by humanity ! I cannot bring myself to believe that such will be the feeling of a majority of this House. But for myself, though every friend of the measure should desert it, and I be left to stand alone, with the gentleman from Massachusetts, I would give to the resolution the poor sanction of my unqualified approbation. CHAPTER H EARNESTNESS BY earnestness is meant enthusiasm for one's theme : not mere sound and fury, but a surrender [ of self to the emotions growing out of the subject. ' Earnestness, therefore, is closely associated with di- rectness : for the earnest speaker is very likely to be direct, and directness will often beget earnestness. We must note, however, that mere feeling is not nec- essarily earnestness in the sense in which it is used here ; nor is the earnest speaker always direct in his presentation. In the previous exercises the object was attained if the student's delivery became direct, regardless of the fact that he may have been relatively cold on the one hand, or violently demonstrative on the other. But now it is for the student to recognize that his theme is of more importance than himself ; to en- deavor to let the truth he has to present sink in of its own weight rather than to drive it home by phys- ical force, as if it must be accepted because lie ut- tered it, instead of for its own sake. The truth is to be stated not with shrill voice, violent headshakings and pounding gestures, but strongly, positively, and with 34 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKIJsLG the self-control growing out of the conviction that it must prevail. Very few speakers, especially those of strong con- victions, appreciate the value of eliminating them- selves from their delivery. Emerson has told us of the value of under-statement in controversial writ- ings. May we not apply his advice to the manner of public speaking ? An audience will frequently refuse to act upon the advice of an orator, even if he speaks the truth, because his presentation has the effect of a command. His personality steps in between his theme and the audience. On the other hand, with- out in any way descending from his level as teacher, and with arguments as strong as he can make them, he may often win the hearts and approval of his hearers simply through enthusiasm for his theme. His manner should not say, " You must do this be- cause / command it " ; but, " Should we not do this because it is right? " Experience has shown that the average student is most deficient in the realm of earnestness. Through lack of imagination or undue repression he seems to have difficulty in infusing passion, feeling, into the rendition of the words of another. He should there- fore be urged to lay particular stress upon the selec- tions in this chapter and to endeavor to fill them with at least an approximation of the author's feel- ings. AFFAIRS IN CUBA JOHN M. THUESTON United States Senate, March 24, 1898 I AM here by command of silent lips ' to speak once and for all upon the Cuban situation. I shall en- deavor to be honest, conservative, and just. I have no purpose to stir the public passion to any action not necessary and imperative to meet the duties and necessities of American responsibility, Christian humanity, and national honor. I would shirk this task if I could, but I dare not. I can not satisfy my conscience except by speaking, and speaking now. I went to Cuba^firmly believingj that the condition of affairs there.had been greatly exaggerated by the press, and my own effortsf,were directed in the first instance to the attempted exposurejof these sup- posed exaggerations. There has undoubtedly beenf much sensationalisnijin the journalism of the time, but as to the condition of affairs in Cuba ,there has been no exaggeration, j because exaggeration has been impossible. Under the inhuman policy of Weyler,not less than 400,000* self-supporting, simple, peaceable, defence- less country people were driven from their homes, in the agricultural portions^ of the Spanish provinces to the cities, .and imprisoned upon the barren waste | outside the Tesidence portions tof these cities fand within the lines of intrenchmentjestablished a little 1 Mrs. Thurston died in Cuba. Her last request was that her husband should do his utmost to secure intervention. 35 36 PEACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING way beyond. Their humble homes were burned, their fields laid waste, their implements of hus- bandry destroyed, their live stock and food supplies for the most part t confiscated. Moot of the people W>VA o\i\ rn^j wornon, and rrfriMrfrn. Siiey were thus there with nothing to depend upon.exce'pt the scanty charity of the inhabitants of the citiesfand with slow starvation, their inevitable fate. H- The pictures in the American newspapers of the starving reconcentrados are true. They can all be duplicated by the thousands. I never saw, and please God I may never again see, so deplorable a sight as the reconcentrados in the suburbs of Matan- zas. I can never forget to my dying day the hope- less anguish in their despairing eyes. Huddled about their little bark huts, they raised no voice of appeal to us for alms as we went among them. Their only appeal came from their sad eyes, through which one looks as through an open window into their agonizing souls. The Government of Spain has not and will not appropriate one dollar to save these people. They are now being attended, and nursed, and adminis- tered to by the charity of the United States. Think of the spectacle ! We are feeding these citizens of Spain ; we are nursing their sick ; we are saving such as can be saved, and yet there are those who still say it is right for us to send food, but we must keep hands off. I say that the time has come when muskets must go with the food. We asked the gov- ernor if he knew of any relief for these people ex- cept through the charity of the United States. He JOHN M. THUESTON 37 did not. We asked him, " When do you think the time will come that these people can be placed in a position of self-support ? " He replied to us, with deep feeling-, " Only the good God or the great Gov- ernment of the United States can answer that ques- tion." I hope and believe that the good God by the great Government of the United States will answer that question. shall refer to these horrible things no further. They are there. God pity me ; I have seen them ; they will remain in my mind forever and this is almost the twentieth century. Christ died nineteen hundred years ago, and Spain is a Christian nation. She has set up more crosses in more lands, beneath more skies, and under them has butchered more people than all the other nations of the earth com- bined. Europe may tolerate her existence ^ as long as the people of the Old World wish. God grant that before another Christmas morningf the last ves- tige of Spanish tyranny and oppression (will have vanished from the Western Hemisphere. I counselled silence and moderation from this floor when the passion of the nation seemed at white heat over the destruction of the Maine ; but it seems to me the time for action has now come. No greater reason for it can exist to-morrow than exists to-day. Every hour's delay only adds another chapter to the awful story of misery and death. Only one power can intervene the United States of America. Ours is the one great nation of the New World, the mother of American republics. She holds a position of trust and responsibility toward the peoples and affairs of the whole Western Hemisphere. It was her glorious example which inspired the patriots of Cuba to raise the flag of liberty in her eternal hills. 38 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING We cannot refuse to accept this responsibility which the God of the universe has placed upon us as the one great power in the New World. We must act ! What shall our action be ? Some say, The acknowl- edgment of the belligerency of the revolutionists. The hour and the opportunity for that have passed away. Others say, Let us by resolution or official proclamation recognize the independence of the Cubans. It is too late for even such recognition to be of great avail. Others say, Annexation to the United States. God forbid ! I would oppose an- nexation with my latest breath. The people of Cuba are not our people ; they cannot assimilate with us ; and beyond all that, I am utterly and unalterably opposed to any departure from the declared policy of the fathers, which would start this republic for the first time upon a career of conquest and domin- ion utterly at variance with the avowed purposes and the manifest destiny of popular government. There is only one action possible, if any is taken ; that is, intervention for the independence of the island. Against the intervention of the United States in this holy cause there is but one voice of dissent ; that voice is the voice of the money-changers. They fear war ! Not because of any Christian or en- nobling sentiment against war and in favor of peace, but because they fear that a declaration of war, or the intervention which might result in war, would have a depressing effect upon the stock market. Let them go. They do not represent American senti- ment ; they do not represent American patriotism. Let them take their chances as they can. Their weal or woe is of but little importance to the liberty- loving people of the United States. They will not do the fighting ; their blood will not flow ; they JOHN M. THURSTON 39 will keep on dealing- in options on human life. Let the men whose loyalty is to the dollar stand aside while the men whose loyalty is to the flag come to the front. There are those who say that the affairs of Cuba are not the affairs of the United States ; who insist that we can stand idly by and see that island de- vastated and depopulated, its business interests destroyed, its commercial intercourse with us cut off, its people starved, degraded, and enslaved. It may be the naked legal right of the United States to stand thus idly by. I have the legal right to pass along the street and see a helpless dog stamped into the earth under the heels of a ruffian. I can pass by and say, that is not my dog. I can sit in my comfortable parlor, and through my plate-glass window see a fiend outraging a helpless woman near by, and I can legally say, this is no affair of mine it is not happening on my premises. But if I do, I am a coward and a cur, unfit to live, and, God knows, unfit to die. And yet I cannot protect the dog nor save the woman without the exercise of force. We cannot intervene and save Cuba without the exercise of force, and force means war ; war means blood. The lowly Nazarene on the shores of Galilee preached the divine doctrine of love, " Peace on earth, good will toward men." Not peace on earth at the ex- pense of liberty and humanity. Not good will to- ward men who despoil, enslave, degrade, and starve to death their fellow-men. I believe in the doctrine of Christ. I believe in the dcfctrine of peace ; but men must have liberty before there can come abid- ing peace. When has a battle for humanity and liberty ever been won except by force ? What barri- 40 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING cade of wrong, injustice, and oppression has evei been carried except by force ? Force compelled the signature of unwilling royalty to the great Magna Charta ; force put life into the Declaration of Independence and made effective the Emancipation Proclamation ; force waved the flag of revolution over Bunker Hill and marked the snows of Valley Forge with blood-stained feet ; force held the broken line of Shiloh, climbed the flame-swept hill at Chattanooga, and stormed the clouds on Lookout Heights ; force marched with Sherman to the sea, rode with Sheridan in the Valley of the Shenandoah, and gave Grant victory at Appomattox; force saved the Union, kept the stars in the flag, made " niggars " men. The time for God's force has come again. Let the impassioned lips of American patriots once more take up the song: In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigured you and me. As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, For God is marching on. Others may hesitate, others may procrastinate, others may plead for further diplomatic negotiation, which means delay, but for me, I am ready to act now, and for my action I am ready to answer to my conscience, my country, and my God. AGAINST CENTRALIZATION HENEY W. GKADY The University of Fa., June 25, 1889 THE unmistakable danger that threatens free gov- ernment in America, is the increasing tendency to concentrate in the Federal government, powers and privileges that should be left with the States, and to create powers that neither the State nor Federal government should have. It is not strange that there should be a tendency to centralization in our government. This disposi- tion was the legacy of the war. Steam and elec- tricity have emphasized it by bringing the people closer together. The splendor of a central govern- ment dazzles the unthinking ; its opulence tempts the poor and the avaricious ; its strength assures the rich and the timid ; its patronage incites the spoilsmen, and its powers inflame the partisan. Concurrent with this political drift is another movement, less formal, perhaps, but not less danger- ous : the consolidation of capital. The world has not seen, nor has the mind of man conceived of such miraculous wealth-gathering as is an every-day tale to us. The seeds of a luxury that even now sur- passes that of Borne or Corinth, and has only yet put forth its first flowers, are sown in this simple Kepublic. What shall the full fruitage be? The youngest nation, America, is vastly the richest, and 41 42 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING in twenty years, in spite of war, has nearly trebled her wealth. Millions are made on the turn of a trade, and the toppling mass grows and grows, while in its shadow starvation and despair stalk among the people, and swarm with increasing leg- ions against the citadels of human life. But the abuse of this amazing power of consolidated wealth is its bitterest result and its pressing danger. When the agent of a dozen men who have captured and who control an article of prime necessity, meets the representatives of a million farmers from whom they have forced $3,000,000 the year before, with no more moral right than is behind the highway man who halts the traveller at the pistol's point, and insolently gives them the measure of this year's rapacity, and tells them men who live in the sweat of their brows, and stand between God and Nature that they must submit to the infamy because they are helpless then the first fruits of this system are gathered and have turned to ashes on the lips. When a dozen men get together in the morning and fix the price of a dozen articles of common use with no standard but their arbitrary will, and no limit but their greed or daring and then notify the sovereign people of this free Republic how much, in the mercy of their masters, they shall pay for the necessaries of life then the point of intolerable shame has been reached. We have read of the robber barons of the Rhine, who from their castles sent a shot across the bow of every passing craft, and descending as hawks from the crags, tore and robbed and plundered the voyagers until their greed was glutted, or the strength of their victims spent. Shall this shame of Europe against which the world revolted, shall it be repeated in this HENRY W. GKADY 43 free country ? And yet, when a syndicate or a trust can arbitrarily add twenty-five per cent, to the cost of a single article of common use, and safely gather forced tribute from the people, until from its surplus it could buy every castle on the Ehine where is the difference, save that the castle is changed to a broker's office, and the picturesque river to the teeming streets and the broad fields of this govern- ment "of the people, by the people, and for the people " ? Let it be noted that the alliance between those who would centralize the government and the con- solidated money power is not only close but essen- tial. The one is the necessity of the other. Estab- lish the money power and there is universal clamor for strong government. The weak will demand it for protection against the people restless under op- pression ; the patriotic, for protection against the plutocracy that scourges and robs ; the corrupt, hoping to buy of one central body distant from local influences what they could not buy from the legislat- ures of the States sitting at their homes. Thus, hand in hand, will walk as they have always walked the federalist and the capitalist, the centralist and the monopolist ; the strong government protecting the money power, and the money power the politi- cal standing army of the government. Against this tendency who shall protest ? Those that believe that this vast Republic, with its diverse interests and its local needs, can better be governed by liberty and enlightenment diffused among the people than by powers and privileges congested at the centre ; those who believe that the States should do nothing that the people can do themselves, and the government nothing that the States and the 44 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING people can do ; those who believe that the wealth of the central government is a crime rather than a virt- ue, and that every dollar not needed for its econom- ical administration should be left with the people of the States ; those who believe that the hearthstone of the home is the true altar of liberty, and the en- lightened conscience of the citizen the best guaran- tee of government. Those of you who note the far- mer sending his sons to the city that they may escape the unequal burdens under which he has labored, thus diminishing the rural population whose leisure, integrity, and deliberation have corrected the passion and impulse and corruption of the cities ; who note that while the rich are growing richer, and the poor poorer, we are lessening that great middle class that, ever since it met the returning crusaders in England with the demand that the hut of the humble should be as sacred as the castle of the great, has been the bulwark and glory of every English-speaking com- munity you who know these things protest with all the earnestness of your soul against the policy and the methods that make them possible. What is the remedy ? To exalt the hearthstone ; to strengthen the home ; to build up the individual ; to magnify and defend the principle of local self- Government. Not in deprecation of the Federal government, but to its glory ; not to weaken the Republic, but to strengthen it ; not to check the rich blood that flows to its heart, but to send it full and wholesome from healthy members rather than from withered and diseased extremities. The germ of the best patriotism is in the love that a man has for the home he inhabits, for the soil he tills, for the trees that give him shade, and the hills that stand in his pathway. The love of home deep HENRY W. GRADY 45 rooted and abiding- lodged in the heart of the citi- zen, is the saving principle of our government. This love shall not be pent up or provincial. The home should be consecrated to humanity, and from its roof-tree should fly the flag of the Republic. Every simple fruit gathered there, every sacrifice endured, and every victory won, should bring better joy and inspiration in the knowledge that it will deepen the glory of our Republic and widen the harvest of humanity. Let it be understood that I am no pessimist as to this Eepublic. I know that my country has reached the point of perilous greatness, and that strange forces not to be measured or comprehended are hurrying her to heights that dazzle and blind all mortal eyes ; but I know that beyond the uttermost glory is enthroned the Lord God Almighty, and that when the hour of her trial has come He will lift up His everlasting gates and bend down above her in mercy and in love. For with her He has surely lodged the ark of His covenant with the sons of men. Emerson wisely said, " Our whole history looks like the last effort by Divine Providence in behalf of the human race." And the Eepublic will endure. Centralism will be checked, and liberty saved plutocracy overthrown and equality re- stored. The trend of the times is with us. The world moves steadily from gloom to brightness. And bending down humbly as Elisha did, and praying that my eyes shall be made to see, I catch the vision of this Eepublic its mighty forces in balance, and its unspeakable glory falling on all its children ; chief among the federation of English-speaking people ; plenty streaming from its borders, and light 46 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING from its mountain tops working out its mission under God's approving 1 eye, until the dark conti- nents are open, and the highways of earth estab- lished, and the shadows lifted, and the jargons of the nations stilled, and the perplexities of Babel straightened and under one language, one liberty, and one God, all the nations of the world hearken- ing to the American drum-beats, and girding up their loins, shall march amid the breaking of the millennial dawn into the paths of righteousness and peace ! SPEECH ON THE WAR OF 1812 HENKY CLAY United States House of Representatives, January 5, 1813 [This speech was delivered during the debate on a bill proposing that twenty thousand men should be added to the existing military establishment. American Orations (New York : 1896) contains the following in teresting note : " When Clay came to Congress in 1811 he became immediately the recognized leader of the war party in the House, and as Speaker he organized the committees to promote the war policy. It was Clay's leadership which hastened the war. Madison was timid and desired to avoid war as long as possible ; he was urged and forced into the war by the more radical young Republi- cans from the West and South, like Clay and Calhoun, . . . This speech of Clay was especially in reply to Quincy, who had made a strong speech in opposition to the war."] SIR gentlemen appear to me to forget that they stand on American soil; that they are not in the British House of Commons, but in the chamber of the House of Representatives of the United States ; that we have nothing to do with the affairs of Europe, the partition of territory and sovereignty there, except so far as these things affect the in- terests of our own country. Gentlemen transform themselves into the Burkes, Chathams, and Pitts, of another country, and, forgetting, from honest zeal, the interests of America, engage with European sensibility in the discussion of European interests. If gentlemen ask whether I do not view with regret 47 48 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING and horror the concentration of such vast power in the hands of Bonaparte, I reply that I do. I regret to see the Emperor of China holding such an im- mense sway over the fortunes of millions of our species. I regret to see Great Britain possessing so uncontrolled a command over all the waters of the globe. If I had the ability to distribute among the nations of Europe their several portions of power and of sovereignty, I would say that Holland should be resuscitated and given the weight she enjoyed in the days of her De Witts. I would con- fine France within her natural boundaries, the Alps, Pyrenees, and the Rhine, and make her a secondary naval power only. I would abridge the British maritime power, raise Prussia and Austria to their original condition, and preserve the integrity of the Empire of Russia. But these are speculations. I look at the political transactions of Europe, with the single exception of their possible bearing upon us, as I do at the history of other countries and other times- I do not survey them with half the interest that I do the movements in South America. Our political relation with them is much less im- portant than it is supposed to be. I have no fears of French or English subjugation. If we are united we are too powerful for the mightiest nation in Europe or all Europe combined. If we are sepa- rated and torn asunder, we shall become an easy prey to the weakest of them. In the latter dreadful contingency our country will not be worth preserv- ing. Next to the notice which the opposition has found itself called upon to bestow upon the French Emperor, a distinguished citizen of Virginia, for- merly President of the United States, has never for HENRY CLAY 49 a moment failed to receive their kindest and most respectful attention. An honorable gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Quincy], of whom, I am sorry to say, it becomes necessary for me, in the course of my remarks, to take some notice, has alluded to him in a remarkable manner. Neither his retirement from public office, his eminent services, nor his advanced age, can exempt this patriot from the coarse assaults of party malevolence. No, sir. In 1801 he snatched from the rude hand of usurpation the violated Constitution of his country, and that is his crime. He preserved that instrument, in form, and substance, and spirit, a precious inheritance for generations to come, and for this he can never be forgiven. How vain and impotent is party rage, directed against such a man. He is not more ele- vated by his lofty residence, upon the summit of his own favorite mountain, than he is lifted, by the serenity of his mind, and the consciousness of a well-spent life, above the malignant passions and bitter feelings of the day. No ! his own beloved Monticello is not less moved by the storms that beat against its sides than is this illustrious man by the howlings of the whole British pack, set loose from the Essex kennel. When the gentleman to whom I have been compelled to allude shall have mingled his dust with that of his abused ancestors, when he shall have been consigned to oblivion, or, if he lives at all, shall live only in the treasonable annals of a certain junto, the name of Jefferson will be hailed with gratitude, his memory honored and cherished as the second founder of the liberties of the people, and the period of his administration will be looked back to as one of the happiest and brightest epochs of American history ; an oasis in the midst of a 50 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING sandy desert. But I beg the gentleman's pardon ; he has already secured to himself a more imperish- able fame than I had supposed ; I think it was about four years ago that he submitted to the House of Representatives an initiative proposition for the impeachment of Mr. Jefferson? The House con- descended to consider it. The gentleman debated it with his usual temper, moderation, and urbanity. The House decided upon it in the most solemn manner, and, although the gentleman had somehow obtained a second, the final vote stood one for, and one hundred and seventeen against, the prop- osition. But, sir, I must speak of another subject, which I never think of but with feelings of the deepest awe. The gentleman from Massachusetts, in imitation of some of his predecessors of 1799, has entertained us with a picture of cabinet plots, presidential plots, and all sorts of plots, which have been engendered by the diseased state of the gentleman's imagina- tion. I wish, sir, that another plot, of a much more serious and alarming character a plot that aims at the dismemberment of our Union had only the same imaginary existence. But no man, who has paid any attention to the tone of certain prints and to transactions in a particular quarter of the Union, for several years past, can doubt the existence of such a plot. It was far, very far from my intention to charge the opposition with such a design. No, I believe them generally incapable of it. But I can- not say as much for some who have been unworthily associated with them in the quarter of the Union to which I have referred. The gentleman cannot have forgotten his own sentiment, uttered even on the floor of this House, " peaceably if we can, forcibly if we HENRY CLAY 51 must," nearly at the very time when Henry's mission was undertaken. The flagitiousness of that embassy had been attempted to be concealed by directing the public attention to the price which, the gentleman says, was given for the disclosure. As if any price could change the atrociousness of the attempt on the part of Great Britain, or could extenuate in the slightest degree the offence of those citizens who entertained and deliberated on a proposition so in- famous and unnatural. But, sir, I will quit this unpleasant subject. The war was declared because Great Britain arro- gated to herself the pretension to regulate our for- eign trade, under the delusive name of retaliatory orders in council a pretension by which she under- took to proclaim to American enterprise, " thus far shalt thou go, and no further " orders which she refused to revoke after the alleged cause of their enactment had ceased ; because she persisted in the practice of impressing American seamen; because she had instigated the Indians to commit hostilities against us ; and because she refused indemnity for her past injuries upon our commerce. I throw out of the question other wrongs. So undeniable were the causes of the war, so powerfully did they ad- dress themselves to the feelings of the whole Amer- ican people, that when the bill was pending before this House, gentlemen in the opposition, although provoked to debate, would not, or could not, utter one syllable against it. It is true, they wrapped themselves up in sullen silence, pretending they did not choose to debate such a question in secret ses- sion. While speaking of the proceedings on that occasion, I beg to be permitted to avert to another fact which transpired an important fact, material 52 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING for the nation to know, and which I have often re- gretted had not been spread upon our journals. My honorable colleague [Mr. McKee] moved, in commit- tee of the whole, to comprehend France in the war ; and when the question was taken upon the proposi- tion, there appeared but ten votes in support of it, of whom seven belonged to this side of the house, and three only to the other. It is not to the British principle (of allegiance), objectionable as it is, that we are alone to look ; it is to her practice, no matter what guise she puts on. It is in vain to assert the inviolability of the obliga- tion of allegiance. It is in vain to set up the plea of necessity, and to allege that she cannot exist without the impressment of HEE seamen. The naked truth is, she comes, by her press-gangs, on board of our vessels, seizes OUR native as well as naturalized seamen, and drags them into her service. It is the case, then, of the assertion of an erroneous principle a principle which, if it were theoretically right, must be forever practically wrong a practice which can obtain countenance from no principle whatever, and to submit to which, on our part, would botray the most abject degradation. We are told by gentlemen in the opposition, that the Government has not done all that was incumbent on it to do, to avoid just cause of complaint on the part of Great Britain ; that in particular the certificates of protec- tion, authorized by the act of 1796, are fraudulently used. Sir, Government has done too much in grant- ing those paper protections. I can never think of them without being shocked. They resemble the passes which the master grants to his negro slave : " Let the bearer, Mungo, pass and rep ass without molestation." What do they imply? That Great HENRY CLAY 63 Britain has a right to seize all who are not provided with them. From their very nature, they must be liable to abuse on both sides. If Great Britain de- sires a mark, by which she can know her own sub- jects, let her give them an ear-mark. The colors that float from the mast-head should be the creden- tials of our seamen. There is no safety to us, and the gentlemen have shown it, but in the rule that all who sail under the flag (not being enemies), are pro- tected by the flag. It is impossible that this coun- try should ever abandon the gallant tars who have won for us such splendid trophies. Let me suppose that the genius of Columbia should visit one of them in his oppressor's prison, and attempt to reconcile him to his forlorn and wretched condition. She would say to him, in the language of gentlemen on the other side : " Great Britain intends you no harm ; she did not mean to impress you, but one of her own subjects ; having taken you by mistake, I will remonstrate, and try to prevail upon her, by peaceable means, to release you ; but I cannot, my son, fight for you." If he did not consider this mere mockery, the poor tar would address her judgment and say : " You owe me, my country, protection ; I owe you, in return, obedience. I am no British subject ; I am a native of old Massachusetts, where lived my aged father, my wife, my children. I have faithfully discharged my duty. Will you refuse to do yours ? " Appealing to her passions, he would continue : " I lost this eye in fighting under Trux- ton, with the Insurgente ; I got this scar before Trip- oli ; I broke this leg on board the Constitution, when the Guerriere struck." I will not imagine the dread- ful catastrophe to which he would be driven by an abandonment of him to his oppressor. It will not 54 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING be, it cannot be, that his country will refuse him protection. An honorable peace is attainable only by an effi- cient war. My plan would be to call out the ample resources of the country, give them a judicious direction, prosecute the war with the utmost vigor, strike wherever we can reach the enemy, at sea or on land, and negotiate the terms of peace at Quebec or at Halifax. We are told that England is a proud and lofty nation, which, disdaining to wait for dan- ger meets it half way. Haughty as she is we tri- umphed over her once, and, if we do not listen to the counsels of timidity and despair, we shall again prevail. In such a cause, with the aid of Providence, we must come out crowned with success ; but, if we fail, let us fail like men, lash ourselves to our 'gal- lant tars, and expire together in one common strug- gle, fighting for FREE TRADE AND SEAMEN'S BIGHTS. IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS EDMUND BUKKE House of Lords, February 13, 1788 [Mr. Burke regarded Warren Hastings as the responsible author of nearly all the calamities of India. On May 10, 1787, Mr. Burke went to the bar of the House of Lords, and there impeached Warren Hastings of high crimes and misdemeanors. The trial began Feb- ruary 13, 1788, and Mr. Burke opened the case in a speech which lasted four days, and which has been characterized as the greatest intellectual effort ever made before the Parliament of Great Britain. The extract here given is the peroration of that speech. ] IN the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villainy upon Warren Hastings, in this last moment of my application to you. My Lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of national justice ? Do we want a cause, my Lords ? You have the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated prov- inces, and of wasted kingdoms. Do you want a criminal, my Lords ? When was there so much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one ? No, my Lords, you must not look to punish any other such delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent. My Lords, is it a prosecutor you want ? You have before you the Commons of Great Britain as prose- cutors ; and I believe, my Lords, that the sun in his 55 56 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING beneficent progress round the world, does not behold a more glorious sight than that of men, separated from a remote people by the material bounds and barriers of nature, united by the bond of a social and moral community all the Commons of England re- senting, as their own, the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the people of India. Do we want a tribunal ? My Lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this. My Lords, here we see virtually, in the mind's eye, that sacred majesty of the Crown, under whose authority you sit, and whose power you exercise. We see in that invisible authority, what we all feel in reality and life, the beneficent powers and protecting justice of his Majesty. We have here the heir-apparent to the Crown, such as the fond wishes of the people of England wish an heir-ap- parent of the Crown to be. We have here all the branches of the royal family, in a situation between majesty and subjection, between the Sovereign and the subject offering a pledge, in that situation, for the support of the rights of the Crown and the lib- erties of the people, both which extremities they touch. My Lords, we have a great hereditary peer- age here ; those who have their own honor, the honor of their ancestors, and of their posterity, to guard, and who will justify, as they have always justified, that provision in the Constitution by which justice is made an hereditary office. My Lords, we have here a new nobility, who have risen, and exalted themselves, by various merits, by great military ser- vices, which have extended the fame of this country from the rising to the setting sun. We have those, who, by various civil merits and various civil talents, EDMUND BUEKE 57 have been exalted to a situation which they well de- serve, and in which they will justify the favor of their Sovereign and the good opinion of their fellow- subjects, and make them rejoice to see those virtuous characters, that were the other day upon a level with them, now exalted above them in rank, but feeling with them in sympathy what they felt in common with them before. We have persons exalted from the practice of the law, from the place in which they administered high, though subordinate justice, to a seat here, to enlighten with their knowledge, and to strengthen with their votes, those principles which have distinguished the courts in which they have presided. My Lords, you have here, also, the lights of our religion ; you have the bishops of England. My Lords, you have that true image of the primitive Church in its ancient form, in its ancient ordinances, purified from the superstitions and the vices which a long succession of ages will bring upon the best institutions. You have the representatives of that religion which says that their God is love, that the very vital spirit of their institution is charity a re- ligion which so much hates oppression, that when the God whom we adore appeared in human form, he did not appear in a form of greatness and maj- esty, but in sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle that their welfare was the object of all government, since the person, who was the Master of Nature, chose to appear himself in a subordinate situation. These are the considerations which influence them, which animate them, and will animate them, against all op- pression : knowing that He who is called first among them, and first among us all, both of the flock that is 58 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING fed and of those who feed it, made himself " the ser- vant of all." My Lords, these are the securities which we have in all the constituent parts of the body of this House. We know them, we reckon, we rest upon, and com- mit safely the interests of India and of humanity into their hands. Therefore, it is with confidence, that, ordered by the Commons, I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors. I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, in Parliament assembled, whose par- liamentary trust he has betrayed. I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dis- honored. I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted, whose property he has destroyed, whose country he has laid waste and desolate. I impeach him in the name, and by virtue, of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated. I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and op- pressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life. CHAPTEE in DIGNITY THE failure of many public speakers is oftentimes due solely to a lack of dignity. It is true that what some speakers mistake for dignity is but a vain and pompous strutting; and the student must be con- stantly on his guard against such oratorical dishon- esty. Nevertheless, he cannot lay too much stress upon the endeavor to impress the audience with the importance of his theme and of the occasion. This applies as well to the address delivered to an average jury, to a meeting of working-men, or to an after- dinner speech, as to a sermon, an argument before the Supreme Court, or to a Commemoration Ode. It is true that different occasions may call for different styles and treatments, but in every case there must be dignity, without which lasting impressions are well-nigh impossible. One can point, no doubt, to several speakers who have achieved, or who are achieving, what is called success, but whose speech is far from dignified ; in fact, who pride themselves on their off-hand manner and their total lack of dig- nity. But it is certain that their success is only temporary, while their work contributes nothing to the annals of oratory. It may be well to repeat that 59 60 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING on every occasion we expect and demand that the speaker be dignified even though his theme be but a commonplace one and his style simple and colloquial. While it is true that an audience will hardly be likely to sympathize with a speaker who appears dis- tant and overbearing, yet true dignity, even with an uncultivated audience, is always impressive, and carries with it a weight that familiarity can never attain. There are few who have not some conception of true dignity. The study of the selections in this chapter is intended to develop a dignified address through the development of the individual. That is to say, dignity must be the manifestation of the man. Let the student conceive the circumstances under which the speeches were delivered ; let him rid him- self of all narrowness and conceive the speaker's personal bias and prejudice as eliminated ; let him recognize the greatness of the occasion and his re- sponsibility ; and let him aim to convince or move his audience through the power of the truths he presents rather than through his own assertion of those truths. In this way he will soon come to re- alize the meaning of true dignity and to manifest it in all his work. Less time should be spent on this chapter than on the two preceding. It requires time to develop dig- nity, and it is useless to attempt to force it. So soon as the student has caught the spirit of the chapter therefore he may pass on to the next step, endeavor- ing, however, to infuse all his subsequent work with the spirit of dignity. SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS ABEAHAM LINCOLN March 4, 1865 FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in de- tail of a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been con- stantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an im- pending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to sav- ing the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city, seeking to destroy it without war seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by nego- tiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of 61 62 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING them would make war rather than let the nation sur- vive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not dis- tributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial en- largement of it. Neither party expected for the war the mag- nitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease, even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. " Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh." If we shall suppose that Amer- ican slavery is one of these offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which hav- ing continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those ABRAHAM LINCOLN 63 by whom the offence came, shall we discern there any departure from those Divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him ? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by an- other drawn with the sword, as was said three thou- sand years ago, so, still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous al- together. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans ; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. THE MAETYR PRESIDENT HENEY WAED BEECHEE Brooklyn, April 15, 1865 " And Moses went up from the plains of Moab, unto the moun- tain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah, that is over against Jericho ; and the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan, and all Naphtali, and the land of Ephraim, and Manasseh, and all the land of Judah, unto the utmost sea, and the south, and the plain of the valley of Jericho, the city of palm trees, unto Zoar. And the Lord said unto him, this is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, saying, I will give it unto thy seed ; I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither. So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord." DBUT. 34 : 1-5. THERE is no historic figure more noble than that of the Jewish law-giver. After so many thousand years the figure of Moses is not diminished, but stands up against the background of early days, dis- tinct and individual, as if he had lived but yester- day. There is scarcely another event in history more touching than his death. He had borne the great burdens of state for forty years, shaped the Jews to a nation, filled out their civil and religious polity, administered their laws, guided their steps, or dwelt with them in all their journeyings in the wilderness ; had mourned in their punishment, kept step with their march, and led them in wars, until the end of their labors drew nigh. The last stage was reached. Jordan only lay between them and 64 HENRY WARD BEECHER 65 the promised land. The promised land ! oh, what yearning's had heaved his breast for that divinely promised place! He had dreamed of it by night, and mused by day. It was holy and endeared as God's favored spot. It was to be the cradle of an illustrious history. All his long-, laborious, and now weary life, he had aimed at this as the consumma- tion of every desire, the reward of every toil and pain. Then came the word of the Lord to him, "Thou mayest not go over: Get thee up into the mountain, look upon it, and die." From that silent summit, the hoary leader gazed to the north, to the south, to the west, with hungry eyes. The dim outlines rose up. The hazy recesses spoke of quiet valleys between the hills. With eager longing, with sad resignation, he looked upon the promised land. It was now to him a forbidden land. It was a moment's anguish. He forgot all his personal wants, and drank in the vision of his people's home. His work was done. There lay God's promise fulfilled. There was the seat of coming Jerusalem ; there the city of Judah's King ; the sphere of judges and prophets ; the mount of sorrow and salvation ; the nest whence were to fly blessings innumerable to all mankind. Joy chased sadness from every feature, and the prophet laid him down and died. Again a great leader of the people has passed through toil, sorrow, battle, and war, and come near to the promised land of peace, into which he might not pass over. Who shall recount our martyr's suf- ferings for this people ? Since the November of 1860, his horizon has been black with storms. By day and by night he trod a way of danger and dark- ness. On his shoulders rested a government dearer 66 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING to him than his own life. At its integrity millions of men were striking at home. Upon this govern- ment foreign eyes lowered. It stood like a lone island in a sea full of storms ; and every tide and wave seemed eager to devour it. Upon thousands .of hearts great sorrows and anxieties have rested, but not on one such, and in such measure, as upon that simple, truthful, noble soul, our faithful and sainted Lincoln. Never rising to the enthusiasm of more impassioned natures in hours of hope, and never sinking with the mercurial in hours of defeat to the depths of despondency, he held on with unmovable patience and fortitude, putting caution against hope, that it might not be premature, and hope against caution, that it might not yield to dread and danger. He wrestled ceaselessly, through four black and dreadful purgatorial years, wherein God was cleansing the sin of his people as by fire. At last the watcher beheld the gray dawn for the country. The mountains began to give forth their forms from out the darkness ; and the East came rushing toward us with arms full of joy for all our sorrows. Then it was for him to be glad exceeding- ly, that had sorrowed immeasurably. Peace could bring to no other heart such joy, such rest, such honor, such trust, such gratitude. But he looked upon it as Moses looked upon the promised land. Then the wail of a nation proclaimed that he had gone from among us. Not thine the sorrow, but ours, sainted soul. Thou hast indeed entered the promised land, while we are yet on the march. To us remains the rocking of the deep, the storm upon the land, days of duty and nights of watching, but thou art sphered high above all darkness and fear, beyond all sorrow and weariness. Best, O weary HENRY WARD BEECHER 67 heart ! Kejoice exceedingly, them that hast suffered enough ! Thou hast beheld Him who invisibly led thee in this great wilderness. Thou standest among the elect. Around thee are the royal men that have ennobled human life in every age. Kingly art thou, with glory on thy brow as a diadem. And joy is upon thee for evermore. Over all this land, over all the little cloud of years that now from thine in- finite horizon moves back as a speck, thou art lifted up as high as the star is above the clouds that hide us, but never reach it. In the goodly company of Mount Zion thou shalt find that rest which thou hast sorrowing sought in vain ; and thy name, an ever- lasting name in heaven, shall flourish in fragrance and beauty as long as men shall last upon the earth, or hearts remain, to revere truth, fidelity, and good- ness. Never did two such orbs of experience meet in one hemisphere, as the joy and the sorrow of the same week in this land. The joy was as sudden as if no man had expected it, and as entrancing as if it had fallen a sphere from heaven. It rose up over sobriety, and swept business from its moorings, and ran down through the land in irresistible course. Men embraced each other in brotherhood that were strangers in the flesh. They sang, or prayed, or, deeper yet, many could only think thanksgiving and weep gladness. That peace was sure ; that government was firmer than ever ; that the land was cleansed of plague ; that the ages were opening to our footsteps, and we were to begin a march of blessings ; that blood was staunched, and scowling enmities were sinking like storms beneath the hori- zon ; that the dear fatherland, nothing lost, much gained, was to rise up in unexampled honor among 68 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING the nations of the earth these thoughts, and that undistinguishable throng of fancies, and hopes, and desires, and yearnings, that filled the soul with tremblings like the heated air of midsummer days all these kindled up such a surge of joy as no words may describe. In one hour joy lay without a pulse, without a gleam, or breath. A sorrow came that swept through the land as huge storms sweep through the forest and field, rolling thunder along the sky, dishevelling the flowers, daunting every singer in thicket or forest, and pouring blackness and darkness across the land and up the mountains. Did ever so many hearts, in so brief a time, touch two such boundless feelings? It was the uttermost of joy ; it was the uttermost of sorrow noon and midnight, without a space between. The blow brought not a sharp pang. It was so terrible that at first it stunned sensibility. Citizens were like men awakened at midnight by an earth- quake, and bewildered to find everything that they were accustomed to trust wavering and falling. The very earth was no longer solid. The first feeling was the least. Men waited to get straight to feel. They wandered in the streets as if groping after some impending dread, or undeveloped sorrow, or some one to tell them what ailed them. They met each other as if each would ask the other, " Am I awake, or do I dream ? " There was a piteous help- lessness. Strong men bowed down and wept. Other and common griefs belonged to some one in chief: this belonged to all. It was each and every man's. Every virtuous household in the land felt as if its first-born were gone. Men were bereaved, and walked for days as if a corpse lay unburied in their HENRY WARD BEECHER 69 dwellings. There was nothing else to think of. They could speak of nothing but that ; and yet, of that they could speak only falteringly. All busi- ness was laid aside. Pleasure forgot to smile. The city for nearly a week ceased to roar. The great Leviathan lay down, and was still. Even avarice stood still, and greed was strangely moved to gen- erous sympathy and universal sorrow. Kear to his name monuments, found charitable institutions, and write his name above their lintels ; but no monu- ment will ever equal the universal, spontaneous, and sublime sorrow that in a moment swept down lines and parties, and covered up animosities, and in an hour brought a divided people into unity of grief and indivisible fellowship of anguish. And now the martyr is moving in triumphal march, mightier than when alive. The nation rises up at every stage of his coming. Cities and states are his pall-bearers, and the cannon beats the hours with solemn progression. Dead, dead, dead, he yet speaketh! Is Washington dead? Is Hampden dead? Is David dead? Is any man that ever was fit to live dead ? Disenthralled of flesh, and risen in the unobstructed sphere where passion never comes, he begins his illimitable work. His life now is grafted upon the infinite, and will be fruitful as no earthly life can be. Pass on, thou that hast over- come! Your sorrows, oh people, are his peace! Your bells, and bands, and muffled drums, sound triumph in his ear. Wail and weep here ; God makes it echo joy and triumph there. Pass on! Four years ago, oh, Illinois, we took from your midst an untried man, and from among the people. We return him to you a mighty conqueror. Not thine any more, but the nation's ; not ours, but the 70 PEACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING world's. Give him place, oh, ye prairies ! In the midst of this great continent his dust shall rest, a sacred treasure to myriads who shall pilgrim to that shrine to kindle anew their zeal and patriotism. Ye winds that move over the mighty places of the West, chant requiem ! Ye people, behold a martyr whose blood, as so many articulate words, pleads for fidel- ity, for law, for liberty I ORATION AT THE LAYING OF THE CORNEE-STONE OF THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT DANIEL WEBSTEE Charlestown, Mass., June 17, 1825 THIS uncounted multitude before me, and around me, proves the feeling- which the occasion has ex- cited. These thousands of human faces, glowing with sympathy and joy, and, from the impulses of a common gratitude, turned reverently to heaven, in this spacious temple of the firmament, proclaim that the day, the place, and the purpose of our assem- bling, have made a deep impression on our hearts. If, indeed, there be anything in local association fit to affect the mind of man, we need not strive to repress the emotions which agitate us here. We are among the sepulchres of our fathers. We are on ground distinguished by their valor, their con- stancy, and the shedding of their blood. We are here, not to fix an uncertain date in our annals, nor to draw into notice an obscure and unknown spot. If our humble purpose had never been conceived, if we ourselves had never been born, the 17th of June, 1775, would have been a day on which all subsequent history would have poured its light, and the emi- nence where we stand, a point of attraction to the eyes of successive generations. The society, whose organ I am, was formed for the 73 74 PEACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING purpose of rearing- some honorable and durable mon- ument to the memory of the early friends of Amer- ican Independence. They have thought that, for this subject, no time could be more propitious than the present prosperous and peaceful period; that no place could claim preference over this memorable spot ; and that no day could be more auspicious to the undertaking*, than the anniversary of the battle which was here fought. The foundation of that mon- ument we have now laid. With solemnities suited to the occasion, with prayers to Almighty God for His blessing, and in the midst of this cloud of wit- nesses, we have begun the work. We trust it will be prosecuted ; and that, springing from a broad foundation, rising high in massive solidity and un- adorned grandeur, it may remain, as long as Heaven permits the work of man to last, a fit emblem, both of the events in memory of which it is raised, and of the gratitude of those who have reared it. Let it not be supposed that our object is to per- petuate national hostility, or even to cherish a mere military spirit. It is higher, purer, nobler. We consecrate our work to the spirit of national inde- pendence, and we wish that the light of peace may rest upon it forever. We rear a memorial of our conviction of that unmeasured benefit, which has been conferred on our own land, and of the happy influences which have been produced by the same events, on the general interests of mankind. We come, as Americans, to mark a spot which must for- ever be dear to us and our posterity. We wish that whosoever, in all coming time, shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not undis- tinguished, where the first great battle of the rev- olution was fought. We wish that this structure DANIEL WEBSTER 75 may proclaim the magnitude and importance of that event, to every class and every age. We wish that infancy may learn the purpose of its erection, from maternal lips ; and that weary and withered age may behold it, and be solaced by the recollections which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here, and be proud, in the midst of its toil. We wish that, in those days of disaster, which, as they come on all nations, must be expected to come on us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward, and be assured that the foundations of our national power still stand strong. We wish that this column, rising towards heaven among the pointed spires of so many temples dedicated to God, may contribute also to produce, in all minds, a pious feeling of dependence and gratitude. We wish, finally, that the last object on the sight of him who leaves his native shore, and the first to gladden his who revisits it, may be something which shall remind him of the liberty and the glory of his country. Let it rise, till it meet the sun in his coming ; let the earliest light of the morning gild it, and parting day linger and play on its summit. We live in a most extraordinary age. Events so various and so important that they might crowd and distinguish centuries, are, in our times, com- pressed within the compass of a single life. When has it happened that history has had so much to record, in the same term of years, as since the 17th of June, 1775 ? Our own revolution, which, under other circumstances, might itself have been expected to occasion a war of half a century, has been achieved ; twenty -four sovereign and independent states erect- ed ; and a general government established over them, so safe, so wise, so free, so practical, that we might 76 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING well wonder its establishment should have been accomplished so soon, were it not for the greater wonder that it should have been established at all. Two or three millions of people have been aug- mented to twelve ; and the great forests of the West prostrated beneath the arm of successful in- dustry ; and the dwellers on the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi become the fellow-citizens and neighbors of those who cultivate the hills of New England. We have a commerce that leaves no sea unexplored ; navies that take no law from superior force ; revenues adequate to all the exigencies of government, almost without taxation ; and peace with all nations, founded on equal rights and mut- ual respect. Europe within the same period, has been agitated by a mighty revolution, which, while it has been felt in the individual condition and happiness of almost every man, has shaken to the centre her political fabric, and dashed against one another, thrones which had stood tranquil for ages. On this, our continent, our own example has been followed ; and colonies have sprung up to be nations. Unaccustomed sounds of liberty and free government have reached us from beyond the track of the sun ; and at this moment the dominion of European power, in this continent, from the place where we stand to the south pole, is anni- hilated forever. In the mean time, both in Europe and America, such has been the general progress of knowledge ; such the improvements in legislation, in commerce, in the arts, in letters, and above all, in the liberal ideas and the general spirit of the age, that the whole world seems changed. Yet, notwithstanding that this is but a faint abstract DANIEL WEBSTER 77 of the things which have happened since the day of the battle of Bunker Hill, we are but fifty years re- moved from it ; and we now stand here, to enjoy all the blessings of our own condition, and to look abroad on the brightened prospects of the world, while we hold still among us some of those, who Were active agents in the scenes of 1775, and who are now here, from every quarter of New England, to visit, once more, and under circumstances so affecting I had almost said so overwhelming this renowned theatre of their courage and patriotism. Venerable men ! you have come down to us, from a former generation. Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives, that you might behold this joyous day. You are now where you stood fifty years ago, this very hour, with your brothers, and your neighbors, shoulder to shoulder, in the strife for your country. Behold, how altered ! The same heavens are indeed above your heads ; the same ocean rolls at your feet ; but all else, how changed ! You hear now no roar of hostile cannon, you see no mixed volumes of smoke and flame rising from burning Charlestown. The ground strewed with the dead and the dying ; the impetuous charge ; the steady and successful re- pulse ; the loud call to repeated assault ; the sum- moning of all that is manly to repeated resistance ; a thousand bosoms freely and fearlessly bared in an instant to whatever of terror there may be in war and death ; all these you have witnessed, but you wit- ness them no more. All is peace. The heights of yonder metropolis, its towers and roofs, which you then saw filled with wives, and children, and country- men in distress and terror, and looking with unutter- able emotions for the issue of the combat, have pre- sented you to-day with the sight of its whole happy 78 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING population, come out to welcome and greet you with a universal jubilee. Yonder proud ships, by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount, and seeming fondly to cling around it, are not means of annoyance to you, but your country's own means of distinction and defence. All is peace ; and God has granted you this sight of your country's happiness, ere you slumber in the grave forever. He has allowed you to behold and to partake the re- ward of your patriotic toils ; and he has allowed us, your sons and countrymen, to meet you here, and in the name of the present generation, in the name of your country, in the name of liberty, to thank you! But, alas ! you are not all here ! Time and the sword have thinned your ranks. Prescott, Putnam, Stark, Brooks, Read, Pomeroy, Bridge ; our eyes seek for you in vain amidst this broken band ! You are gathered to your fathers, and live only to your country in her grateful remembrance, and your own bright example. But let us not too much grieve that you have met the common fate of men. You lived, at least, long enough to know that your work had been nobly and successfully accomplished. You lived to see your country's independence established, and to sheathe your swords from war. On the light of liberty you saw arise the light of peace, like ' ' Another morn, Risen on mid-noon ;" and the sky, on which you closed your eyeg, was cloudless. But ah ! him ! the first great martyr in this great cause ! him ! the premature victim of his own self- devoting heart ! him ! the head of our civil councils, DANIEL WEBSTER 79 and the destined leader of our military bands ; whom nothing brought hither but the unquenchable fire of his own spirit ; him ! cut off by Providence, in the hour of overwhelming anxiety and thick gloom ; falling ere he saw the star of his country rise ; pour- ing out his generous blood, like water, before he knew whether it would fertilize a land of freedom or of bondage how shall I struggle with the emotions that stifle the utterance of thy name ! Our poor work may perish ; but thine shall endure ! This monument may moulder away ; the solid ground it rests upon may sink down to a level with the sea ; but thy memory shall not fail ! Wheresoever among men a heart shall be found, that beats to the trans- ports of patriotism and liberty, its aspirations shall be to claim kindred with thy spirit ! But the scene amidst which we stand does not permit us to confine our thoughts or our sympathies to those fearless spirits, who hazarded or lost their lives on this consecrated spot. We have the happi- ness to rejoice here in the presence of a most worthy representation of the survivors of the whole revolu- tionary army. Veterans! you are the remnant of many a well- fought field. You bring with you marks of honor, from Trenton, and Monmouth, from Yorktown, Cam- den, Bennington, and Saratoga. Veterans of half a century! when, in your youthful days, you put everything at hazard in your country's cause, good as that cause was, and sanguine as youth is, still your fondest hopes did not stretch onward to an hour like this ! At a period to which you could not reasonably have expected to arrive ; at a moment of national prosperity, such as you could never have foreseen, you are now met, here, to enjoy the fellow 80 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING ship of old soldiers, and to receive the overflowing's of a universal gratitude. But your agitated countenances and your heaving breasts inform me, that even this is not an unmixed joy. I perceive that a tumult of contending feelings rushes upon you. The image of the dead, as well as the persons of the living, throng to your em- braces. The scene overwhelms you, and I turn from it. May the Father of all mercies smile upon your declining years, and bless them ! And when you shall here have exchanged your embraces ; when you shall once more have pressed the hands which have been so often extended to give succor in ad- versity, or grasped in the exultation of victory ; then look abroad into this lovely land, which your young valor defended, and mark the happiness with which it is filled ; yea, look abroad into the whole earth, and see what a name you have contributed to give to your country, and what a praise you have added to freedom ; and then rejoice in the sympathy and gratitude which beam upon your last days from the improved condition of mankind. And let the sacred obligations which have de- volved on this generation, and on us, sink deep into our hearts. Those are daily dropping from among us, who established our liberty and our government. The great trust now descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us, as our appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defence and preserva- tion ; and there is opened to us, also, a noble pur- DANIEL WEBSTER 81 suit, to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace, let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, pro- mote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform some- thing worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled conviction, and an habitual feeling, that these twenty-four States are one country. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be, our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself be- come a vast and splendid monument, not of oppres- sion and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze, with ad- miration, forever. part {Two THE STUDY OF DETAIL CHAPTER IV MOODS THUS far we have been considering the fundamental elements of public speaking. We have been aiming to bring before the student's mind the value of di- rectness, earnestness, and dignity ; and to train him in the development of these essentials. In Part Two we are to study the presentation of thought in de- tail. As we listen to conversation we note the variety of inflection, melody, key, quality, etc. Public speaking should have much the same variety, not for its own sake, but that the audience may follow the speaker without effort. One of the most serious de- fects possible in a public speaker is the tendency to drift. It leads the speaker to state his case in a mo- notonously dreary style, or allows him to be carried along in an equally monotonous way, upon the tide of intense feeling. The study of moods will contribute much to a per- manent emotional poise, and hence to greater variety of expression. As a result the student will be a more interesting speaker, easier to follow, and more effect- ive in argument. When one speaks extempore, each successive thought is presented with a definite purpose. This sentence asks a question ; the next strongly asserts ; the following appeals, urges, or entreats. Each 85 86 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING thought creates a definite mood in the speaker which manifests itself in his expression. When one recites the words of another there should be the same vari- ety ; but as a rule it is not present because we do not consciously analyze the text to discover the various moods. This is often equally true of speakers who have learned their own words by heart, or who read them from the manuscript. A brief analysis of a part of the sixth paragraph of Webster's speech will make clear the purpose of this chapter. Beginning with the words, " But the gen- tleman inquires why he was made the object of such a reply," and ending, "with his friend from Mis- souri " we find four distinct moods : the first ending with "Missouri" ; the second with " impressions " ; the third with " delay " ; and the fourth with " Missouri." Without insisting on any particular interpretation, one may say that the first mood is that of inquiry ; the second, assertion ; the third, beginning with neg- ative statement, ends in stron'g and emphatic asser- tion ; and the fourth is a simple transition leading up to the next phase of the subject, " If, sir, the honora- ble member," etc. It will be found very helpful if each student will analyze certain portions of the en- tire selection and then render them as a test of his grasp of the subject of Moods. The results of such study will soon be evident not only in declamation, but in original work. If students will bear in mind that the mood must precede the spoken word they will have gone far to- ward mastering the principle here discussed. REPLY TO HATNE DANIEL WEBSTER United States Senate, Jcmitary 26, 1830 MB. PKESIDENT When the mariner has been tossed, for many days, in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and ascertain how far the ele- ments have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and before we float farther, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may at least be able to conjecture where we now are. I ask for the reading" of the resolution. [The Secretary read the resolution, as follows : "Resolved, That the committee on public lands be instructed to inquire and report the quantity of the public lands remaining unsold within each state and territory, and whether it be expedient to limit, for a certain period, the sales of the public lands to such lands only as have heretofore been offered for sale, and are now subject to entry at the minimum price. And, also, whether the office of surveyor general, and some of the land offices, may not be abolished without detriment to the public interest ; or whether it be expedient to adopt measures to hasten the sales, and extend more rapidly the surveys of the public lands."] We have thus heard, sir, what the resolution is, 87 00 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING which is actually before us for consideration ; and it will readily occur to every one that it is almost the only subject about which something has not been said in the speech, running 1 through two days, by which the Senate has been now entertained by the gentleman from South Carolina. Every topic in the wide range of our public affairs, wheth- er past or present everything, general or local, whether belonging to national politics or party pol- itics seems to have attracted more or less of the honorable member's attention, save only the resolu- tion before us. He has spoken of everything but the public lands. They have escaped his notice. To that subject, in all his excursions, he has not paid even the cold respect of a passing glance. When this debate, sir, was to be resumed on Thursday morning, it so happened that it would have been convenient for me to be elsewhere. The hon- orable member, however, did not incline to put off the discussion to another day. He had a shot, he said, to return, and he wished to discharge it. That shot, sir, which he was kind thus to inform us, was coming, that we might stand out of the way, or prepare our- selves to fall before it, and die with decency, has now been received. Under all advantages, and with expectation awakened by the tone which preceded it, it has been discharged, and has spent its force. It may become me to say no more of its effect than that, if nobody is found, after all, either killed or wounded by it, it is not the first time in the history of human affairs that the vigor and success of the war have not quite come up to the lofty and sound- ing phrase of the manifesto. The gentleman, sir, in declining to postpone the debate, told the Senate with the emphasis of his hand DANIEL WEBSTER 89 upon his heart, that there was something- rankling here, which he wished to relieve. [Mr. Hayne rose and disclaimed having used the word rankling.] It would not, Mr. President, be safe for the honorable member to appeal to those around him, upon the question whether he did, in fact, make use of that word. But he may have been unconscious of it. At any rate, it is enough that he disclaims it. But still, with or without the use of that particular word, he had yet something here, he said, of which he wished to rid himself by an immediate reply. In this re- spect, sir, I have a great advantage over the honora- ble gentleman. There is nothing here, sir, which gives me the slightest uneasiness ; neither fear, nor anger, nor that which is sometimes more trouble- some than either, the consciousness of having been in the wrong. There is nothing either originating here, or now received here by the gentleman's shot. Nothing original, for I had not the slightest feeling of disrespect or unkindness toward the honorable member. Some passages, it is true, had occurred since our acquaintance in this body, which I could wish might have been otherwise ; but I had used philosophy, and forgotten them. When the hon- orable member rose, in his first speech, I paid him the respect of attentive listening ; and when he sat down, though surprised, and I must say even as- tonished, at some of his opinions, nothing was far- ther from my intention than to commence any per- sonal warfare ; and through the whole of the few remarks I made in answer, I avoided, studiously and carefully, everything which I thought possible to be construed into disrespect. And, sir, while there is thus nothing originating here, which I wished at any time, or now wish, to discharge, I must repeat, also, 90 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING that nothing has been received here, which rankles, or in any way gives me annoyance. I will not accuse the honorable member of violating the rules of civilized war I will not say that he poisoned his arrows. But whether his shafts were, or were not, dipped in that which would have caused rankling if they had reached their destination ; there was not, as it hap- pened, quite strength enough in the bow to bring them to their mark. If he wishes now to find those shafts, he must look for them elsewhere ; they will not be found fixed and quivering in the object at which they were aimed. The honorable member complained that I had slept on his speech. I must have slept on it, or not slept at all. The moment the honorable member sat down, his friend from Missouri rose, and, with much honeyed commendation of the speech, suggested that the impressions which it had produced were too charming and delightful to be disturbed by other sentiments or other sounds, and proposed that the Senate should adjourn. Would it have been quite amiable in me, sir, to interrupt this excellent good-feeling? Must I not have been absolutely malicious if I could have thrust myself forward to destroy sensations thus pleasing? Was it not much better and kinder both to sleep upon them myself, and to allow others, also, the pleasure of sleeping upon them ? But if it be meant by sleeping upon his speech that I took time to prepare a reply to it, it is quite a mistake ; owing to other engagements, I could not employ even the interval between the adjournment of the Senate and its meeting the next morning, in attention to the subject of this debate. Nevertheless, sir, the mere matter of fact is un- doubtedly true I did sleep on the gentleman's DANIEL WEBSTER 91 speech, and slept soundly. And I slept equally well on his speech of yesterday, to which I am now replying. It is quite possible that, in this respect also, I possess some advantage over the honorable member, attributable, doubtless, to a cooler tem- perament on my part ; for in truth I slept upon his speeches remarkably well. But the gentleman in- quires why he was made the object of such a reply. Why was he singled out? If an attack had been made on the East, he, he assures us, did not begin it it was the gentleman from Missouri. Sir, I an- swered the gentleman's speech because I happened to hear it ; and because, also, I chose to give an answer to that speech, which, if unanswered, I thought most likely to produce injurious impres- sions. I did not stop to inquire who was the origi- nal drawer of the bill. I found a responsible in- dorser before me, and it was my purpose to hold him liable, and to bring him to his just responsibil- ity without delay. But, sir, this interrogatory of the honorable member was only introductory to an- other. He proceeded to ask me whether I had turned upon him in this debate from the conscious- ness that I should find an overmatch if I ventured on a contest with his friend from Missouri. If, sir, the honorable member, ex gratia modestice, had chosen thus to defer to his friend, and to pay him a compli- ment, without intentional disparagement to others, it would have been quite according to the friendly courtesies of debate, and not at all ungrateful to my own feelings. I am not one of those, sir, who esteem any tribute of regard, whether light and occasional, or more serious and deliberate, which may be bestowed on others, as so much unjustly withholden from themselves. But the tone and 92 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING manner of the gentleman's question forbid me thus to interpret it. I am not at liberty to consider it as nothing- more than a civility to his friend. .It had an air of taunt and disparagement, a little of the loftiness of asserted superiority, which does not allow me to pass it over without notice. It was put as a question for me to answer, and so put as if it were difficult for me to answer, whether I deemed the member from Missouri an overmatch for myself in debate here. It seems to me, sir, that is extraor- dinary language, and an extraordinary tone for the discussions of this body. Matches and overmatches ! Those terms are more applicable elsewhere than here, and fitter for other assemblies than this. Sir, the gentleman seems to forget where and what we are. This is a senate ; a sen- ate of equals ; of men of individual honor and per- sonal character, and of absolute independence. We know no masters ; we acknowledge no dictators. This is a hall for mutual consultation and discussion, not an arena for the exhibition of champions. I offer myself, sir, as a match for no man ; I throw the challenge of debate at no man's feet. But, then, sir, since the honorable member has put the ques- tion in a manner that calls for an answer, I will give him an answer ; and I tell him that, holding myself to be the humblest of the members here, I yet know nothing in the arm of his friend from Missouri, either alone or when aided by the arm of his friend from South Carolina, that need deter even me from espousing whatever opinions I may choose to es- pouse, from debating whenever I may choose to debate, or from speaking whatever I may see fit to say on the floor of the Senate. Sir, when uttered as matter of commendation or compliment, I should DANIEL WEBSTER 93 dissent from nothing- which the honorable member might say of his friend. Still less do I put forth any pretensions of my own. But when put to me as matter of taunt, I throw it back, and say to the gentleman that he could possibly say nothing- less likely than such a comparison to wound my pride of personal character. The anger of its tone rescued the remark from intentional irony, which otherwise probably would have been its general acceptation. But, sir, if it be imagined that by this mutual quota- tion and commendation ; if it be supposed that, by casting the characters of the drama, assigning to each his part to one the attack, to another the cry of onset or if it be thought that by a loud and empty vaunt of anticipated victory any laurels are to be won here ; if it be imagined, especially, that any or all these things will shake any purpose of mine, I can tell the honorable member, once for all, that he is greatly mistaken, and that he is dealing with one of whose temper and character he has yet much to learn. Sir, I shall not allow myself, on this occasion I hope on no occasion to be betrayed into any loss of temper ; but if provoked, as I trust I never shall allow myself to be, into crimination and recrimination, the honorable member may, per- haps, find that in that contest there will be blows to take as well as blows to give ; that others can state comparisons as significant, at least, as his own ; and that his impunity may, perhaps, demand of him whatever powers of taunt and sarcasm he may pos- sess. I commend him to a prudent husbandry of his resources. But, sir, the coalition ! The coalition ! Ay " the murdered coalition ! " The gentleman asks if I were led or frighted into this debate by the spectre 94 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING of the coalition. " "Was it the ghost of the murdered coalition," he exclaims, " which haunted the member from Massachusetts, and which, like the ghost of Banquo, would never down ? " " The murdered coal- ition ! " Sir, this charge of a coalition, in reference to the late administration, is not original with the honorable member. It did not spring up in the Senate. Whether as a fact, as an argument, or as an embellishment, it is all borrowed. He adopts it, in- deed, from a very low origin, and a still lower pres- ent condition. It is one of the thousand calumnies with which the press teemed during an excited polit- ical canvass. It was a charge of which there was not only no proof or probability, but which was, in itself, wholly impossible to be true. No man of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was of that class of falsehoods which, by con- tinued repetition through all the organs of detrac- tion and abuse, are capable of misleading those who are already far misled, and of further fanning pas- sion already kindling into flame. Doubtless it served its day, and in a greater or less degree, the end de- signed by it. Having done that it has sunk into the general mass of stale and loathed calumnies. It is the very cast-off slough of a polluted and shameless press. Incapable of further mischief, it lies in the sewer, lifeless and despised. It is not now, sir, in the power of the honorable member to give it dig- nity or decency, by attempting to elevate it, and to introduce it into the Senate. He cannot change it from what it is an object of general disgust and scorn. On the contrary, the contact, if he choose to touch it, is more likely to drag him down, down to the place where it lies itself. But, sir, the honorable member was not, for other DANIEL WEBSTER 95 reasons, entirely happy in his allusion to the story of Banquo's murder and Banquo's ghost. It was not, I think, the friends, but the enemies of the mur- dered Banquo, at whose bidding his spirit would not down. The honorable gentleman is fresh in his reading of the English classics, and can put me right if I am wrong ; but according to my poor recollec- tion, it was at those who had begun with caresses, and ended with foul and treacherous murder, that the gory locks were shaken. The ghost of Banquo, like that of Hamlet, was an honest ghost. It dis- turbed no innocent man. It knew where its appear- ance would strike terror, and who would cry out, A ghost ! It made itself visible in the right quarter, and compelled the guilty and the conscience-smitten, and none others, to start with, " Prithee, see there ! behold ! look! lo! If I stand here, I saw him I " Their eyeballs were seared was it not so, sir ? who had thought to shield themselves by concealing their own hand, and laying the imputation of the crime on a low and hireling agency in wickedness ; who had vainly attempted to stifle the workings of their own coward consciences ; by ejaculating, through white lips and chattering teeth, " Thou canst not say I did it ! " I have misread the great poet, if it was those who had in no way partaken in the deed of the death, who either found that they were, or feared that they should be, pushed from their stools by the ghost of the slain, or who cried out to a spectre created by their own fears, and their own remorse, " Avaunt ! and quit our sight ! " There is another particular, sir, in which the hon- orable member's quick perception of resemblances 96 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING might, I should think, have seen something in the story of Banquo, making it not altogether a subject of the most pleasant contemplation. Those who murdered Banquo, what did they win by it ? Sub- stantial good ? Permanent power? Or disappoint- ment, rather, and sore mortification dust and ashes the common fate of vaulting ambition overleap- ing itself? Did not evenhanded justice, ere long, commend the poisoned chalice to their own lips? Did they not soon find that for another they had " filed their mind " ? that their ambition, though apparently for the moment successful, had but put a barren sceptre in their grasp ? Ay, sir, " A barren sceptre in their gripe, Thence to be wrenched by an unlineal hand, No son of theirs succeeding." Sir, I need pursue the allusion no further. I leave the honorable gentleman to run it out at his leisure, and to derive from it all the gratification it is calculated to administer. If he finds himself pleased with the associations, and prepared to be quite satisfied, though the parallel should be en- tirely completed, I had almost said I am satisfied also but that I shall think of. Yes, sir, I will think of that. CHAPTER V IMPRESSIVENESS THE purpose of this chapter is to direct the student to concentration upon each phrase, or thought unit, as distinguished from the mood, or emotional unit. As we find speakers who seem to manifest no variety of mood and feeling, so there are those who fail to impress their thought detail upon an audience. Let the student, then, clearly grasp each idea in the following extracts and strive to make his audience see the picture. The practice recommended in this and in the preceding chapter will do much toward developing the sense of light and shade, of propor- tion, and of variety, so essential to successful public speaking. THE WONDERS OF THE DA WN EDWARD EVERETT Albany, N Y., Aug. 28, 1856 MUCH as we are indebted to our observatories for elevating our conceptions of the heavenly bodies, they present even to the unaided sight scenes of glory which words are too feeble to describe. I had occa- sion, a few weeks since, to take the early train from Providence to Boston ; and for this purpose rose at two o'clock in the morning. Everything around was wrapped in darkness and hushed in silence, broken only by what seemed at that hour the unearthly clank and rush of the train. It was a mild, serene, mid- summer's night the sky was without a cloud the winds were whist. The moon, then in the last quarter, had just risen, and the stars shone with a spectral lustre but little affected by her presence. Jupiter, two hours high, was the herald of the day ; the Pleiades, just above the horizon, shed their sweet influence in the east ; Lyra sparkled near the zenith ; Andromeda veiled her newly-discovered glories from the naked eye in the south ; the steady pointers far beneath the pole looked meekly up from the depth of the north to their sovereign. Such was the glorious spectacle as I entered the train. As we proceeded, the timid approach of twi- light became more perceptible ; the intense blue of 98 EDWARD EVERETT 99 the sky began to soften ; the smaller stars, like little children, went first to rest ; the sister-beams of the Pleiades soon melted together ; but the bright con- stellations of the west and north remained un- changed. Steadily the wondrous transfiguration went on. Hands of angels hidden from mortal eyes shifted the scenery of the heavens : the glories of night dissolved into the glories of the dawn. The blue sky now turned more softly gray; the great watch-stars shut up their holy eyes ; the east began to kindle. Faint streaks of purple soon blushed along the sky ; the whole celestial concave was filled with the inflowing tides of the morning light, which came pouring down from above in one great ocean of radiance ; till at length, as we reached the Blue Hills, a flash of purple fire blazed out from above the horizon, and turned the dewy tear-drops of flower and leaf into rubies and diamonds. In a few seconds the everlasting gates of the morning were thrown wide open, and the lord of day, arrayed in glories too severe for the gaze of man, began his state. AVALANCHES OF THE JUNGFRAU' G. B. CHEEVEE "Wanderings of a Pilgrim in the Shadow of Mont Slant SUDDENLY an enormous mass of snow and ice, in itself a mountain, seems to move ; it breaks from the toppling- outmost mountain ridge of snow, where it is hundreds of feet in depth, and in its first fall of perhaps two thousand feet is broken into millions of fragments. As you first see the flash of distant artillery by night, then hear the roar, so here you may see the white flashing mass majes- tically bowing, then hear the astounding din. A cloud of dusty, dry snow rises into the air from the concussion, forming a white volume of fleecy smoke, or misty light, from the bosom of which thunders forth the icy torrent in its second prodigious fall over the rocky battlements. The eye follows it, de- lighted, as it ploughs through the path which pre- ceding avalanches have worn, till it comes to the brink of a vast ridge of bare rock, perhaps more than two thousand feet perpendicular ; then pours the whole cataract over the gulf, with a still louder roar of echoing thunder, to which nothing but the noise of Niagara in its sublimity is comparable. Another fall of still greater depth ensues, over a second similar castellated ridge or reef in the sur- face of the mountain, with an awful, majestic slow- 100 G. B. CHEEVEK 101 ness, and a tremendous crash in its concussion, awakening again the reverberating peals of thunder. Then the torrent roars on to another smaller fall, till at length it reaches a mighty groove of snow and ice. Here its progress is slower ; and last of all you listen to the roar of the falling fragments, as they drop out of sight, with a dead weight, into the bottom of the gulf, to rest there forever. Figure to yourself a cataract like" that of Niagara, poured in foaming grandeur, not raeuedy over one great precipice of two hundred feec, bat over the successive ridgy precipices of two or three thousand, in the face of a mountain eleven thousand feet high, and tumbling, crashing, thundering down with a continuous din of far greater sublimity than the sound of the grandest cataract. The roar of the falling mass begins to be heard the moment it is loosened from the mountain ; it pours on with the sound of a vast body of rushing water ; then comes the first great concussion, a booming crash of thun- ders, breaking on the still air in mid-heaven ; your breath is suspended, and you listen and look ; the mighty glittering mass shoots headlong over the main precipice, and the fall is so great that it pro- duces to the eye that impression of dread majestic slowness of which I have spoken, though it is doubtless more rapid than Niagara. But if you should see the cataract of Niagara itself coming down five thousand feet above you in the air, there would be the same impression. The image remains in the mind, and can never fade from it ; it is as if you had seen an alabaster cataract from heaven. The sound is far more sublime than that of Niagara, because of the preceding stillness in those Alpine solitudes. In the midst of such silence and solem- 102 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING nity, from out the bosom of those glorious, glitter- ing forms of nature, comes that rushing, crashing thunder-burst of sound ! If it were not that your soul, through the eye, is as filled and fixed with the sublimity of the vision as, through the sense of hearing, with that of the audible report, methinks you would wish to bury your face in your hands, and fall prostrate,; as at the voice of the Eternal. THE FIEST VIEW OF THE HEAVENS O. M. MITCHEL Cincinnati College, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1842 OFTEN have I swept backward, in imagination, six thousand years, and stood beside our great ances- tor, as he gazed for the first time upon the going down of the sun. What strange sensations must have swept through his bewildered mind, as he watched the last departing ray of the sinking orb, unconscious whether he should ever behold its re- turn. Wrapped in a maze of thought, strange and startling, he suffers his eye to linger long about the point at which the sun had slowly faded from view. A mysterious darkness creeps over the face of Na- ture ; the beautiful scenes of earth are slowly fad- ing, one by one, from his dimmed vision. A gloom deeper than that which covers earth steals across the mind of earth's solitary inhabitant. He raises his inquiring gaze toward heaven ; and lo ! a silver crescent of light, clear and beautiful, hanging in the western sky, meets his astonished gaze. The young moon charms his untutored vi- sion, and leads him upward to her bright attendants, which are now stealing, one by one, from out the deep blue sky. The solitary gazer bows, wonders, and adores. 103 104 PEACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING The hours glide by ; the silver moon is gone ; the stars are rising, slowly ascending the heights of heaven, and solemnly sweeping downward in the stillness of the night. A faint streak of rosy light is seen in the east ; it brightens ; the stars fade ; the planets are extinguished ; the eye is fixed in mute astonishment on the growing splendor, till the first rays of the returning sun dart their radi- ance 011 the young earth and its solitary inhabitant. The curiosity excited on this first solemn night, the consciousness that in the heavens God hath de- clared his glory, the eager desire to comprehend the mysteries that dwell in their bright orbs, have clung, through the long lapse of six thousand years, to the descendants of him who first watched and wondered. In this boundless field of investigation, human genius has won its most signal victories. Generation after generation has rolled away, age after age has swept silently by; but each has swelled, by its contributions, the stream of discov- ery. Mysterious movements have been unravelled ; mighty laws have been revealed; ponderous orbs have been weighed ; one barrier after another has given way to the force of intellect ; until the mind, majestic in its strength, has mounted, step by step, up the rocky height of its self-built pyramid, from whose star-crowned summit it looks out upon the grandeur of the universe self-clothed with the pre- science of a God. REGTTLJJS TO THE CARTHAGINIANS E. KELLOGG THE beams of the rising sun had gilded the lofty domes of Carthage, and given, with its rich and mel- low light, a tinge of beauty even to the frowning ramparts of the outer harbor. Sheltered by the verdant shores, an hundred triremes were riding proudly at their anchors, their brazen beaks glitter- ing in the sun, their streamers dancing in the morn- ing breeze, while many a shattered plank and timber gave evidence of desperate conflicts with the fleets of Home. No murmur of business or of revelry arose from the city. The artisan had forsaken his shop, the judge his tribunal, the priest his sanctuary, and even the stern stoic had come forth from his retire- ment to mingle with the crowd that, anxious and agitated, were rushing toward the senate-house, startled by the report that Regulus had returned to Carthage*^ Onward, still onward, trampling each other under foot, they rushed, furious with anger and eager for revenge. Fathers were there, whose sons were groaning in fetters ; maidens, whose lovers, weak and wounded, were dying in the dungeons of Rome ; and gray -haired men and matrons, whom the Eoman sword had left childless. But when the stern features of Eegulus were seen, 105 106 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING and his colossal form towering- above the ambas- sadors who had returned with him from Eome ; when the news passed from lip to lip that the dreaded warrior, so far from advising the Roman senate to consent to an exchange of prisoners, had urged to pursue, with exterminating vengeance s Carthage and the Carthaginians, the multitude swayed to and fro like a forest beneath a tempest, and the rage and hate of that tumultuous throng vented itself in groans, and curses, and yells of ven- geance. But calm, cold, and immovable as the mar- ble walls around him stood the Eoman ; and he stretched out his hand over that frenzied crowd, with gesture as proudly commanding as though he still stood at the head of the gleaming cohorts of Eome. The tumult ceased ; the curse, half muttered, died upon the lip ; and so intense was the silence, that the clanking of the brazen manacles upon the wrists of the captive fell sharp and full upon every ear in that vast assembly, as he thus addressed them : "Ye doubtless thought for ye judge of Eoman virtue by your own that I would break my plighted oath, rather than, returning, brook your vengeance. If the bright blood that fills my veins, transmitted free from godlike ancestry, were like that slimy ooze which stagnates in your arteries, I had remained at home, and broke my plighted oath to save my life. " I am a Eoman citizen ; therefore have I re- turned, that ye might work your will upon this mass of flesh and bones, that I esteem no higher than the rags that cover them. Here, in your capital, do I defy you. Have I not conquered your armies, fired your towns, and dragged your generals at my char- E. KELLOGG 107 lot wheels, since first my youthful arms could wield a spear ? And do you think to see me crouch and cower before a tamed and shattered senate ? The tearing- of flesh and rending of sinews is but pastime compared with the mental agony that heaves my frame. "The moon has scarce yet waned since the proudest of Eome's proud matrons, the mother upon whose breast I slept, and whose fair brow so oft had bent over me before the noise of battle had stirred my blood, or the fierce toil of war nerved my sinews, did with fondest memory of bygone hours entreat me to remain. I have seen her, who, when my country called me to the field, did buckle on my harness with trembling hands, while the tears fell thick and fast down the hard corselet scales I have seen her tear her gray locks and beat her aged breast, as on her knees she begged me not to return to Carthage ; and all the assembled senate of Rome, grave and reverend men, proffered the same request. The puny torments which ye have in store to wel- come me withal, shall be, to what I have endured, even as the murmur of a summer's brook to the fierce roar of angry surges on a rocky beach. " Last night, as I lay fettered in my dungeon, I heard a strange, ominous sound : it seemed like the distant march of some vast army, their harness clank- ing as they marched, when suddenly there stood by me Xanthippus, the Spartan general, by whose aid you conquered me, and, with a voice low as when the solemn wind moans through the leafless forest, he thus addressed me : ' Roman, I come to bid thee curse, with thy dying breath, this fated city ; know that, in an evil moment, the Carthaginian generals, furious with rage that I had conquered thee, their 108 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING conqueror, did basely murder me. And then they thought to stain my brightest honor. But, for this foul deed, the wrath of Jove shall rest upon them here and hereafter.' And then he vanished. "And now, go bring your sharpest torments. The woes I see impending over this guilty realm shall be enough to sweeten death, though every nerve and artery were a shooting pang. I die ! but my death shall prove a proud triumph ; and, for every drop of blood ye from my veins do draw, your own shall flow in rivers. Woe to thee, Carthage! Woe to the proud city of the waters! I see thy nobles wailing at the feet of Roman senators ! thy citizens in terror ! thy ships in flames ! I hear the victorious shouts of Rome ! I see her eagles glitter- ing on thy ramparts ! Proud city, thou art doomed ! The curse of God is on thee a clinging, wasting curse. It shall not leave thy gates till hungry flames shall lick the gold from off thy proud pal- aces, and every brook run crimson to the sea." CHAPTEB VI CONTRAST THE contrast is an artistic device by means of which any given idea is made more striking by set- ting it over against its opposite. Sometimes the contrast is merely of ideas, but quite as often it is of emotional states. To make this distinction clear let the student compare the second paragraph of Tact and Talent with the second paragraph of Spartacus to the Gladiators. In the former, Tact is set over against Talent, and there is virtually but one mood. In the latter, we have a touching picture of the happy early life of Spartacus contrasted with the ruin and desolation of his home after the invasion of the Romans. As Spartacus dwells upon his boy- hood days, and especially the loving care of his mother, his voice is full of tenderness ; but in a mo- ment this gives way to grief, violent rage, and feelings of revenge, as he recalls the massacre of his parents and the ruin of his home. 100 TACT AND TALENT LONDON ATLAS TALENT is something, but tact is everything. Talent is serious, sober, grave, and respectable ; tact is all that, and more too. It is not a sixth sense, but it is the life of all the five. It is the open eye, the quick ear, the judging taste, the keen smell, and the lively touch ; it is the interpreter of all riddles, the surmounter of all difficulties, the remover of all ob- stacles. It is useful in all places, and at all times ; it is useful in solitude, for it shows a man his way into the world ; it is useful in society, for it shows him his way through the world. Talent is power, tact is skill ; talent is weight, tact is momentum ; talent knows what to do, tact knows how to do it ; talent makes a man respectable, tact will make him respected ; talent is wealth, tact is ready money. For all the practical purposes of life, tact car- ries it against talent, ten to one. Take them to the theatre, and put them against each other on the stage, and talent shall produce you a tragedy that will scarcely live long enough to be condemned, while tact keeps the house in a roar, night after night, with its successful farces. There is no want of dramatic talent, there is no want of dramatic tact ; but they are seldom together : so we have suc- cessful pieces which are not respectable, and respect- able pieces which are not successful. 110 LONDON ATLAS 111 Take them to the bar, and let them shake their learned curls at each other in legal rivalry. Talent sees its way clearly, but tact is first at its journey's end. Talent has many a compliment from the bench, but tact touches fees from attorneys and clients. Talent speaks learnedly and logically, tact trium- phantly. Talent makes the world wonder that it gets on no faster, tact excites astonishment that it gets on so fast. And the secret is, that tact has no weight to carry ; it makes no false steps ; it hits the right nail on the head ; it loses no time ; it takes all hints ; and, by keeping its eye on the weathercock, is ready to take advantage of every wind that blows. Take them into the church. Talent has always something worth hearing, tact is sure of abundance of hearers ; talent may obtain a good living, tact will make one ; talent gets a good name, tact a great one ; talent convinces, tact converts ; talent is an honor to the profession, tact gains honor from the profession, Place them in the senate. Talent has the ear of the house, but tact wins its heart, and has its votes ; talent is fit for employment, but tact is fitted for it. Tact has a knack of slipping into place with a sweet silence and glibness of movement, as a bill- iard ball insinuates itself into the pocket. It seems to know everything, without learning anything. It has served an invisible and extemporary apprentice- ship : it wants no drilling ; it never ranks in the awkward squad ; it has no left hand, no deaf ear, no blind side. It puts on no looks of wondrous wisdom, it has no air of profundity, but plays with the de- tails of place as dexterously as a well-taught hand flourishes over the keys of the pianoforte. It has all the air of commonplace, and all the force and power of genius. ROME AND CARTHAGE VICTOE HUGO EOME and Carthage! behold them drawing- near for the struggle that is to shake the world! Carthage, the metropolis of Africa, is the mistress of oceans, of kingdoms, and of nations ; a magnificent city, bur- dened with opulence, radiant with the strange arts and trophies of the East. She is at the acme of her civilization ; she can mount no higher ; any change now must be a decline. Kome is comparatively poor. She has seized all within her grasp, but rather from the lust of conquest than to fill her own coffers. She is demi -barbarous, and has her education and her fortune both to get. All is before her, nothing behind. For a time these two nations exist in view of each other. The one reposes in the noontide of her splen- dor ; the other waxes strong in the shade. But, .little by little, air and space are wanting to each, for her development. Eome begins to perplex Car- thage, and Carthage is an eyesore to Eome. Seated on opposite banks of the Mediterranean, the two cities look each other in the face. The sea no longer keeps them apart ! Europe and Africa weigh upon each other. Like two clouds surcharged with elec- tricity, they impend ; with their contact must come the thunder shock. The catastrophe of this splendid drama is at hand. What actors are met ! Two races, 112 VICTOR HUGO 113 that of merchants and mariners, that of laborers and soldiers ; two nations, the one dominant by gold, the other by steel ; two republics, the one the- ocratic, the other aristocratic ; Borne and Carthage ! Home with her army, Carthage with her fleet : Car- thage, old, rich, and crafty ; Borne, young, poor, ro- bust ; the past, and the future ; the spirit of dis- covery, and the spirit of conquest ; the genius of commerce, and the demon of war ; the East and South on one side, the West and North on the other ; in short, two worlds, the civilization of Africa, and the civilization of Europe. They measure each other from head to foot. They gather all their forces. Gradually the war kindles. The world takes fire. These colossal powers are locked in deadly strife. Carthage has crossed the Alps ; Borne, the seas. The two nations, personi- fied in two men, Hannibal and Scipio, close with each other, wrestle, and grow infuriate. The duel is desperate. It is a struggle for life. Borne wavers ; she utters that cry of anguish, " Hannibal at the gates ! " But she rallies, collects all her strength for one last, appalling effort, throws herself upon Carthage, and sweeps her from the face of che earth. SPABTACUS TO THE GLADIATOBS E. KELLOGG IT had been a day of triumph in Capua. Lentulus, returning with victorious eagles, had amused the populace with the sports of the amphitheatre to an extent hitherto unknown even in that luxurious city. The shouts of revelry had died away ; the roar of the lion had ceased ; the last loiterer had retired from the banquet, and the lights in the palace of the victor were extinguished. The moon, piercing the tissue of fleecy clouds, silvered the dew-drops on the corse- let of the Roman sentinel, and tipped the dark waters of the Vulturnus with a wavy, tremulous light. No sound was heard, save the last sob of some retiring wave, telling its story to the smooth pebbles of the beach ; and then all was still as the breast when the spirit has departed. In the deep recesses of the am- phitheatre a band of gladiators were assembled, their muscles still knotted with the agony of conflict, the foam upon their lips, the scowl of battle yet linger- ing on their brows, when Spartacus, starting forth from amid the throng, thus addressed them : " Ye call me chief ; and ye do well to call him chief who, for twelve long years, has met upon the arena every shape of man or beast the broad empire of Rome could furnish, and who never yet lowered his arm. If there be one among you who can say that ever, in public fight or private brawl, my actions did 114 E. KELLOGG 115 belie my tongue, let him stand forth and say it. If there be three in all your company dare face me on the bloody sands, let them come on. And yet I was not always thus, a hired butcher, a savage chief of still more savage men ! My ancestors came from old Sparta, and settled among the vine-clad rocks and citron- groves of Syrasella. My early life ran quiet as the brooks by which I sported; and when at noon I gathered the sheep beneath the shade, and played upon the shepherd's flute, there was a friend, the son of a neighbor, to join me in the pastime. We led our flocks to the same pasture, and partook to- gether of our rustic meal. One evening, after the sheep were folded, and we were all seated beneath the myrtle which shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra, and how, in ancient times, a little band of Spartans, in a defile of the mountains, had withstood a whole army. I did not then know what war was ; but my cheeks burned, I knew not why, and I clasped the knees of that venerable man, until my mother, part- ing the hair from off my forehead, kissed my throb- bing temples and bade me go to rest, and think no more of those old tales and savage wars. That very night the Romans landed on our coast. I saw the breast that had nourished me trampled by the hoof of the war-horse, and the bleeding body of my father flung amidst the blazing rafters of our dwelling ! " To-day I killed a man in the arena, and when I broke his helmet-clasps, behold ! he was my friend. He knew me, smiled faintly, gasped, and died ; the same sweet smile upon his -lips that I had marked, when, in adventurous boyhood, we scaled the lofty cliff to pluck the first ripe grapes, and bear them home in childish triumph. I told the praetor 116 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING that the dead man had been my friend, generous and brave, and I begged that I might bear away the body, to burn it on a funeral pile, and mourn over its ashes. Ay, upon my knees, amid the dust and blood of the arena, I begged that poor boon, while all the assembled maids and matrons, and the holy virgins they call Yestals, and the rabble, shouted in dqfrision, deeming it rare sport, forsooth, to see Rome's fiercest gladiator turn pale and tremble at sight of that piece of bleeding clay. And the praetor drew back, as if I were pollution, and sternly said, ' Let the carrion rot ; there are no noble men but Romans.' And so, fellow-gladiators, must you, and so must I, die like dogs. O Rome, Rome, thou hast been a tender nurse to me. Ay, thou hast given to that poor, gentle, timid shepherd lad, who never knew a harsher tone than a flute-note, muscles of iron and a heart of flint ; taught him to drive the sword through plaited mail and links of rugged brass, and warm it in the marrow of his foe ; to gaze into the glaring eye-balls of the fierce Numid- ian lion, even as a boy upon a laughing girl. And he shall pay thee back, until the yellow Tiber is red as frothing wine, and in its deepest ooze thy life- blood lies curdled. " Ye stand here now like giants, as ye are. The strength of brass is in your toughened sinews ; but to-morrow some Roman Adonis, breathing sweet perfume from his curly locks, shall with his lily fingers pat your red brawn, and bet his sesterces upon your blood. Hark ! hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? 'Tis three days since he tasted flesh, but to-morrow he shall break his fast upon yours, and a dainty meal for him ye will be ! If ye are beasts, then stand here like fat oxen, waiting for the E. KELLOGG 117 butcher's knife ! If ye are men, follow me ! Strike down yon guard, gain the mountain passes, and there do bloody work, as did your sires at old Thermopylae. Is Sparta dead ? Is the old Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that you do crouch and cower like a belabored hound beneath his master's lash ? O comrades, warriors, Thracians, if we must fight, let us fight for ourselves! If we must slaughter, let us slaughter our oppressors ! If we must die, let it be under the clear sky, by the bright waters, in noble, honorable battle 1 " CHAPTEK YII GENUNG says of Climax : " This figure, which de- pends upon the law that a thought must have prog- ress, is the ordering of thought and expression so that there shall be uniform and evident increase in significance, or interest, or intensity." The climax of Significance is illustrated in The artisan had forsaken his shop, the judge his tribunal, the priest the sanctuary, and even the stern stoic had come forth from his retirement. The artisan, who could ill afford to lose his day's labor, had left his shop to join the throng that was taking its way to the great square of the city. The judge, whose duty it was to administer justice, could not refrain from joining the crowd. The priest, whose sacred oflice was to tend the altars of the gods, he too, for once, was neglecting his duty. And even the stern stoic, whose philosophy taught him to remain unmoved under any and all conditions of life, even he, perforce, must mix with the multitude thronging the Carthaginian streets. Each succeed- *The following presentation is taken with slight modification from Principles of Vocal Expression, by Chamberlain and Clark. 118 CLIMAX 119 ing clause presents to us a more unusual disturbance of the normal condition of Carthaginian affairs ; and the climax is reached when the man whose whole philosophy teaches him never to be moved, even he, is impelled to do violence to his life-long convictions. The following illustrates the climax of Intensity : If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms ! Never ! Never I Never ! The verbal expression does not progress ; and yet the emotion, increasing in force as the mind dwells upon the thought, finds vent in increasing intensity of vocal expression. Greater intensity is not neces- sarily greater loudness or higher pitch ; but greater intensity of feeling, which may result in greater loud- ness or higher pitch, or, on the other hand, in lower pitch and more controlled or more dignified expres- sion. We have thus far been considering simple and palpable forms of climaxes. Let us turn now to the examination of the more difficult and complex. We recall the fact that Marullus, in the play of Julius Ccesar, is greatly surprised that the citizens of Rome should dress themselves in their best garb and make holiday to celebrate the return of Caesar. One of the crowd remarks that they make holiday to see Caesar, and to rejoice in his triumph, whereupon Marullus addresses them in the speech given below. Mar. Wherefore rejoice ? What conquest brings he home ? What tributaries follow him to Rome, 120 PKACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING To grace in captive bonds his chariot wheels? You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome, Knew you not Pompey ? Many a time and oft Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements, To towers and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, Your infants in your arms, and there have sat The live-long day, with patient expectation, To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome ; And when you saw his chariot but appear, Have you not made an universal shout, That Tiber trembled underneath her banks, To hear the replication of your sounds Made in her concave shores? And do you now put on your best attire? And do you now cull out a holiday? And do you now strew flowers in his way That comes in triumph over Pompey's blood? Be gone ! Run to your houses, fall upon your knees, Pray to the gods to intermit the plague That needs must light on this ingratitude. Julius Cezsar, Act /, Sc. 1. The first three ideas comprise a climax of Signifi- cance. In line 4 we have another climax, reaching its height on the word " worse." Then with " many a time and oft " begins another climax, which, with occasional diminutions, continues to " shores." In the next four lines we have a climax which is intensified by contrast. The word " now " is full of reproof and condemnation ; and by the time the speaker utters the words " over Pompey's blood," he is so overcome with the thought of the enormity of the crime that, with the utmost fervor, he urges the mob to run to their houses and pray to the gods to refrain from visiting upon their heads the rightful punishment for CLIMAX 121 their crime. We must not lose sight of the fact that, throughout the speech, as the emotion of Marullus increases, we shall have a climax of Intensity. In oratory the ordinary climax of Significance pre- sents no great difficulty. As soon as tfie student appreciates the growth in significance, he will mani- fest that increase in greater intensity of expression. It may be well to repeat that the increase need not be in loudness, nor is it necessary that the pitch of the voice be raised ; but there will unquestionably be some form of climax in the expression. The difficulty begins when the climax is made up of smaller climaxes, as in the example from Julius Ccesar, or when a climax is, so to speak, one of con- siderable length. In the latter case, the utmost care must be used to husband one's resources, so that when the moment of intensest feeling is reached, there shall be sufficient power to produce the recfuired result. The student, then, is advised to determine carefully that point in his oration where the strongest effect is to be made, and then to be careful to sub- ordinate all other effects to that of climax. CASSIUS' COMPLAINT OF CAESAR. Bru. Another general shout ! I do believe that these applauses are For some new honors that are heaped on Caesar. Cas. Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus ; and we petty men "Walk under his huge legs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonorable graves. Men at some time are masters of their fates : 122 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings. Brutus and Caesar : what should be in that Caesar? Why should that name be sounded more than yours? Write them together, yours is as fair a name ; Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well ; Weigh them, it is as heavy ; conjure with 'em, Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Caesar. [Shout. Now, in the names of all the gods at once, Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, That he is grown so great? Age, thou art sham'd ! Borne, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods ! When went there by an age, since the great flood, But it was fam'd with more than with one man? When could they say, till now, that talk'd of Rome, That her wide walls encompass'd but one man? Now is it Rome indeed, and room enough, When there is in it but one only man. O ! you and I have heard our father say There was a Brutus once that would have brook'd The eternal devil to keep his state in Rome, As easily as a king. Julius Ccesar^ Act /, Sc. 2. After this chapter has been studied the student is advised to review the selections in Chapters I and II. When these were first studied it was sufficient if the student approximated the spirit of directness and earnestness, even though there were palpable defi- ciencies in detail. Let him now strive to bring out the detail, and to combine directness, earnestness, and dignity in each selection. LIBERTY AND UNION DANIEL WEBSTEK United States Senate, January 26, 1830 I profess, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view the prosperity and honor of the whole country and the preservation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is* to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with new- ness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings ; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection or ite benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain of national, social, personal happiness. I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark recesses be- hind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us to- gether shall be broken asunder. I have not accus- 123 124 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING tomed myself to hang- over the precipice of dis- union, to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below ; nor could I regard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it shall be broken up and de- stroyed. While the Union lasts, we have high, ex- citing, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day at least, that curtain may not rise. God grant that on my vision never may be opened what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, dis- cordant, belligerent ; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as, What is all this worth ? nor those other words of delusion and folly, Liberty first, and Union afterward; but every- where, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable ! part Sbree STYLES OF DELIVERY CHAPTEE Vin THE COLLOQUIAL STYLE BROADLY considered, there are three styles of de- livery : the colloquial, the elevated, and the impas- sioned. The delivery of almost any oration will require all of these styles, but for the purpose of training it is best to consider them separately. The colloquial style is the basis of effective public speaking. By colloquial is not meant careless and commonplace speaking, but simple, direct, and dig- nified conversation. The presentation of facts arguments, simple narration and description, not accompanied by strong emotion, will generally be in colloquial style. HAMLET'S ADVICE TO THE PLAYERS. (Hamlet, Act III, Sc 2.) SPEAK the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue ; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town crier spoke my lines. And do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus ; but use all gently : for in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and 127 128 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING beget a temperance that may give it a smoothness. Oh, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious, periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing bat inex- plicable dumb-shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o'erdoing Termagant ; it out- herods Herod ; pray you avoid it. Be not too tame neither, but let your own discre- tion be your tutor : suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of Nature ; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of play- ing, whose end, both at the first, and now, was, and is, to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature, to show Virtue her own feature, Scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve ; the censure of the which one must, in your allowance, o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. Oh, there be players that I have seen play and heard others praise, and that highly not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, or man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature's journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated human- ity so abominably. ELOQUENCE OF O'CONNELL WENDELL PHILLIPS Boston, August 6, 1875. BROADLY considered, O'Connell's eloquence has never been equalled in modern times, certainly not in English speech. Do you think I am partial ? I will vouch John Kandolph of Roanoke, the Virginia slaveholder, who hated an Irishman almost as much as he hated a Yankee, himself an orator of no mean level. Hearing O'Connell, he exclaimed, "This is the man, these are the lips, the most eloquent that speak the English tongue in my day ! " I think he was right. I remember the solemnity of Webster, the grace of Everett, the rhetoric of Choate : I know the eloquence that lay hid in the iron logic of Cal- houn ; I have melted beneath the magnetism of Sergeant S. Prentiss of Mississippi, who wielded a power few men ever had : it has been my fortune to sit at the feet of the great speakers of the English tongue on the other side of the ocean ; but, I think all of them together never surpassed, and no one of them ever equalled O'Connell. Nature intended him for our Demosthenes. Never, since the great Greek, has she sent forth any one so lavishly gifted for his work as a tribune of the people. In the first place, he had a magnificent presence, im- pressive in bearing, massive, like that of Jupiter. * Copyright by Lee & Shepard, Boston. 129 130 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING Webster himself hardly outdid him in the majesty of his proportions. To be sure, he had not Web- ster's craggy face, and precipice of brow, nor his eyes glowing like anthracite coal. Nor had he the lion roar of Mirabeau. But his presence filled the eye. A small O'Connell would hardly have been an O'Connell at all. These physical advantages are half the battle. I remember Russell Lowell telling us that Mr. Webster came home from Washington at the time the Whig party thought of dissolution, and went down to Faneuil Hall to protest. Draw- ing himself up to his loftiest proportion, his brow clothed with thunder, before the listening thousands, he said, " Well, gentlemen, I am a Whig, a Massa- chusetts Whig, a Faneuil Hall Whig, a Revolution- ary Whig, a Constitutional Whig ; if you break the Whig party, sir, where am I to go ? " And says Lowell, " We held our breath, thinking where he could go. If he had been five feet three, we should have said, * Who cares where you go ? " So it was with O'Con- nell ; there was something majestic in his presence before he spoke ; and he added to it, what Webster had not, but Clay might have lent, grace. Lithe as a boy at seventy, every attitude a picture, every gesture a grace, he was still all nature, nothing but nature seemed to speak all over him. He had a voice that covered the gamut. I heard him once say, " I send my voice across the Atlantic, careering like the thunder-storm against the breeze, to tell the slave-holder of the Carolinas that God's thunderbolts are hot, and to remind the bondman that the dawn of his redemption is already break- ing." You seemed to hear the tones coming back to London from the Rocky Mountains. Then, with the slightest possible Irish brogue, he would tell a WENDELL PHILLIPS 131 story, while all Exeter Hall shook with laughter. The next moment, tears in his voice like a Scotch song-, five thousand men wept. His marvellous voice, its almost incredible power and sweetness, " Even to the verge of that vast audience sent, It played with each wild passion as it went ; Now stirred the uproar, now the murmur stilled, And sobs or laughter answered as it willed." THE HOMES OF THE PEOPLE HENEY W. GEADY Elberton, Ga., June, 1889. I WENT to Washington the other day, and I stood on the Capitol Hill ; my heart beat quick as I looked at the towering marble of my country's Capitol and the mist gathered in my eyes as I thought of its tremendous significance, and the armies and the treasury, and the judges and the President, and the Congress and the courts, and all that was gathered there. And I felt that the sun in all its course could not look down on a better sight than that majestic home of a republic that had taught the world its best lessons of liberty. And I felt that if honor and wisdom and justice abided therein, the world would at last owe that great house in which the ark of the covenant of my country is lodged, its final uplifting and its regeneration. Two days afterward, I went to visit a friend in the country, a modest man, with a quiet country home. It was just a simple, unpretentious house, set about with big trees, encircled in meadow and field rich with the promise of harvest. The fragrance of the pink and hollyhock in the front yard was mingled with the aroma of the orchard and of the gardens, and resonant with the cluck of poultry and the hum of bees. 132 HENRY W. GRADY 133 Inside was quiet, cleanliness, thrift, and comfort. There was the old clock that had welcomed, in steady measure, every newcomer to the family, that had ticked the solemn requiem of the dead, and had kept company with the watcher at the bedside. There were the big 1 , restful beds and the old, open fireplace, and the old family Bible, thumbed with the fingers of hands long since still, and wet with the tears of eyes long" since closed, holding 1 the sim- ple annals of the family and the heart and the conscience of the home. Outside, there stood my friend, the master, a sim- ple, upright man, with no mortgage on his roof, no lien on his growing- crops, master of his land and master of himself. There was his old father, an aged, trembling man, but happy in the heart and home of his son. And as they started to their home, the hands of the old man went down on the young man's shoulder, laying 1 there the unspeakable bless- ing of the honored and grateful father and enno- bling it with the knighthood of the fifth command- ment. And as they reached the door the old mother came with the sunset falling fair on her face, and lighting up her deep, patient eyes, while her lips, trembling with the rich music of her heart, bade her husband and son welcome to their home. Beyond was the housewife, busy with her household cares, clean of heart and conscience, the buckler and helpmeet of her husband. Down the lane came the children, trooping home after the cows, seeking as truant birds do the quiet of their home nest. And I saw the night come down on that house, falling gently as the wings of the unseen dove. And the old man while a startled bird called from the 134 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING forest, and the trees were shrill with the cricket's cry, and the stars were swarming in the sky got the family around him, and, taking the old Bible from the table, called them to their knees, the lit- tle baby hiding in the folds of its mother's dress, while he closed the record of that simple day by calling down God's benediction on that family and on that home. And while I gazed, the vision of that marble Capitol faded. Forgotten were its treasures and its majesty, and I said, " Oh, surely here in the homes of the people are lodged at last the strength and the responsibility of this govern- ment, the hope and the promise of this republic." PAUL BEVEBE'S BIDE* GEOEGE WILLIAM CUETIS Concord, Mass., April 19, 1875 THE first imposing- armed movement against the colonies, on the 19th of April, 1775, did not take the people by surprise. For ten years they had seen the possibility, for five years the probability, and for at least a year the certainty of the contest. They quietly organized, watched, and waited. As the spring advanced, it was plain that some movement would be made. On Tuesday, the 18th, Gage, the British commander, who had decided to send a force to Concord to destroy the stores, picketed the roads from Boston into Middlesex to prevent any report of the intended march from spreading into the country. But the very air was electric. In the ten- sion of the popular mind every sight and sound was significant. It was part of Gage's plan to seize Hancock and Adams, who were at Lexington ; and on the evening of the 18th, the Committee of Safety at Cambridge sent them word to beware, for suspicious officers were abroad. In the afternoon one of the govern- or's grooms strolled into a stable where John Bal- lard was cleaning a horse. John Ballard was a Son of Liberty, and when the groom idly hinted at what might take place next morning, John's heart leaped * From Orations and Addresses by George William Curtis. Copyright, 1894, by Harper and Brothers. 135 136 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING and his hand shook ; and, asking 1 the groom to fin- ish cleaning* the horse, he ran to a friend, who car- ried the news straight to Paul Kevere, who told him he had already heard it from two other persons. That evening-, at ten o'clock, eight hundred British troops, under Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, took boat at the foot of the Common and crossed to the Cam- bridge shore. Gage thought his secret had been kept, but Lord Percy, who had heard the people say on the Common that the troops would miss their aim, undeceived him. Gage instantly ordered that no one should leave the town. But as the troops crossed the river, Ebenezer Dorr, with a message to Hancock and Adams, was riding over the Neck to Roxbury, and Paul Revere was rowing over the river to Chariest own, having agreed with his friend, Robert Newman, to show lanterns from the belfry of the Old North Church " One if by land, and two if by sea " as a signal of the march of the British. Already the moon was rising, and while the troops were stealthily landing at Lechmere Point, their se- cret was flashing out into the April night; and Paul Revere, springing into the saddle, upon the Charles- town shore, spurred away into Middlesex. " How far that little candle throws its beams ! " The mod- est spire yet stands, revered relic of the old town of Boston, of those brave men and of their deeds. Startling the land that night with the warning of danger, let it remind the land forever of the patriot- ism with which that danger was averted, and for our children, as for our fathers, still stand secure, the Pharos of American liberty. It was a brilliant night. The winter had been un- usually mild, and the spring very forward. The hills were already green. The early grain waved in the GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 137 fields, and the air was sweet with the blossoming- orchards. Already the robins whistled, the blue- birds sang, and the benediction of peace rested upon the landscape. Under the cloudless moon the sol- diers silently marched, and Paul Revere swiftly rode, galloping through Medford and West Cambridge, rousing every house as he went spurring for Lex- ington and Hancock and Adams, and evading the British patrols who had been sent out to stop the news. Stop the news ! Already the village churches were beginning to ring the alarm, as the pulpits beneath them had been ringing for many a year. In the awakening houses lights flashed from win- dow to window. Drums beat faintly far away and on every side. Signal-guns flashed and echoed. The watch-dogs barked, the cocks crew. Stop the news ! Stop the sunrise ! The murmuring night trembled with the summons so earnestly expected, so dreaded, so desired. And as long ago the voice rang out at midnight along the Syrian shore wailing that great Pan was dead, but in the same moment the choiring angels whispered, " Glory to God in the highest, for Christ is born!" so, if the stern alarm of that April night seemed to many a wistful and loyal heart to portend the passing glory of the British dominion and the tragical chance of war, it whispered to them with prophetic inspira- tion, " Good will to men, America is born ! " CHAPTEE IX THE ELEVATED STYLE ALL public speaking is accompanied by a certain amount of emotion which we may call animation or enthusiasm. But when the speaker leaves the mere presentation of fact and argument, and appeals to the feelings of his audience, the colloquial style, in which he has been speaking, naturally gives way to a more impressive manner which we may call the elevated style. In practising the following examples, the student should remember what was stated in the chapter on Dignity : that however intense the feeling, there should always be emotional poise and self command. 138 A REMINISCENCE OF LEXINGTON THEODORE PAKKER ONE raw morning- in spring- it will be eighty years the 19th day of this month Hancock and Adams, the Moses and Aaron of that Great Deliver- ance, were both at Lexington ; they also had " ob- structed an officer " with brave words. British soldiers, a thousand strong, came to seize them and carry them over sea for trial, and so nip the bud of Freedom auspiciously opening in that early spring. The town militia came together before daylight, "for training." A great, tall man, with a large head and a high, wide brow, their captain, one who had " seen service," marshalled them into line, numbering but seventy, and bade " every man load his piece with powder and ball. I will order the first man shot that runs away," said he, when some faltered. " Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they want to have a war, let it begin here." Gentlemen, you know what followed ; those farm- ers and mechanics " fired the shot heard round the world." A little monument covers the bones of such as before had pledged their fortune and their sacred honor to the Freedom of America, and that day gave it also their lives. I was born in that little town, and bred up amid the memories of that day. When a boy, my mother lifted me up, one Sunday, in her religious, patriotic arms, and held 139 140 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING me while I read the first monumental line I ever saw " Sacred to Liberty and the Eights of Man- kind." Since then I have studied the memorial marbles of Greece and Rome, in many an ancient town ; nay, on Egyptian obelisks, have read what was written before the Eternal roused up Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt, but no chiselled stone has ever stirred me to such emotion as these rustic names of men who fell "In the Sacred Cause of God and their Country." Gentlemen, the Spirit of Liberty, the Love of Justice, was early fanned into a flame in my boyish heart. That monument covers the bones of my own kinsfolk ; it was their blood which reddened the long, green grass at Lexington. It was my own name which stands chiseled on that stone ; the tall Captain who marshalled his fellow farmers and mechanics into stern array, and spoke such brave and dangerous words as opened the war of American Independence, the last to leave the field, was my father's father. I learned to read out of his Bible, and with a musket he that day captured from the foe, I learned also another religious lesson, that " Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God." I keep them both " Sacred to Liberty and the Rights of Mankind," to use them both "In the Sacred Cause of God and my Country." DEATH OF GARFIELD JAMES G. ELAINE Halls of Congress, February 26, 1882 SURELY, if happiness can ever come from the honors or triumphs of this world, on that quiet July morning James A. Garfield may well have been a happy man. No foreboding of evil haunted him ; no slightest premonition of danger clouded his sky. His terrible fate was upon him in an instant. One moment he stood erect, strong, confident in the years stretching peacefully before him ; the next he lay wounded, bleeding, helpless, doomed to weary weeks of torture, to silence and the grave. Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness, by the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interests, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death, and he did not quail. Not alone for the one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes whose lips may tell ! What brilliant, broken plans ! What baffled high ambitions ! What sundering of strong, warm man- 141 142 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING hood's friendships ! What bitter rending- of sweet household ties ! Behind him, a proud, expectant nation ; a great host of sustaining friends ; a cher- ished and happy mother, wearing the full rich hon- ors of her early toil and tears ; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his ; the little boys, not yet emerged from childhood's days of frolic ; the fair young daughter : the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day and every day rewarding a father's love and care ; and in his heart the eager rejoicing power to meet all demands. Before him, desolation and darkness, and his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal sympathy. Though masterful in his mortal weakness, enshrined in the prayers of a world, all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him in his suffering. He trod the winepress alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bul- let he heard the voice of God. With simple resig- nation he bowed to the Divine decree. As the end drew near, his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from its prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopeless- ness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live, or die, as God should will, within sight of its heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices . . . Let us believe that in the silence of the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a further shore, and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning. PLYMOUTH ROCK DANIEL WEBSTEE Plymouth Mass., December 22, 1820 WE have come to Plymouth Kock, to record here our homage for our Pilgrim Fathers, our sympathy in their sufferings, our gratitude for their labors, our admiration of their virtues, our veneration for their piety, and our attachment to those principles of civil and religious liberty for which they encount- ered the dangers of the ocean, the storms of heaven, the violence of savages, disease, exile, and famine, to enjoy and to establish. And we would leave here, also, for the generations which are rising up rapidly to fill our places, some proof that we have endeav- ored to transmit the great inheritance unimpaired ; that in our estimate of public principles and private virtue, in our veneration of religion and piety, in our devotion to civil and religious liberty, in our re- gard for whatever advances human knowledge, or improves human happiness, we are not altogether unworthy of our origin. When the traveller pauses on the plain of Mar- athon, what are the emotions which most strongly agitate his breast ? What is the glorious recollec- tion which thrills through his frame, and suffuses his eyes? Not, I imagine, that Grecian skill and Grecian valor were here most signally displayed, but 143 144 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING that Greece herself was saved. It is because to this spot, and to the event which has rendered it immor- tal, he refers all the succeeding glories of the republic. It is because, if that day had gone other- wise, Greece had perished. It is because he per- ceives that her philosophers and orators, her poets and painters, her sculptors and architects, her gov- ernments and free institutions, point backward to Marathon, and that their future existence seems to have been suspended on the contingency, whether the Persian or the Grecian banner should wave vic- torious in the beams of that day's setting sun. " If we conquer," said the Athenian commander, on the approach of that decisive day, " if we conquer, we shall make Athens the greatest city of Greece." A prophecy how well fulfilled ! " If God prosper us," might have been the more appropriate language of our fathers when they land- ed upon this rock, "if God prosper us, we shall here begin a work which shall last for ages ; we shall plant here a new society in the principles of the fullest liberty and the purest religion ; we shall subdue this wilderness which is before us ; we shall fill the region of the great continent, which stretches almost from pole to pole, with civilization and Chris- tianity ; the temples of the true God shall rise where now ascends the smoke of idolatrous sacrifice ; fields and gardens, the flowers of summer, and the waving and golden harvest of autumn, shall spread over a thousand hills, and stretch along a thousand valleys, never yet, since the creation, reclaimed to the use of civilized man. We shall whiten this coast with the canvas of a prosperous commerce; we shall stud the long and winding shore with a hundred cities. That which we sow in weakness shall be raised in DANIEL WEBSTER 145 strength. From our sincere but houseless worship there shall spring splendid temples to record God's goodness ; from the simplicity of our social union there shall arise wise and politic constitutions of government, full of the liberty which we ourselves bring and breathe ; from our zeal for learning, insti- tutions shall spring which shall scatter the light of knowledge throughout the land, and, in time, paying back where they have borrowed, shall contribute their part to the great aggregate of human knowl- edge ; and our descendants, through all generations, shall look back to this spot and to this hour with unabated affection and regard." CHAPTEE X THE IMPASSIONED STYLE THE impassioned style is that form of utterance which is the manifestation of intensest feeling. It differs from the elevated only in degree. The purpose of the exercises in this chapter is to train the student in the controlled expression of the most intense emotion. In oratory we find this im- passioned utterance, generally, when the speaker has the design to move his audience to definite choice or action. In concluding the study of styles, it is well to re- mind the student that each of the forms of utterance here discussed is appropriate, and even necessary, under certain circumstances. Many speakers in their desire to avoid affectation deliver the prof ound- est truths in a colloquial manner that reduces them to mere commonplaces. Again, others express sim- ple statements in a manner so elevated as to be out of all harmony with the ideas presented* However, the student's greatest danger lies in the use of the impassioned style. In dramatic work it is often nec- essary to present a character as entirely lacking in self-control, but such a condition is never present in the realm of oratory. Let the pupil abandon himselt 146 THE IMPASSIONED STYLE 147 to the delivery of the impassioned passages with all the fervor of which he is capable, but never, under any circumstances, allow the emotion to pass beyond his control. HOTSPUR TO WORCESTER (1st Henry IV., Act L, Sc. 3.) Worcester. Those same noble Scots That are your prisoners, Hotspur. I'll keep them all ; By heaven, he shall not have a Scot of them ; No, if a Scot would save his soul, he shall not : I'll keep them, by this hand. Wor. You start away, And lend no ear unto my purposes. Those prisoners you shall keep. Hot. Nay, I will ; that's flat : He said he would not ransom Mortimer ; Forbade my tongue to speak of Mortimer ; But I will find him when he lies asleep, And in his ear I'll holla Mortimer! Nay, I'll have a starling shall be taught to speak Nothing but Mortimer, and give it him, To keep his anger still in motion. SHTLOCK FOR THE JEWS (Merchant of Venice, Act III., Sc. 1.) Salarin. But tell us, do you hear whether Antonio have had any loss at sea or no ? Shylock. There I have another bad match : a bank- rupt, a prodigal, who dare scarce show his head on the 148 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING Rialto ; a beggar, that was used to come so smug upon the mart ; let him look to his bond ! he was wont to call me usurer ; let him look to his bond ! he was wont to lend money for a Christian courtesy; let him look to his bond ! Solar. Why, I am sure if he forfeit thou wilt not take his flesh. What's that good for ? Shy. To bait fish withal : if it will feed nothing else it will feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me and hindered me half a million ; laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies ! and what's his reason ? I am a Jew ! Hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions ? fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is ? If you prick us, do we not bleed ? if you tickle us, do we not laugh ? if you poison us, do we not die ? and if you wrong us, shall we not re- venge ? If we are like you in the rest, we will re- semble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility ? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example ? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute ; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction. AGAINST CURTAILING THE EIGHT OF SUFFRAGE VICTOE HUGO Paris, May 20, 1850 GENTLEMEN I address the men who govern us and say to them : Go on, cut off three millions of voters ; cut off eight out of nine, and the result will be the same to you, if it be not more decisive. What you do not cut off is your own faults ; the absurdities of your policy of compression, your fatal incapacity, your ignorance of the present epoch, the antipathy you feel for it, and that it feels for you ; what you will not cut off is the times which are advancing, the hour now striking, the ascending movement of ideas, the gulf opening broader and deeper between yourself and the age, between the young generation and you, between the spirit of liberty and you, between the spirit of phi- losophy and you. What you will not cut off is this immense fact, that the nation goes to one side, while you go to the other ; that what for you is the sunrise is for it the sun's setting ; that you turn your backs to the future, while this great people of France, its front all radiant with light from the rising dawn of a new humanity, turns its back to the past. Gentlemen, this law is invalid ; it is null ; it is 149 150 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING dead even before it exists. And do you know what has killed it ? It is that, when it meanly approaches to steal the vote from the pocket of the poor and feeble, it meets the keen, terrible eye of the national probity, a devouring light, in which the work of darkness disappears. Yes, men who govern us, at the bottom of every citizen's conscience, the most obscure as well as the greatest, at the very depths of the soul (I use your own expression) of the last beggar, the last vaga- bond, there is a sentiment, sublime, sacred, insur- mountable, indestructible, eternal the sentiment of right ! This sentiment, which is the very essence of the human conscience, which the Scriptures call the corner-stone of justice, is the rock on which in- iquities, hypocrisies, bad laws, evil designs, bad governments, fall, ajad are shipwrecked. This is the hidden, irresistible obstacle, veiled in the recesses of every mind, but ever present, ever active, on which you will always exhaust yourselves; and which, whatever you do, you will never destroy. I warn you, your labor is lost ; you will not extinguish it, you will not confuse it. Far easier to drag the rock from the bottom of the sea, than the sentiment of right from the heart of the people 1 ON THE IRISH DISTURBANCE BILL DANIEL O'CONNELL I DO not rise to fawn or cringe to this House ; I do not rise to supplicate you to be merciful toward the nation to which I belong, toward a nation which, though subject to England, yet is distinct from it. It is a distinct nation : it has been treated as such by this country, as may be proved by his- tory, and by seven hundred years of tyranny. I call upon this House, as you value the liberty of England, not to allow the present nefarious bill to pass. In it are involved the liberties of England, the liberty of the Press, and of every other institu- tion dear to Englishmen. Against the bill I protest, in the name of the Irish people, and in the face of Heaven. I treat with scorn the puny and pitiful assertion that grievances are not to be complained of that our redress is not to be agitated ; for, in such cases, remonstrance cannot be too strong, agi- tation cannot be too violent, to show to the world with what injustice our fair claims are met, and un- der what tyranny the people suffer. The clause which does away with the trial by jury what, in the name of Heaven, is it, if it is not the establishment of a revolutionary tribunal ? It drives the judge from his bench ; it does away with that which is more sacred than the Throne itself that for which your king reigns, your lords deliberate, 151 152 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING your commons assemble. If ever I doubted, before, of the success of our agitation for repeal, this bill this infamous bill the way in which it has been re- ceived by the House ; the manner in which its op- ponents have been treated ; the personalities to which they have been subjected; the yells with which one of them has this night been greeted all these things dissipate my doubts, and tell me of its complete and early triumph. Do you think those yells will be forgotten ? Do you suppose their echo will not reach the plains of my injured and insulted country ; that they will not be whispered in her green valleys, and heard from her lofty hills ? Oh, they will be heard there ! yes, and they will not be forgotten. The youth of Ireland will bound with indignation they will say, " We are eight millions, and you treat us thus, as though we were no more to your country than the isle of Guernsey or of Jersey ! " I have done my duty. I stand acquitted to my conscience and my country. I have opposed this measure throughout, and I now protest against it, as harsh, oppressive, uncalled for, unjust : as estab- lishing an infamous precedent, by retaliating crime against crime; as tyrannous cruelly and vindic- tively tyrannous 1 Ipart four THE FORMS OF DISCOURSE CHAPTEB XI THE FORMS OF DISCOURSE RHETORICIANS recognize five forms of discourse : Description, Narration, Exposition, Argumentation, and Persuasion. In this chapter will be found, in the order in which they are named above, an exam- ple of each of the first four forms and several of the last. This material is inserted to afford opportunity for practice in the styles discussed in the preceding chapter and may do much to lay the foundations for original composition. 155 THE BURNING OF MOSCOW J. T. HEADLEY (Napoleon and his Marshals, Vol. I.) AT length Moscow, with its domes, and towers, and palaces, appeared in sight ; and Napoleon, who had joined the advanced guard, gazed long and thoughtfully on that goal of his wishes. Murat went forward and entered the gates with his splendid cavalry ; but, as he passed through the streets, he was struck by the solitude that surrounded him. Nothing was heard but the heavy tramp of his squadrons as they passed along, for a deserted and abandoned city was the meagre prize for which such unparalleled efforts had been made. As night drew its curtain over the splendid capital, Napo- leon entered the gates, and immediately appointed Mortier governor. In his directions, he com- manded him to abstain from all pillage. " For this," said he, " you shall be answerable with your life. Defend Moscow against all, whether friend or foe." The bright moon rose over the mighty city, tip- ping with silver the domes of more than two hun- dred churches, and pouring a flood of light over a thousand palaces and the dwellings of three hun- dred thousand inhabitants. The weary army sank to rest, but there was no sleep for Mortier's eyes. Not the gorgeous and variegated palaces and their rich ornaments, nor the parks and gardens and 156 J. T. HEADLEY 157 oriental magnificence that everywhere surrounded him, kept him wakeful, but the ominous foreboding that some dire calamity was hanging over the silent capital. When he entered it, scarcely a living soul met his gaze as he looked down the long streets ; and when he broke open the buildings, he found parlors, and bedrooms, and chambers, all furnished, and in order, but no occupants. This sudden abandonment of their homes betokened some secret purpose yet to be fulfilled. The midnight moon was settling over the city, when the cry of " Fire ! " reached the ears of Mortier ; and the first light over Napoleon's fal- tering empire was kindled, and that most wondrous scene of modern times commenced, the Burning of Moscow. Mortier, as governor of the city, immediately issued his orders, and was putting forth every exer- tion, when, at daylight, Napoleon hastened to him. Affecting to disbelieve the reports that the inhabi- tants were firing their own city, he put more rigid commands on Mortier to keep the soldiers from the work of destruction. The marshal simply pointed to some iron covered houses that had not yet been opened, from every crevice of which smoke was issuing like steam 'from the sides of a pent-up vol- cano. Sad and thoughtful, Napoleon turned toward the Kremlin, the ancient palace of the Czars, whose huge structure rose high above the surrounding edifices. In the morning, Mortier, by great exertions, was enabled to subdue the fire. But the next night, September 15th, 1812, at midnight, the sentinels on watch upon the lofty Kremlin saw below them the flames bursting through the houses and palaces, 158 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING and the cry of "Fire! fire!" passed through the city. The dread scene was now fairly opened. Fiery balloons were seen dropping through the air and lighting on the houses ; dull explosions were heard on every side from the shut-up dwellings, and the next moment light burst forth, and the flames were raging through the apartments. All was uproar and confusion. The serene air and moonlight of the night before had given way to driving clouds and a wild tempest, that swept like the roar of the sea over the city. Flames arose on every side, blazing and crackling in the storm ; while clouds of smoke and sparks in an incessant shower went driving toward the Kremlin. The clouds themselves seemed turned into fire, rolling wrath over devoted Moscow. Mortier, crushed with the responsibility thrown upon his shoulders, moved with his Young Guard amid this desolation, blow- ing up the houses and facing the tempest and the flames, struggling nobly to arrest the conflagration. He hastened from place to place amid the ruins, his face blackened with smoke, and his hair and eye- brows singed with the fierce heat. At length the day dawned a day of tempest and of flame and Mortier, who had strained every nerve for thirty-six hours, entered a palace and dropped down from fatigue. The manly form and stalwart arm that had so often carried death into the ranks of the enemy, at length gave way, and the gloomy marshal lay and panted in utter exhaustion. But the night of tempest had been succeeded by a day of tempest ; and when night again enveloped the city, it was one broad flame, waving to and fro in the blast. The wind had increased to a perfect hurricane, and shifted from quarter to quarter, as if on purpose J. T. HEADLEY 159 to swell the sea of fire and extinguish the last hope. The fire was approaching the Kremlin, and already the roar of the flames and crash of falling houses, and the crackling of burning embers, were borne to the ears of the startled Emperor. He arose and walked to and fro, stopping convulsively and gazing on the terrific scene. Murat, Eugene, and Berthier rushed into his presence, and on their knees be- sought him to flee ; but he still clung to that haughty palace as if it were his empire. But at length the shout, "The Kremlin is on fire ! " was heard above the roar of the conflagra- tion, and Napoleon reluctantly consented to leave. He descended into the streets with his staff, and looked about for a way of egress, but the flames blocked every passage. At length they discovered a postern gate, leading to the Moskwa, and entered it ; but they had entered still further into the dan- ger. As Napoleon cast his eye round the open space, girdled and arched with fire, smoke, and cinders, he saw one single street yet open, but all on fire. Into this he rushed, and amid the crash of falling houses, and raging of the flames, over burn- ing ruins, through clouds of rolling smoke, and be- tween walls of fire, he pressed on ; and, at length, half-suffocated, emerged in safety from the blazing city, and took up his quarters in the imperial palace of Petrousky, nearly three miles distant. Mortier, relieved from his anxiety for the Em- peror, redoubled his efforts to arrest the conflagra- tion. His men cheerfully rushed into every danger. Breathing nothing but smoke and ashes, canopied by flame, and smoke, and cinders, surrounded by walls of fire, that rocked to and fro, and fell with a crash amid the blazing ruins, carrying down with 160 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING them red-hot roofs of iron ; he struggled against an enemy that no boldness could awe, or courage over- come. Those brave troops had heard the tramp of thousands of cavalry sweeping to battle, without fear ; but now they stood in still terror before the march of the conflagration, under whose burning footsteps was heard the incessant crash of falling houses, and palaces, and churches. The continuous roar of the raging hurricane, mingled with that of the flames, was more terrible than the thunder of artillery ; and before this new foe, in the midst of the battle of the elements, the awe-struck army stood powerless and affrighted. When night again descended on the city, it pre- sented a spectacle, the like of which was never seen before, and which baffles all description. The streets were streets of fire, the heavens a canopy of fire, and the entire body of the city a mass of fire, fed by a hurricane that sped the blazing fragments in a con- stant stream through the air. Incessant explosions, from the blowing up of stores of oil, and tar, and spirits, shook the very foundations of the city, and sent vast volumes of smoke rolling furiously toward the sky. Huge sheets of canvas on fire came float- ing like messengers of death through the flames; the towers and domes of the churches and palaces glowing with a red-hot heat over the wild sea be- low, then tottering a moment on their bases, were hurled by the tempest into the common ruin. Thousands of wretches, before unseen, were driven by the heat from the cellars and hovels, and streamed in an incessant throng through the streets. Children were seen carrying their parents ; the strong, the weak ; while thousands were staggering under the loads of plunder they had snatched from the flames. J. T. HEADLEY 161 This, too, would frequently take fire in the falling shower, and the miserable creatures would be com- pelled to drop it, and flee for their lives. O, it was a scene of woe and fear inconceivable and indes- cribable ! A mighty and closely -packed city of houses, and churches, and palaces, wrapped from limit to limit in flames, which are fed by a whirling hurricane, is a sight the world will seldom see. But this was within the city. To Napoleon, with- out, the scene was still more sublime and terrific. When the flames had overcome all obstacles, and had wrapped everything in their red mantle, that great city looked like a sea of rolling fire, swept by a tempest that drove it into billows. Huge domes and towers, throwing off sparks like blazing fire- brands, now disappeared in their maddening flow, as they rushed and broke high over their tops, scattering their spray of fire against the clouds. The heavens themselves seemed to have caught the conflagration, and the angry masses that swept it rolled over a bosom of fire. Columns of flame would rise and sink along the surface of this sea, and huge volumes of black smoke suddenly shoot into the air, as if volcanoes were working below. The black form of the Kremlin alone towered above the chaos, now wrapped in flame and smoke, again emerging into view, standing amid this scene of desolation and terror, like Virtue in the midst of a burning world, enveloped but unscathed by the devouring elements. Napoleon stood and gazed on the scene in silent awe. Though nearly three miles distant, the win- dows and walls of his apartment were so hot that he could scarcely bear his hand against them. Said he, years afterward : " It was a spectacle of a sea and 162 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKINC4 billows of fire, a sky and clouds of flame, mountains of red rolling flames, like immense waves of the sea, alternately bursting forth and elevating themselves to skies of flame above. O, it was the most grand, the most sublime, and the most terrific sight the world ever beheld." THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO VICTOE HUGO Les MiseraUes HAD it not rained on the night of the 17th of June, 1815, the future of Europe would have been changed. A few drops of water more or less prostrated Napo- leon. That Waterloo should be the end of Auster- litz, Providence needed only a little rain, and an unseasonable cloud crossing the sky sufficed for the overthrow of a world. The battle of Waterloo and this gave Blucher time to come up could not be commenced before half -past eleven. Why ? Because the ground was soft. It was necessary to wait for it to acquire some little firmness so that the artillery could manoeuvre. Had the ground been dry, and the artillery able to move, the action would have been commenced at six o'clock in the morning. The battle would have been won and finished at two o'clock, three hours before the Prussians turned the scale of fortune. How much fault is there on the part of Napoleon in the loss of this battle ? Is the shipwreck' to be imputed to the pilot ? His plan of battle was, all confess, a masterpiece. To march straight to the centre of the allied line, pierce the enemy, cut them in two, push the British half upon Hal and the Prus- sian half upon Tongres, make of Wellington and 163 164 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING Bliicher two fragments, carry Mont Saint Jean, seize Brussels, throw the German into the Rhine, and the Englishman into the sea. All this, for Napoleon, was in this battle. What would follow, anybody can see. Those who would get a clear idea of the battle of Waterloo have only to lay down upon the ground in their mind a capital A. The left stroke of the A is the road from Nivelles, the right stroke is the road from Genappe, the cross of the A is the sunken road from Ohan to Brame-1'Alleud. The top of the A is Mont Saint Jean, Wellington is there ; the left- hand lower point is Hougomont, Eeille is there with Jerome Bonaparte ; the right-hand lower point is La Belle Alliance, Napoleon is there. A little be- low the point where the cross of the A meets and cuts the right stroke, is La Haie Sainte. At the middle of this cross is the precise point where the final battle-word was spoken. There the lion is placed, the involuntary symbol of the supreme hero- ism of the Imperial Guard. The triangle contained at the top of the A, between the two strokes and the cross, is the plateau of Mont Saint Jean. The strug- gle for this plateau was the whole of the battle. The wings of the two armies extended to the right and left of the two roads from Genappe and from Ni- velles ; D'Erlon being opposite Picton, Keille oppo- site Hill. Behind the point of the A, behind the plateau of Mont Saint Jean, is the forest of Soignes. As to the plain itself, we must imagine a vast undu- lating country ; each wave commanding the next, and these undulations rising toward Mont Saint Jean are there bounded by the forest. Both generals had carefully studied the plain of Mont Saint Jean, now called the plain of Waterloo. Already in the preceding year, Wellington, with the VICTOR HUGO 165 sagacity of prescience, had examined it as a possible site for a great battle. On this ground and for this contest Wellington had the favorable side, Napoleon the unfavorable. The English army was above, the French army below. Everybody knows the first phase of this battle ; the difficult opening, uncertain, hesitating, threat- ening for both armies, but for the English still more than for the French. It had rained all night : the ground was softened by the shower ; water lay here and there in the hol- lows of the plain as in basins ; at some points the wheels sank in to the axles ; the horses' girths dripped with liquid mud ; had not the wheat and rye spread down by that multitude of advancing carts filled the ruts and made a bed under the wheels, all movements, particularly in the valleys on the side of Papelotte, would have been impossible. The affair opened late ; Napoleon, as we have ex- plained, had a habit of holding all his artillery in hand like a pistol, aiming now at one point, anon at another point of the battle, and he desired to wait until the field batteries could wheel and gallop freely ; for this the sun must come out and dry the ground. But the sun did not come out. He had not now the field of Austerlitz. When the first gun was fired, the English General Colville looked at his watch and noted that it was thirty-five minutes past eleven. The battle was commenced with fury, more fury perhaps than the emperor would have wished, by the left wing of the French at Hougomont. At the same time Napoleon attacked the centre by hurling the brigade of Quiot upon La Haie Sainte, and Ney pushed the right wing of the French against the left wing of the English which rested upon Papelotte. 166 PKACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING There is in this day from noon to four o'clock an obscure interval ; the middle of this battle is almost indistinct, and partakes of the thickness of the con- flict. However, in the afternoon, at a certain mo- ment, the battle assumed precision. Toward four o'clock the situation of the English army was serious. The Prince of Orange com- manded the centre, Hill the right wing, Picton the left wing. The Prince of Orange, desperate and in- trepid, cried to the Hollando-Belgians : Nassau ! Brunswick ! never retreat ! Hill, exhausted, had fal- len back upon Wellington, Picton was dead. At the very moment that the English had taken from the French the colors of the 105th of the line, the French had killed General Picton by a ball through the head. For Wellington the battle had two points of support, Hougomont and La Haie Sainte ; Hou- gomont still held out, but was burning ; La Haie Sainte had been taken. Of the German battalion which defended it, forty -two men only survived ; all the officers, except five, were dead or prisoners. Three thousand combatants were massacred in that grange. A sergeant of the English Guards, the best boxer in England, reputed invulnerable by his comrades, had been killed by a little French drum- mer. Baring had been dislodged, Alten put to the sword. Several colors had been lost, one belonging to Alten's division, and one to the Luneburg battal- ion, borne by a prince of the family of Deux-Ponts. The Scotch Grays were no more ; Ponsonby's heavy dragoons had been cut to pieces. That valiant cav- alry had given way before the lancers of Bro and the cuirassiers of Travers ; of their twelve hundred horses there remained six hundred; of three lieu- tenant-colonels, two lay on the ground, Hamilton VICTOR HUGO 167 wounded, Mather killed. Ponsonby had fallen, pierced with seven thrusts of a lance. Gordon was dead, Marsh was dead. Two divisions, the fifth and the sixth, were destroyed. Hougomont yielding, La Haie Sainte taken, there was but one knot left, the centre. That still held. Wellington reinforced it. He called thither Hill, who was at Merbe Braine, and Chasse, who was at Braine 1'Alleud. The centre of the English army, slightly concave, very dense and very compact, held a strong position. It occupied the plateau of Mont Saint Jean, with the village behind it and in front the declivity, which at that time was steep. Wellington, anxious, but impassible, was on horse- back, and remained there the whole day in the same attitude, a little in front of the old mill of Mont Saint Jean, which is still standing, under an elm which an Englishman, an enthusiastic vandal, has since bought for two hundred francs, cut down and carried away. Wellington was frigidly heroic. The balls rained down. His aide-de-camp, Gordon, had just fallen at his side. Lord Hill, showing him a bursting shell, said : My Lord, what are your in- structions, and what orders do you leave us, if you allow yourself to be killed ? To follow my example, answered Wellington. To Clinton he said laconic- ally: Hold this spot to the last man. The day was clearly going badly. Wellington cried to his old companions of Talavera, Vittoria, and Salamanca: Boys ! We must not be beat ; what would they say of us in England ! About four o'clock the English line staggered backward. All at once only the artillery and the sharpshooters were seen on the crest of the plateau, 168 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING the rest disappeared ; the regiments, driven by the shells and bullets of the French, fell back into the valley now crossed by the cow-path of the farm of Mont Saint Jean ; a retrograde movement took place, the battle front of the English was slipping away, Wellington gave ground. Beginning retreat ! cried Napoleon. At the moment when Wellington drew back, Na- poleon started up. He saw the plateau of Mont Saint Jean suddenly laid bare, and the front of the English army disappear. It rallied, but kept con- cealed. The emperor half rose in his stirrups. The flash of victory passed into his eyes. Wellington hurled back on the forest of Soignes and destroyed ; that was the final overthrow of England by France ; it was Cressy, Poitiers, Malplaquet, and Eamillies avenged. The man of Marengo was wiping out Agincourt. The emperor then contemplating this terrible turn of fortune, swept his glass for the last time over every point of the battle-field. His guard standing behind with grounded arms, looked up to him with a sort of religion. He was reflecting ; he was examining the slopes, noting the ascents, scrutinizing the tuft of trees, the square rye field, the footpath ; he seemed to count every bush. He looked for some time at the English barricades on the two roads, two large abattis of trees, that on the Genappe road above La Haie Sainte, armed with two cannon, which alone, of all the English artillery, bore upon the bottom of the field of battle, and that of the Nivelles road where glistened the Dutch bayonets of Chasse's brigade. He noticed near that barricade the old chapel of Saint Nicholas, painted white, which is at the corner of the cross- VICTOR HUGO 169 road toward Braine 1'Alleud. He bent over and spoke in an undertone to the guide Lacoste. The guide made a negative sign of the head, probably treacherous. The emperor rose up and reflected. Wellington had fallen back. It remained only to complete this repulse by a crushing charge. Napoleon, turning abruptly, sent off a courier at full speed to Paris to announce that the battle was won. Napoleon was one of those geniuses who rule the thunder. He had found his thunderbolt. He ordered Milhaud's cuirassiers to carry the plateau of Mont Saint Jean. They were three thousand five hundred. They formed a line of half a mile. They were gigantic men on colossal horses. They were twenty - six squadrons. Aide -de - camp Bernard brought them the emperor's order. Ney drew his sword and placed himself at their head. The enor- mous squadrons began to move. Then was seen a fearful sight. All this cavalry, with sabres drawn, banners waving, and trumpets sounding, formed in column by division, descending with an even move- ment and as one man with the precision of a bronze battering-ram opening a breach. An odd numerical coincidence ; twenty-six bat- talions were to receive these twenty-six squadrons. Behind the crest of the plateau, under cover of the masked battery, the English infantry, formed in thirteen squares, two battalions to the square, and, upon two lines seven on the first, and six on the second with musket to the shoulder, and eye upon their sights, waiting calm, silent, and immovable. They could not see the cuirassiers, and the cuiras- siers could not see them. They listened to the ris- ing of this tide of men. They heard the increasing 170 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING sound of three thousand horses, the alternate and measured striking of their hoofs at full trot, the rat- tling of the cuirasses, the clicking of the sabres, and a sort of fierce roar of the coming host. There was a moment of fearful silence, then, suddenly, a long line of raised arms brandishing sabres ap- peared above the crest, with casques, trumpets, and standards, and three thousand faces with gray mustaches, crying, Vive PEmpereur! All this cav- alry debouched on the plateau, and it was like the beginning of an earthquake. All at once, tragic to relate, at the left of the Eng- lish, and on our right, the head of the column of cuirassiers reared with a frightful clamor. Arrived at the culminating point of the crest, unmanageable, full of fury, and bent upon the extermination of the squares and cannons, the cuirassiers saw between themselves and the English a ditch, a grave. It was the sunken road of Ohain. It was a frightful moment. There was the ravine, unlocked for, yawning at the very feet of the horses > two fathoms deep between its double slope. The second rank pushed in the first, the third pushed in in the second ; the horses reared, threw themselves over, fell upon their backs, and struggled with their feet in the air, piling up and overturning their riders ; no power to retreat ; the whole column was nothing but a projectile. The force acquired to crush the English crushed the French. The inexo- rable ravine could not yield until it was filled ; riders and horses rolled in together pell-mell, grinding each other, making common flesh in this dreadful gulf, and when this grave was full of living men, the rest marched over them and passed on. Almost a third of the Dubois brigade sank into this abyss. VICTOR HUGO 171 Here the loss of the battle began. At the same time with the ravine, the artillery was unmasked. Sixty cannons and the thirteen squares thundered and flashed into the cuirassiers. The brave General Delord gave the military salute to the English bat- tery. All the English flying artillery took position in the squares at a gallop. The cuirassiers had not even time to breathe. The disaster of the sunken road had decimated, but not discouraged them. They were men who, diminished in number, grew greater in heart. Wathier's column alone had suf- fered from the disaster ; Delord's, which Ney had sent obliquely to the left, as if he had a presenti- ment of the snare, arrived entire. The cuirassiers hurled themselves upon the English squares. At full gallop, with free rein, their sabres in their teeth, and their pistols in their hands, the attack began. There are moments in battle when the soul hardens a man even to changing the soldier into a statue, and all this flesh becomes granite. The English battalions, desperately assailed, did not yield an inch. Then it was frightful. All sides of the English squares were attacked at once. A whirlwind of frenzy enveloped them. This frigid infantry remained impassable. The first rank, with knee on the ground, received the cuiras- siers on their bayonets, the second shot them down ; behind the second rank, the cannoneers loaded their guns, the front of the square opened, made way for an eruption of grape, and closed again. The cuiras- siers answered by rushing upon them with crushing force. Their great horses reared, trampled upon the ranks, leaped over the bayonets, and fell, gigan- tic, in the midst of these four living walls. The balls made gaps in the ranks of the cuirassiers, the 172 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING cuirassiers made breaches in the squares. Files of men disappeared, ground down beneath the horses' feet. The cuirassiers, relatively few in number, lessened by the catastrophe of the ravine, had to contend with almost the whole of the English army, but they multiplied themselves, each man became equal to ten. Nevertheless some Hanoverian battalions fell back. Wellington saw it and remembered his cavalry. Had Napoleon, at that very moment, remembered his infantry, he would have won the battle. This forgetfulness was his great fatal blunder. Suddenly the assailing cuirassiers perceived that they were assailed. The English cavalry was upon their back. Before them the squares, behind them Somerset ; Somerset, with the fourteen hundred dragoon guards. Somerset had on his right Dorn- berg with his German light-horse, and on his left Trip, with the Belgian carbineers. The cuirassiers, attacked front, flank, and rear, by infantry and cavalry, were compelled to face in all directions. What was that to them ? They were a whirlwind. Their valor became unspeakable. The cuirassiers annihilated seven squares out of thirteen, took or spiked sixty pieces of cannon, and took from the English regiments six colors, which three cuirassiers and three chasseurs of the guard carried to the Emperor before the farm of la Belle-Alliance. The situation of Wellington was growing worse. This strange battle was like a duel between two wounded infuriates who, while yet fighting and re- sisting, lose all their blood. Which of the two shall fall first ? Wellington felt that he was giving way. The crisis was upon him. The cuirassiers had not succeeded, in this sense, that the centre was not VICTOK HUGO 173 broken. All holding the plateau, nobody held it, and in fact it remained for the most part with the English. Wellington held the village and the crown- ing plain; Ney held only the crest and the slope. On both sides they seemed rooted in this funebral soil. But the enfeeblement of the English appeared ir- remediable. The hemorrhage of this army was hor- rible. Kempt, on the left wing, called for rein- forcements. Impossible, answered Wellington ; we must die on the spot we now occupy. Almost at the same moment singular coincidence which depicts the exhaustion of both armies Ney sent to Napoleon for infantry, and Napoleon exclaimed : Infantry ! where does lie expect me to take them ? Does he expect me to make them ? However, the English army was farthest gone. The furious onslaughts of these great squadrons with iron cuirasses and steel breastplates had ground up the infantry. At five o'clock Wel- lington drew out his watch, and was heard to mur- mur these sombre words : Bliicher, or night ! It was about this time that a distant line of bay- onets glistened on the heights beyond Frischemont. Here is the turning-point in this colossal drama. The rest is known ; the irruption of a third army, the battle thrown out of joint, eighty-six pieces of artillery suddenly thundering forth, a new battle falling at night-fall upon our dismantled regiments, the whole English line assuming the offensive and pushed forward, the gigantic gap made in the French army, the English grape and Prussian grape lending mutual aid, extermination, disaster in front, disaster in flank, the Guard entering into line amid this ter- rible crumbling. Feeling that they were going to their death, they 174 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING cried out : Vive I'Empereur ! There is nothing more touching in history than this death-agony bursting forth in acclamations. Each battalion of the Guard, for this final effort, was commanded by a general. Friant, Michel, Ko- guet, Harlet, Mallet, Poret de Morvan, were there. When the tall caps of the Grenadiers of the Guard with their large eagle plates appeared, symmetrical, drawn up in line, calm, in the smoke of that conflict, the enemy felt respect for France ; they thought they saw twenty victories entering upon the field of battle, with wings extended, and those who were con- querors, thinking themselves conquered, recoiled ; but Wellington cried : Up Guards, and at them ! The red regiment of English Guards, lying behind the hedges, rose up, a shower of grape riddled the tricolored flag fluttering about our eagles, all hurled themselves forward, and the final carnage began. The Imperial Guard felt the army slipping away around them in the gloom, and the vast overthrow of the rout ; they heard the Sauve qui pent ! which had replaced the Vive I'Empereur ! and, with flight behind them, they held on their course, battered more and more and dying faster and faster at every step. There were no weak souls or cowards there. The privates of that band were as heroic as their general. Not a man flinched from the suicide. The rout behind the Guard was dismal. The army fell back rapidly from all sides at once. The cry : Treachery ! was followed by the cry : Sauve qui pent ! A disbanding army is a thaw. The whole bends, cracks, snaps, floats, rolls, falls, crashes, hur- ries, plunges. Mysterious disintegration. Ney bor- rows a horso, leaps upon him, and without hat, cra- vat, or sword, plants himself in the Brussels road, VICTOR HUGO 175 arresting at once the English and the French. He endeavors to hold the army, he calls them back, he reproaches them, he grapples with the rout. He is swept away. The soldiers flee from him, cry- ing : Vive Marshal Ney ! Napoleon gallops along the fugitives, harangues them, urges, threatens, en- treats. The mouths, which in the morning were crying Vive VEmpereur, are now agape ; he is hardly rec- ognized. The Prussian cavalry, just come up, spring forward, fling themselves upon the enemy, sabre, cut, hack, kill, exterminate. Teams rush off, the guns are left to the care of themselves ; the soldiers of the train unhitch the caissons and take the horses to escape ; wagons upset, with their four wheels in air, block up the road, and are accessories of the massacre. They crush and they crowd ; they trample on the living and the dead. Arms are broken. A mul- titude fills roads, paths, bridges, plains, hills, valleys, woods, choked up by this flight of fortj r thousand men. Cries, despair ; knapsacks and muskets cast into the rye, passages forced at the point of the sword : no more comrades, no more officers, no more generals ; inexpressible dismay. In the gathering night, on a field near Genappe, Bernard and Bertrand seized by a flap of his coat and stopped a haggard, thoughtful, gloomy man, who, dragged thus far by the current of the rout, had dismounted, passed the bridle of his horse under his arm, and, with a bewildered eye, was re- turning alone toward Waterloo. It was Napoleon, endeavoring to advance again, mighty somnambulist of a vanished dream. WATERLOO VICTOB HUGO Les Miserables THE battle of Waterloo is an enigma. It is as obscure to those who won it as to him who lost it. To Napoleon it is a panic ;* Bliicher sees in it only fire ; Wellington comprehends nothing of it. Look at the reports. The bulletins are confused, the com- mentaries are foggy. The former stammer, the lat- ter falter. Jomini separates the battle of Waterloo into four periods ; Muffling divides it into three tides of fortune ; Charras alone, though upon some points our appreciation differs from his, has seized with his keen glance the characteristic lineaments of that catastrophe of human genius struggling with divine destiny. All the other historians are blinded by the glare, and are groping about in that blindness. A day of lightnings, indeed, the downfall of the mili- tary monarchy, which to the great amazement of kings, has dragged with it all kingdoms, the fall of force, the overthrow of war. In this event, bearing the impress of superhu- man necessity, man's part is nothing. Does taking away Waterloo from Wellington and from Bliicher detract anything from England and Germany? No. Neither illustrious England nor * u A battle ended, a day finished, false measures repaired, greater success assured for the morrow, all was lost by a moment of panic." (Napoleon, Dictations at St. Helena.) 176 VICTOR HUGO 177 august Germany is in question in the problem of Waterloo. Thank heaven, nations are great aside from the dismal chances of the sword. Neither Ger- many, nor England, nor France, is held in a scab- bard. At this day, when Waterloo is only a clicking of sabres, above Blucher, Germany has Goethe, and above Wellington, England has Byron. A vast up- rising of ideas is peculiar to our century, and in this aurora England and Germany have a magnificent share. They are majestic because they think. The higher plane which they bring to civilization is in- trinsic to them ; it comes from themselves, and not from an accident. The advancement which they have made in the nineteenth century does not spring from Waterloo. It is only barbarous nations who have a sudden growth after a victory. It is the fleeting vanity of the streamlet swelled by the storm. Civilized nations, especially in our times, are not exalted nor abased by the good or bad fortune of a captain. Their specific gravity in the human race results from something more than a combat. Their honor, thank God, their dignity, their light, their genius, are not numbers that heroes and conquerors, those gamblers, can cast into the lottery of battles. Oftentimes a battle lost is progress attained. Less glory, m-ore liberty. The drum is silent, reason speaks. It is the game at which he who loses, gains. Let us speak, then, coolly of Waterloo on both sides. Let us render unto Fortune the things that are For- tune's, and unto God the things that are God's. What is Waterloo ? A victory ? No. A prize. A prize won by Europe, paid by France. It was not much to put a lion there. Waterloo moreover is the strangest encounter in history. Napoleon and Wellington : they are not 178 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING enemies, they are opposites. Never has God, who takes pleasure in antitheses, made a more strik- ing 1 contrast and a more extraordinary meeting". On one side, precision, foresight, geometry, pru- dence, retreat assured, reserves economized, obsti- nate composure, imperturbable method, strategy to profit by the ground, tactics to balance battalions, carnage drawn to the line, war directed watch in hand, nothing left voluntarily to chance, ancient classic courage, absolute correctness ; on the other, intuition, inspiration, a military marvel, a superhu- man instinct ; a flashing- glance, a mysterious some- thing which g-azes like the eagle and strikes like the thunderbolt, prodigious art in disdainful impetuos- ity, all the mysteries of a deep soul, intimacy with destiny ; river, plain, forest, hill, commanded, and in some sort forced to obey, the despot going- even so far as to tyrannize over the battle-field ; faith in a star joined to strategic science, increasing it, but disturbing it. Wellington was the Barreme of war. Napoleon was its Michael Ang-elo, and this time genius was vanquished by calculation. On both sides they were expecting somebody. It was the exact calculator who succeeded. Napoleon expected Grouchy ; he did not come. Wellington expected Bliicher ; he came. Wellington is classic war taking- her revenge. Bonaparte, in his dawn, had met her in Italy, and defeated her superbly. The old owl fled before the young- vulture. Ancient tactics had been not only thunderstruck, but had received mortal offence. What was this Corsican of twenty-six ? What meant this brilliant 'novice who, having everything- against him, nothing for him, with no provisions, no munitions, no cannon, no shoes, almost without VICTOR HUGO 179 an army, with a handful of men against multitudes, rushed upon allied Europe, and absurdly gained victories that were impossible ? Whence came this thundering madman who, almost without taking breath, and with the same set of combatants in hand, pulverized one after the other the five armies of the Emperor of Germany? Who was this new comer in war with the confidence of destiny? The academic military school excommunicated him as it ran away. Thence an implacable hatred of the old system of war against the new, of the correct sabre against the flashing sword, and of the checker- board against genius. On the 18th of June, 1815, this hatred had the last word, and under Lodi, Mon- tebello, Montenotte, Mantua, Marengo, Arcola, it wrote : Waterloo. Waterloo is a battle of the first rank won by a captain of the second. What is truly admirable in the battle of Waterloo is England, English firmness, English resolution, English blood ; the superb thing which England had there may it not displease her is herself. It is not her captain, it is her army. Wellington, strangely ungrateful, declared in a letter to Lord Bathurst that his army, the army that fought on the 18th of June, 1815, was a " detestable army." What does this dark assemblage of bones, buried beneath the furrows of Waterloo, think of that? England has been too modest in regard to Wel- lington. To make Wellington so great is to belittle England. Wellington is but a hero like the rest. These Scotch Grays, these Horse Guards, these regi- ments of Maitland and of Mitchell, this infantry of Peck and Kempt, this cavalry of Ponsonby and of 180 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING Somerset, these Highlanders playing the bagpipe under the storm of grape, these battalions of Ky- landt, these raw recruits who hardly knew how to handle a musket, holding out against the veteran bands of Essling and Bivoli all that is grand. Wellington was tenacious, that was his merit, and we do not undervalue it, but the least of his foot- soldiers or his horsemen was quite as firm as he. The iron soldier is as good as the Iron Duke. For our part, all our glorification goes to the English soldier, the English army, the English people. If trophy there be, to England the trophy is due. The Waterloo column would be more just if, instead of the figure of a man, it lifted to the clouds the statue of a nation. But this great England will be offended at what we say here. She has still, after her 1688 and our 1789, the feudal illusion. She believes in hereditary right and in the hierarchy. This people, surpassed by none in might and glory, esteems itself as a na- tion, not as a people. So much so that as a people they subordinate themselves willingly, and take a lord for a head. Workmen, they submit to be de- spised ; soldiers, they submit to be whipped. We remember that at the battle of Inkerman a sergeant who, as it appeared, had saved the army, could not be mentioned by Lord Eaglan, the English military hierarchy not permitting any hero below the rank of officer to be spoken of in a report. What we admire above all, in an encounter like that of Waterloo, is the prodigious skill of fortune. The night's rain, the wall of Hougomont, the sunken road of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to cannon, Napoleon's guide who deceives him, Bulow's guide who leads him right ; all this cataclysm is wonderfully carried out. VICTOR HUGO 181 Taken as a whole, let us say, Waterloo was more of a massacre than a battle. Of all great battles, Waterloo is that which has the shortest line in proportion to the number en- gaged. Napoleon, two miles, Wellington, a mile and a half ; seventy-two thousand men on each side. From this density came the carnage. A hundred and forty-four thousand men ; sixty thousand dead. The field of Waterloo to-day has that calm which belongs to the earth ; impassive support of man ; it resembles any other plain. At night, however, a sort of visionary mist arises from it, and if some traveller be walking there, if he looks, if he listens, if he dreams like Virgil in the fatal plain of Philippi, he becomes possessed by the hallucination of the disaster. The terrible 18th of June is again before him ; the artificial hill of the monument fades away, this lion, whatever it be, is dispelled ; the field of battle resumes its real- ity; the lines of infantry undulate in the plain, furious gallops traverse the horizon ; the bewildered dreamer sees the flash of sabres, the glistening of bayonets, the bursting of shells, the awful inter- mingling of the thunders ; he hears, like a death- rattle from the depths of a tomb, the vague clamor of the phantom battle ; these shadows are grena- diers; these gleams are cuirassiers; this skeleton is Napoleon ; that skeleton is Wellington ; all this is unreal, and yet it clashes and combats ; and the ravines run red, and the trees shiver, and there is fury even in the clouds, and, in the darkness, all those savage heights, Mont Saint Jean, Hougo- mont, Frischemont, Papelotte, Planchenoit, appear confusedly crowned with whirlwinds of spectres ex- terminating each other. AMERICAN TAXATION EDMUND BUKKE House of Commons, April 19, 1774 [After the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, Great Britain adopted violent measures against the colonists. Laws were passed, depriving Massachusetts of her charter, and closing Boston Harbor against all commerce. There were some, however, who thought that these measures should be accompanied by an act of conciliation. Accordingly, Mr. Rose Fuller moved, u That the House resolve itself into a committee of the whole House, to take into consideration the duty of three pence per pound on tea, payable in all his Majesty's dominions in America, with a view to repealing the same." Mr. Burke seconded the motion, and supported it by a speech, of which the following is a part.] SIK I agree with the honorable gentleman * who spoke last, that this subject is not new in this House. Very disagreeably to this House, very unfortunately to this nation, and to the peace and prosperity of this whole empire, no topic has been more familiar to us. For nine long years, session after session, we have been lashed round and round this miserable circle of occasional arguments and temporary expe- dients. I am sure our heads must turn, and our stomachs nauseate with them. We have had them in every shape; we have looked at them in every point of view. Invention is exhausted ; reason is Charles Wolf ran Cornwall, Esq., one of the Lords of the Treas- ury, and afterward Speaker of the House of Commons. 182 EDMUND BUKKE 183 fatigued ; experience has given judgment ; but ob- stinacy is not yet conquered. The honorable gentleman has made one endeavor more to diversify the form of this disgusting argu- ment. He has thrown out a speech composed al- most entirely of challenges. Challenges are serious things ; and, as he is a man of prudence as well as resolution, I dare say he has very well weighed those challenges before he delivered them. I had long the happiness to sit at the same side of the House, and to agree with the honorable gentleman on all American questions. My sentiments, I am sure, are well known to him ; and I thought I had been per- fectly acquainted with his. Though I find myself mistaken, he will still permit me to use the privilege of an old friendship ; he will permit me to apply myself to the House under the sanction of his author- ity ; and on the various grounds he has measured out, to submit to you the poor opinions which I have formed upon a matter of importance enough to de- mand the fullest consideration I could bestow upon it. He has stated to the House two grounds of delib- eration, one narrow and simple, and merely confined to the question on your paper ; the other more large and complicated, comprehending the whole series of the parliamentary proceedings with regard to America, their causes and their consequences. Sir, I will freely follow the honorable gentleman in his historical discussion, without the least man- agement for men or measures, farther than as they shall seem to me to deserve it. But before I go into that large consideration, because I would omit noth- ing that can give the House satisfaction, I wish to tread the narrow ground, to which alone the honor- 184 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING able gentleman, in one part of his speech, has so strictly confined us. He desires to know, whether, if we were to repeal this tax agreeably to the proposition of the honor- able gentleman who made the motion, the Americans would not take post on this concession, in order to make a new attack on the next body of taxes ; and whether they would not call for a repeal of the duty on wine as loudly as they do now for the repeal of the duty on tea? Sir, I can give no security on this subject. But I will do all that I can, and all that can be fairly demanded. To the experience which the honorable gentleman reprobates in one instant and reverts to the next ; to that experience, without the least wa- vering or hesitation on my part, I steadily appeal ; and would to God there were no other arbiter to de- cide on the vote with which the House is to conclude this day ! When Parliament repealed the Stamp Act in the year 1766, 1 affirm, first, that the Americans did not, in consequence of this measure, call upon you to give up the former parliamentary revenue which subsisted in that country, or even any one of the ar- ticles which compose it. I affirm, also, that when, departing from the maxims of that repeal, you re- vived the scheme of taxation, and thereby filled the minds of the colonists with new jealousy, and all sorts of apprehension, then it was that they quar- relled with the old taxes as well as the new ; then it was, and not till then, that they questioned all the parts of your legislative power ; and by the battery of such questions have shaken the solid structure of this empire to its deepest foundations. The act of 1767, which grants this tea duty, sets forth in its preamble that it was expedient to raise EDMUND BURKE 185 a revenue in America for the support of the civil government there, as well as for purposes still more extensive. To this support the act assigns six branches of duties. About two years after this act passed, the ministry I mean the present ministry thought it expedient to repeal five of the duties, and to leave, for reasons best known to themselves, only the sixth standing. Suppose any person, at the time of that repeal, had thus addressed the min- ister : " Condemning, as you do, the repeal of the Stamp Act, why do you venture to repeal the duties upon glass, paper, and painter's colors ? Let your pretence for the repeal be what it will, are you not thoroughly convinced that your concessions will produce, not satisfaction, but insolence, in the Americans ; and that the giving up these taxes will necessitate the giving up of all the rest ? " This objection was as palpable then as it is now ; and it was as good for preserving the five duties as for retaining the sixth. But I hear it continually rung in my ears, now and formerly, " the preamble! what will become of the preamble, if you repeal this tax ? " I am sorry to be compelled so often to expose the calamities and disgraces of Parliament. The preamble of this law, standing as it now stands, has the lie direct given to it by the provisionary part of the act ; if that can be called provisionary which makes no provision. I should be afraid to express myself in this manner, especially in the face of such a for- midable array of ability as is now drawn up before me, composed of the ancient household troops of that side of the House, and the new recruits from this, if the matter were not clear and indisputable. Nothing but truth could give me this firmness ; but Io6 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING plain truth and clear evidence can be beat down by no ability. The clerk will be so good as to turn to the act, and to read this favorite preamble. [It was read in the following words : " Whereas it is expedient that a revenue should be raised in your Majesty's dominions in America, for making a more certain and adequate provision for defraying the charge of the administration of justice and support of civil government in such provinces where it shall be found necessary, and toward farther defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing the said dominions."] You have heard this pompous performance. Now where is the revenue which is to do all these mighty things ? Five sixths repealed abandoned sunk gone lost forever. Does the poor soli- tary tea duty support the purposes of this pream- ble ? Is not the supply there stated as effectu- ally abandoned as if the tea duty had perished in the general wreck ? Here, Mr. Speaker, is a pre- cious mockery a preamble without an act taxes granted in order to be repealed and the reasons of the grant still carefully kept up ! This is raising a revenue in America ! This is preserving dignity in England! If you repeal this tax in compliance with the motion, I readily admit that you lose this fair preamble. Estimate your loss in it. The ob- ject of the act is gone already ; and all you suffer is the purging the statute-book of the opprobrium of an empty, absurd, and false recital. It has been said again and again, that the five taxes were repealed on commercial principles. It is so said in the paper in my hand 1 - a paper which * Lord Hillsborough's circular letter to the governors of the colonies concerning the repeal of some of the duties laid in the act of 1767. EDMUND BURKE 187 I constantly carry about, which I have often used, and shall often use again. What is gained by this pal- try pretence of commercial principles I know not ; for, if your government in America is destroyed by the repeal of taxes, it is of no consequence upon what ideas the repeal is grounded. Repeal this tax, too, upon commercial principles, if you please. These principles will serve as well now as they did formerly. But you know that, either your objection to a repeal from these supposed consequences has no validity, or that this pretence never could re- move it. This commercial motive never was be- lieved by any man, either in America, which this letter is meant to soothe, or in England, which it is meant to deceive. It was impossible it should ; because every man, in the least acquainted with the detail of commerce, must know, that several of the articles on which the tax was repealed were fitter objects of duties than almost any other articles that could possibly be chosen ; without comparison more so than the tea that was left taxed, as infinitely less liable to be eluded by contraband. The tax upon red and white lead was of this nature. You have, in this kingdom, an advantage in lead that amounts to a monopoly. When you find yourself in this situation of advantage, you sometimes venture to tax even your own export. You did so, soon after the last war, when, upon this principle, you ventured to impose a duty on coals. In all the ar- ticles of American contraband trade, who ever heard of the smuggling of red lead and white lead ? You might, therefore, well enough, without danger of contraband, and without injury to commerce (if this were the whole consideration), have taxed these commodities. The same may be said of glass. 188 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING Besides, some of the things taxed were so trivial ? that the loss of the objects themselves, and their utter annihilation out of American commerce, would have been comparatively as nothing-. But is the article of tea such an object in the trade of England as not to be felt, or felt but slightly, like white lead, and red lead, and painters' colors ? Tea is an object of far other importance. Tea is perhaps the most important object, taking it with its necessary connections, of any in the mighty circle of our com- merce. If commercial principles had been the true motives to the repeal, or had they been at all at- tended to, tea would have been the last article we should have left taxed for a subject of controversy. Do you forget that, in the very last year, you stood on the precipice of a general bankruptcy? Your danger was indeed great. You were distressed in the affairs of the East India Company ; and you well know what sort of things are involved in the comprehensive energy of that significant appella- tion. I am not called upon to enlarge to you on that danger, which you thought proper yourselves to aggravate, and to display to the world with all the parade of indiscreet declamation. The mo- opoly of the most lucrative trades and the posses- sion of imperial revenues had brought you to the verge of beggary and ruin. Such was your repre- sentation such, in some measure, was your case. The vent of ten millions of pounds of this com- modity, now locked up by the operation of an in- judicious tax, and rotting in the warehouses of the company, would have prevented all this distress, and all that series of desperate measures which you thought yourselves obliged to take in consequence of it. America would have furnished that vent, EDMUND BURKE 189 which no other part of the world can furnish but America ; where tea is next to a necessary of life, and where the demand grows upon the supply. I hope our dear-bought East India committees have done us at least so much good as to let us know, that without a more extensive sale of that article, our East India revenues and acquisitions can have no certain connection with this country. It is through the American trade of tea that your East India conquests are to be prevented from crushing you with their burden. They are ponderous in- deed; and they must have that great country to lean upon, or they tumble upon your head. It is the same folly that has lost you at once the benefit of the West and of the East. This folly has thrown open folding-doors to contraband, and will be the means of giving the profits of the trade of your colonies to every nation but yourselves. Never did a people suffer so much for the empty words of a preamble. It must be given up. For on what prin- ciple does it stand? This famous revenue stands, at this hour, on all the debate, as a description of revenue not as yet known in all the comprehensive, but too comprehensive vocabulary of finance a pre- ambulary tax. It is, indeed, a tax of sophistry, a tax of pedantry, a tax of disputation, a tax of war and rebellion, a tax for anything but benefit to the imposers, or satisfaction to the subject. Well ! but, whatever it is, gentlemen will force the colonists to take the teas. You will force them? Has seven years 1 struggle been yet able to force them ? O, but it seems we are yet in the right. The tax is " trifling in effect, it is rather an exoneration than an imposition ; three fourths of the duty form- erly payable on teas exported to America is taken 190 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING off; the place of collection is only shifted ; instead of the retention of a shilling from the drawback here, it is threepence custom paid in America." All this, sir, is very true. But this is the very folly and mis- chief of the act. Incredible as it may seem, you know that you have deliberately thrown away a large duty which you held secure and quiet in your hands, for the vain hope of getting- one three-fourths less, through every hazard, through certain litigation, and possibly through war. Could anything be a subject of more just alarm to America than to see you go out of the plain high road of finance, and give up your most certain rev- enues and your clearest interest merely for the sake of insulting your colonies ? No man ever doubted that the commodity of tea could bear an imposition of threepence. But no commodity will bear three- pence, or will bear a penny, when the general feelings of men are irritated, and two millions of people are resolved not to pay. The feelings of the colonies were formerly the feelings of Great Britain. Theirs were formerly the feelings of Mr. Hampden when called upon for the payment of twenty shillings.* Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune ? No ! but the payment of half twenty shil- lings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave. It is the weight of that preamble, of which you are so fond, and not the weight of the duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear. It is then, sir, upon the principle of this measure, and nothing else, that we are at issue. It is a prin- ciple of political expediency. Your act of 1767 as- * The refusal of this celebrated man to pay " ship-money," when, illegally demanded by Charles I. is known to all. EDMUND BURKE 191 serts that it is expedient to raise a revenue in Ameri- ca ; your act of 1769 [March, 1770], which takes away that revenue, contradicts the act of 1767 ; and, by something 1 much stronger than words, asserts that it is not expedient. It is a reflection on your wisdom to persist in a solemn parliamentary declaration of expediency of any object, for which, at the same time, you make no sort of provision. And pray, sir, let not this circumstance escape you it is very ma- terial that the preamble of this act, which we wish to repeal, is not declaratory of a right, as some gentle- men seem to argue it ; it is only a recital of the ex- pediency of a certain exercise of a right supposed already to have been asserted ; an exercise you are now contending for by ways and means, which you confess, though they were obeyed, to be utterly in- sufficient for their purpose. You are, therefore, at this moment in the awkward situation of fighting for a phantom a quiddity a thing that wants not only a substance, but even a name ; for a thing which is neither abstract right, nor profitable enjoyment. They tell you, sir, that your dignity is tied to it. I know not how it happens, but this dignity of yours is a terrible encumbrance to you, for it has of late been continually at war with your interest, your equity, and every idea of your policy. Show the thing you contend for to be reason ; show it to be common sense ; show it to be the means of attaining some useful end ; and then I am content to allow it what dignity you please. But what dignity is derived from the per- severance in absurdity, is more than ever I could discern. The honorable gentleman has said well indeed, in most of his general observations I agree with him he says, that this subject does not stand as it did formerly. Oh, certainly not ! every hour 192 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING you continue on this ill-chosen ground, your diffi- culties thicken on you ; and, therefore, my conclu- sion is, remove from a bad position as quickly as you can. The disgrace, and the necessity of yield- ing, both of them, grow upon you every hour of your delay. Sir, the honorable gentleman having spoken what he thought necessary upon the narrow part of the subject, I have given him, I hope, a satisfactory an- swer. He next presses me, by a variety of direct challenges and oblique reflections, to say something on the HISTORICAL PART. I shall therefore, sir, open myself fully on that important and delicate subject ; not for the sake of telling you a long story (which I know, Mr. Speaker, you are not particularly fond of), but for the sake of the weighty instruction that, I flatter myself, will necessarily result from it. It shall not be longer, if I can help it, than so serious a matter requires. [Mr. Burke then enters upon an extended review of the history of British finance, concluding his speech with the following summary and appeal : ] Now, sir, I trust I have shown, first, on that narrow ground which the honorable gentleman measured, that you are like to lose nothing by com- plying with the motion except what you have lost already. I have shown afterward, that in time of peace you flourished in commerce, and when war required it, had sufficient aid from the colonies, while you pursued your ancient policy ; that you threw everything into confusion when you made the Stamp Act; and that you restored everything to peace and order when you repealed it. I have shown that the revival of the system of taxation has produced the very worst effects ; and that the par- EDMUND BURKE 193 tial repeal has produced, not partial good, but uni- versal evil. Let these considerations, founded on facts, not one of which can be denied, bring us back to our reason by the road of our experience. I cannot, as I have said, answer for mixed meas- ures ; but surely this mixture of lenity would give the whole a better chance of success. When you once regain confidence, the way will be clear before you. Then you may enforce the Act of Navigation when it ought to be enforced. You will yourselves open it where it ought still farther to be opened. Proceed in what you do, whatever you do, from pol- icy, and not from rancor. Let us act like men, let us act like statesmen. Let us hold some sort of consistent conduct. It is agreed that a revenue is not to be had in America. If we lose the profit, let us get rid of the odium. On this business of America I confess I am seri- ous even to sadness. I have had but one opinion concerning it since I sat, and before I sat, in Parlia- ment. The noble Lord [Lord North] will, as usual, probably attribute the part taken by me and my friends in this business to a desire of getting his place. Let him enjoy this happy and original idea. If I deprived him of it, I should take away most of his wit and all his argument. But I had rather bear the brunt of all his wit, and, indeed, blows much heavier, than stand answerable to God for embrac- ing a system that tends to the destruction of some of the very best and fairest of his works. But I know the map of England as well as the noble Lord or as any other person ; and I know that the way I take is not the road to preferment. My excellent and honorable friend under me on the floor [Mr. Dowdeswell] has trod that road with great toil for 194 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING upward of twenty years together. He is not yet arrived at the noble Lord's destination. However, the tracks of my worthy friend are those I have ever wished to follow, because I know they lead to honor. Long may we tread the same road to- gether, whoever may accompany us, or whoever may laugh at us on our journey. I honestly and solemnly declare, I have in all seasons adhered to the system of 1766, for no other reason than that I think it laid deep in your truest interests ; and that, by limiting the exercise, it fixes on the firmest foun- dations a real, consistent, well-grounded authority in Parliament. Until you come back to that system, there will be no peace for England. HENRY'S SPEECH BEFORE HARFLEUR. K. Hen. Once more unto the breach, dear friends once more ; Or close the wall up with our English dead ! In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility : But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger ; Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, Disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage ; Then lend the eye a terrible aspect ; Let it pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon ; let the brow o'erwhelm it As fearfully as doth a galled rock O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide ; Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit To his full height ! On, on, you noble English, SHAKESPEARE 195 Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof ! Fathers that, like so many Alexanders, Have in these parts from morn till even fought, And sheath'd their swords for lack of argument : Dishonor not your mothers ; now attest That those whom you call'd fathers did beget you ! Be copy now to men of grosser blood, And teach them how to war : And you, good yeo- men, Whose limbs were made in England, show us here The mettle of your pasture ; let us swear That you are worth your breeding : which I doubt not; For there is none of you so mean and base, That hath not noble lustre in your eyes. I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, Straining upon the start. The game's afoot : Follow your spirit ; and upon this charge Cry God for Harry ! England ! and Saint George ! King Henry Y., Act III., Sc. 1. AN APPEAL FOE LIBEETY JOSEPH STOKY Salem, Mass., September 18, 1828 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 en- croachment upon your liberties, resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish your system of public instruc- tion. 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 coun- try, 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 196 JOSEPH STORY 197 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 as- sembled here, must soon be gathered to the congre- gation 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 of poetry, exclaim, that here is still his country. PLEA FOR THE OLD SOUTH CHTJBCH, BOSTON WENDELL PHILLIPS Boston, June 4, 1876 A HUNDRED years ago our fathers announced this sublime declaration, " God intended all men to be free and equal." To-day, with a territory that joins ocean to ocean, with her millions of people, with two wars behind her, with the sublime achievement of having grappled with the fearful disease that threat- ened her life, and broken four millions of fetters, the great Kepublic launches into the second century of her existence. With how much pride, with what a thrill, with what tender and loyal reverence, may we not cherish the spot where this marvellous enterprise began, the roof under which its first councils were held, where the air still trembles and burns with Otis and Sam Adams. Except the Holy City, is there any more memorable or sacred place, on the face of the earth, than the cradle of such a change ? Athens has her Acropolis, but the Greek can point to no such results. London has her Palace, and her Tower, and her St. Stephen's Chapel, but the human race owes her no such memories. France has spots marked by the sublimest devotion, but the Mecca of the man who believes and hopes for the human race is not to Paris, it is to the seaboard cities of the great Ke- 198 WENDELL PHILLIPS 199 public. And when the flag was assailed, and the regiments marched through the streets, what walls did they salute as the regimental flags floated by to Gettsyburg and Antietam ? These ! Our boys carried down to the battle-fields the memory of State Street, of Faneuil Hall, of the Old South Church. We had signal prominence in those early days. It was on the men of Boston that Lord North visited his revenge. It was our port that was to be shut and its commerce annihilated. It was Sam Adams and John Hancock who enjoyed the everlasting reward of being the only names excepted from the royal proclama- tion of forgiveness. Here, Sam Adams, the ablest and ripest statesman God gave to the epoch, forecast those measures which welded thirteen colonies into one thunderbolt, and launched it at George the Third. Here, Otis magnetized every boy into a desperate rebel. The saving of this landmark is the best monu- ment you can erect to the men of the ^Revolution. You spend thousands of dollars to put up a statue of some old hero. You want your sons to gaze upon the nearest approach to the features of those " dead but sceptred sovereigns who still rule our spirits from their urns." But what is a statue of Cicero, compared to standing where your voice echoes from pillar and wall that actually heard his philippics ? Scholars have grown old and blind, striving to put their hands on the very spot where bold men spoke or brave men died. Shall we tear in pieces the roof that actually trembled to the words that made us a nation ? It is impossible not to believe, if the spirits above us are permitted to know what passes in thfe' terrestrial sphere, that Adams, and Warren, and Otis are to-day bending over us asking that the scene of 200 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING their Immortal labors shall not be desecrated, or blotted from the sight of men. Consecrate it again to the memory and worship of a grateful people ! Napoleon turned aside his Simp- Ion road to save a tree Caesar had once mentioned. Won't you turn a street, or spare a quarter of an acre, to remind boys what sort of men their fathers were? Think twice before you touch these walls. We are the world's trustees. The Old South no more belongs to us, than Luther's or Hampden's or Brutus's name does to Germany, England, or Rome. Each and all are held in trust as torchlight guides and inspiration for any man struggling for justice and ready to die for truth. The worship of great memories, noble deeds, sacred places, is one of the keenest ripeners of such elements. Seize greedily on every chance to save and emphasize them. part Jive ORATIONS CHAPTEE XH ORATIONS THE concluding part contains representative ora- tions selected from the broad field of British and American oratory. They have been chosen largely because of their vital directness and simplicity of style. From these orations the student may derive for himself many of the principles that will not only be of benefit to his delivery, but also will assist him to a clearer understanding of those laws that must govern in the construction of every true oration. In preparing these selections the student should make a brief analysis of each, determining carefully the main purpose of the oration, the plan of develop- ment, and the feeling that prevails in each paragraph. Then, in his delivery, he may carry into practice all of the principles that have been presented in this book. It is deemed best to insert complete ora- tions in this concluding chapter in order that the student may derive the benefit that can come only from contact with complete productions. For class use in declamation, however, certain portions may be omitted not only without loss to the student, but to his positive advantage. 203 REPEAL OF THE UNION DANIEL O'CONNELL Hill of Tara, August 15th, 1843 [' OP all mass meetings ever heard of, this was unquestionably the greatest. It was computed by reliable witnesses, not at all favorable to the cause which O'Connell espoused, that no fewer than a quarter of a million persons must have been present. They came from all parts of the country round, under the guidance of their parish priests."] FELLOW-IRISHMEN It would be the extreme of affectation in me to suggest that I have not some claim to be the leader of this majestic meeting. It f would be worse than affectation ; it would be drivel- ling folly, if I were not to feel the awful responsibil- ity to my country and my Creator which the part I have taken in this mighty movement imposes on me. Yes ; I feel the tremendous nature of that respon- sibility. Ireland is roused from one end to the other. Her multitudinous population has but one expression and one wish, and that is for the extinc- tion of the Union and the restoration of her nation- ality. [A cry of" No compromise / "] Who talks of compromise? I have come here, not for the pur- pose of making a schoolboy's attempt at declama- tory eloquence, not to exaggerate the historical importance of the spot on which we now stand, or to endeavor to revive in your recollection any of those poetic imaginings respecting it which have 204 DANIEL O'CONNELL 205 been as familiar as household words. But this it is impossible to conceal or deny, that Tara is sur- rounded by historical reminiscences which give it an importance worthy of being" considered by every- one who approaches it for political purposes, and an elevation in the public mind which no other part of Ireland possesses. We are standing upon Tara of the Kings ; the spot where the monarchs of Ire- land were elected, and where the chieftains of Ire- land bound themselves, by the most solemn pledges of honor, to protect their native land against the Dane and every stranger. This was emphatically the spot from which emanated every social power and legal authority by which the force of the entire country was concentrated for the purposes of na- tional defence. On this spot I have a most important duty to per- form. I here protest, in the name of my country and in the name of my God, against the unfounded and unjust Union. My proposition to Ireland is that the Union is not binding on her people. It is void in conscience and in principle, and as a matter of constitutional law I attest these facts. Yes, I attest by everything that is sacred, without being profane, the truth of my assertions. There is no real union between the two countries, and my proposi- tion is that there was no authority given to anyone to pass the Act of Union. Neither the English nor the Irish Legislature was competent to pass that Act, and I arraign it on these grounds. One au- thority alone could make that Act binding, and that was the voice of the people of Ireland. The Irish Parliament was elected to make laws and not to make legislatures ; and, therefore, it had no right to assume the authority to pass the Act of Union. The 206 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING Irish Parliament was elected by the Irish people as their trustees ; the people were their masters, and the members were their servants, and had no right to transfer the property to any other power on earth. If the Irish Parliament had transferred its power of legislation to the French Chamber, would any man assert that the Act was valid ? Would any man be mad enough to assert it ; would any man be insane enough to assert it, and would the insanity of the assertion be mitigated by sending any number of members to the French Chamber ? Everybody must admit that it would not. What care I for France ? and I care as little for England as for France, for both countries are foreign to me. The very highest authority in England has proclaimed us to be aliens in blood, in religion, and in language. [Groans.] Do not groan him for having proved himself honest on one occasion by declaring my opinion. But to show the invalidity of the Union I could quote the authority of Locke on " Parliament." I will, how- ever, only detain you by quoting the declaration of Lord Plunket in the Irish Parliament, who told them that they had no authority to transfer the legislation of the country to other hands. As well, said he, might a maniac imagine that the blow by which he destroys his wretched body annihilates his immortal soul, as you to imagine that you can annihilate the soul of Ireland her constitutional rights. I need not detain you by quoting authorities to show the invalidity of the Union. I am here the representative of the Irish nation, and in the name of that moral, temperate, virtuous, and religious people, I proclaim the Union a nullity. Saurin, who had been the representative of the Tory party for twenty years, distinctly declared that the Act of DANIEL O'CONNELL 207 Union was invalid. He said that the Irish House of Commons had no right, had no power, to pass the Union, and that the people of Ireland would be jus- tified, the first opportunity that presented itself, in effecting its repeal. So they are. The authorities of the country were charged with the enactment, the alteration, or the administration of its laws. These were their powers ; but they had no authority to alter or overthrow the Constitution. I therefore proclaim the nullity of the Union. In the face of Europe I proclaim its nullity. In the face of France, especially, and of Spain, I proclaim its nullity ; and I proclaim its nullity in the face of the liberated States of America. I go farther, and proclaim its nullity on the grounds of the iniquitous means by which it was carried. It was effected by the most flagrant fraud. A rebellion was provoked by the Government of the day, in order that they might have a pretext for crushing the liberties of Ireland. There was this addition to the fraud, that at the time of the Union, Ireland had no legal protection. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and the lives and liberties of the people were at the mercy of courts martial. You remember the shrieks of those who suffered under martial law. One day, from Trim, the troops marched out and made desolate the country around them. No man was safe during the entire time the Union was under discussion. The next fraud was that the Irish people were not al- lowed to meet to remonstrate against it. Two county meetings, convened by the High Sheriffs of these counties, pursuant to requisitions presented to them, were dispersed at the point of the bayonet. In King's County the High Sheriff called the people together in the Court-house, and Colonel Connor of 208 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING the North Cork Militia, supported by artillery and a troop of horse, entered the Court-house at the head of 200 of his regiment and turned out the Sheriff, Magistrates, Grand Jurors, and freeholders assembled to petition against the enactment of the Union. [A YOICE. " We'll engage they won't do it now ! "] In Tipperary a similar scene took place. A meeting convened by the High Sheriff was dis- persed at the point of the bayonet. Thus public sentiment was stifled ; and if there was a compact, as is alleged, it is void on account of the fraud and force by which it was carried. But the voice of Ire- land, though forcibly suppressed at public meetings, was not altogether dumb. Petitions were presented against the Union to which were attached no less than 770,000 signatures. And there were not 3,000 signatures for the Union, notwithstanding all the Government could do. My next impeachment against the Union is the gross corruption with which it was carried. No less than 1,275,000 was spent upon the rotten boroughs, and 2,000,000 was given in direct bribery. There was not one office that was not made instrumental to the carrying of the measure. Six or seven judges were raised to the Bench for the votes they gave in its support ; and no less than twelve bishops were elevated to the Episcopal Bench for having taken the side of the Union ; for corruption then spared nothing to effect its purpose corruption was never carried so far ; and if this is to be binding on the Irish nation, there is no use in honesty at all. Yet in spite of all the means employed, the enemies of Ireland did not succeed at once. There was a ma- jority of eleven against the Union the first time. But before the proposition was brought forward a DANIEL O'OONNELL 209 second time, members who could not be influenced to vote for the measure were bribed to vacate their seats, to which a number of English and Scotch of- ficers, brought over for the purpose, were elected, and by their votes the Union was carried. In the name of the great Irish nation I proclaim it a nul- lity. At the time of the Union the national debt of Ireland was only 20,000,000. The debt of England was 440,000,000. England took upon herself one- half of the Irish debt, but she placed upon Ireland one-half of the 440,000,000. England since that period has doubled her debt, and admitting a pro. portionate increase against Ireland, the Irish debt would not now be more than 40,000,000 ; and you may believe me when I say it in the name of the great Irish people, that we will never pay one shil- ling more. In fact, we owe but 30,000, as is clearly demonstrated in a book lately published by a near and dear relative of mine, Mr. John O'Connell, the member for Kilkenny. I am proud that a son of mine will be able, when the repeal is carried, to meet any of England's financiers, and to prove to them the gross injustice inflicted upon Ireland. My next impeachment of the Union is its de- structive and deleterious effect upon the industry and prosperity of the country. The county of Meath was once studded with noble residences. What is it now ? Even on the spot where what is called the great Duke of Wellington was born, in- stead of a splendid castle or noble residence, the briar and the bramble attest the treachery that pro- duced them. You remember the once prosperous linen -weavers of Meath. There is scarcely a penny paid to them now. In short, the Union struck down the manufacturers of Ireland. The Commissioners 210 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING of the Poor Law prove that 120,000 persons in Ire- land are in a state of destitution during 1 the greater part of each year. How is it that in one of the most fertile countries in the world this should oc- cur ? The Irish never broke any of their bargains nor their treaties, and England never kept one that was made on her part. There is now a union of the legislatures, but I deny that there is a union of the nations, and I again proclaim the Act a nullity. England has given to her people a municipal reform extensive and satisfactory, while to Ireland she gives a municipal reform crippled and worthless. But the Union is more a nullity on ecclesiastical grounds ; for why should the great majority of the people of Ireland pay for the support of a religion which they do not believe to be true ? The Union was carried by the most abominable corruption and bribery, by financial robbery on an extensive scale, which makes it the more heinous and oppressive ; and the result is that Ireland is saddled with an un- just debt, her commerce is taken from her, her trade is destroyed, and a large number of her people thus reduced to misery and distress. Yes, the people of Ireland are cruelly oppressed, and are we tamely to stand by and allow our dearest interests to be trampled upon ? Are we not to ask for redress ? Yes, we will ask for that which alone will give us redress a parliament of our own. And you will have it too, if you are quiet and orderly, and join with me in my present struggle. [Loud cheers} Your cheers will be conveyed to England. Yes, the majority of this mighty multitude will be taken there. Old Wellington began by threatening us, and talked of civil war, but he says nothing about it now. He is getting inlet holes made in DANIEL O'CONNELL 211 stone barracks. Now only think of an old general doing such a thing, as if, were there anything going on, the people would attack stone walls ! I have heard that a great deal of brandy and biscuits have been sent to the barracks, and I sincerely hope the poor soldiers will get some of them. Your honest brothers, the soldiers, who have been sent to Ire- land, are as orderly and as brave men as any in Ireland. I am sure that not one of you has a single complaint to make against them. If any of you have, say so. [Loud cries of " No, no ! "] They are the bravest men in the world, and therefore I do not disparage them at all when I state this fact, that if they are sent to make war against the people, I have enough women to beat them. There is no mockery or delusion in what I say. At the last fight for Ireland, when we were betrayed by a re- liance on English honor, in which we would never again confide for I would as soon confide in the honor of a certain black gentleman who has two horns and hoofs but, as I was saying, at the last battle for Ireland, when, after two days' hard fight- ing, the Irish were driven back by the fresh troops brought up by the English to the bridge of Lim- erick, at that point when the Irish soldiers retired fainting, it was that the women of Limerick threw themselves in the way, and drove the enemy back fifteen, twenty, or thirty paces. Several of the poor women were killed in the struggle, and their shrieks of agony being heard by their countrymen, they again rallied and determined to die in their defence, and, doubly valiant in the defence of the women, they together routed the Saxons. Yes, I repeat, I have enough women to beat all the army of Ireland. It is idle for any minister or statesman 212 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING to suppose for a moment that he can put down such a struggle as this for liberty. The only thing I fear is the conduct of some ruffians who are called Bibbonmen. I know there are such blackguards, for I have traced them from Manchester. They are most dangerous characters, and it will be the duty of every Bepealer, whether he knows or by any means can discover one of them, immediately to hand him over to justice and the law. The Bibbonmen only, by their proceedings, can injure the great and religious cause in which I am now engaged, and in which I have the people of Ireland at my back. This is a holy festival in the Catholic Church the day upon which the Mother of our Saviour as- cended to meet her Son, and reign with Him for ever. On such a day I will not tell a falsehood. I hope I am under her protection while addressing you, and I hope that Ireland will receive the benefit of her prayers. Our Church has prayed against Es- partero and his priest-terrorizing, church-plunder- ing marauders, and he has since fallen from power nobody knows how, for he makes no effort to re- tain it. He seems to have been bewildered by the Divine curse, for without one rational effort the tyrant of Spain has faded before the prayers of Christianity. I hope that there is a blessing in this day, and, fully aware of its solemnity, I assure you that I am afraid of nothing but Bibbonism, which alone can disturb the present movement. I have proclaimed from this spot that the Act of Union is a nullity ; but in seeking for Bepeal I do not want you to disobey the law. I have only to refer to the words of the Tories' friend, Saurin, to prove that the Union is illegal. I advise you to obey the law until you have the word of your beloved Queen to tell DANIEL O'CONNELL 213 you that you shall have a Parliament of your own. [Cheers, and loud cries of " So we will ! "] The Queen God bless her ! will yet tell you that you shall have a legislature of your own three cheers for the Queen ! [Immense cheering^ On the 2d of January last I called this Eepeal year, and I was laughed at for doing so. Are they laughing now ? No : it is now my turn to laugh ; and I will now say that in twelve months more we shall have our Parliament again on College Green. The Queen has the undoubted prerogative at any time to order her Ministers to issue writs, which, being signed by the Lord Chancellor, the Irish Par- liament would at once be convened without the ne- cessity of applying to the English Legislature to repeal what they appear to consider a valid Act of Union. And if dirty Sugden would not sign the writ, an Irish Chancellor would soon be found who would do so. And if we have our Parliament again in Dublin, is there, I would ask, a coward amongst you who would not rather die than allow it to be taken away by an Act of Union ? [Loud cries of " No one ivould ever submit to it ! " " We'd rather die ! " etc.] To the last man. [Cries of " To the last man ! "] Let every man who would not allow the Act of Union to pass hold up his hand. [An immense forest of hands was shown.] When the Irish Parliament is again assembled, I will defy any power on earth to take it from us again. Are you all ready to obey me in the course of conduct which I have pointed out to you ? [Cries of" Yes, yes ! "] When I dismiss you to-day, will you not disperse and go peaceably to your homes [" Yes, yes, we will ! "] every man, woman, and child ? in the same tranquil manner as you have assembled ? [" Yes, yes ! "] But if I want you 214 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING again to-morrow, will you not come to Tara Hill ? [" Yes, yes ! "] Remember, I will lead you into no peril. If danger should arise, it will be in conse- quence of some persons attacking us, for we are de- termined not to attack any person ; and if danger does exist you will not find me in the rear rank. When we get our Parliament, all our grievances will be put to an end ; our trade will be restored, the landlord will be placed on a firm footing, and the tenants who are now so sadly oppressed will be placed in their proper position. " Law, Peace, and Order " is the motto of the Repeal banner, and I trust you will all rally round it. [Cries of" We are all Repealers ! "] I have to inform you that all the magistrates who have recently been deprived of the Commission of the Peace have been appointed by the Eepeal Association to settle any disputes which may arise among the Repealers in their respective localities. On next Monday persons will be ap- pointed to settle disputes without expense, and I call on every man who is the friend of Ireland to have his disputes settled by arbitrators without ex- pense, and 'to avoid going to the Petty Sessions. I believe I am now in a position to announce to you that in twelve months more we shall not be with- out having an Hurrah ! for the Parliament on Col- lege Green ! [Immense cheering.} Your shouts are almost enough to call to life those who rest in the grave. I can almost fancy the spirits of the mighty dead hovering over you, and the ancient kings and chiefs of Ireland, from the clouds, listening to the shouts sent up from Tara for Irish liberty. Oh! Ireland is a lovely land, blessed with the bounteous gifts of Nature, and where is the coward who would not die for her ? [Cries of " Not one ! "] Your cheers 215 will penetrate to the extremity of civilization. Our movement is the admiration of the world, for no other country can show so much force with so much propriety of conduct. No other country can show a people assembled for the highest national purposes that can actuate man ; can show hundreds of thou- sands able in strength to carry any battle that ever was fought, and yet separating with the tranquillity of schoolboys. You have stood by me long stand by me a little longer, and Ireland will be again a nation. DEFENCE OF THE KENNISTONS DANIEL WEBSTEK Supreme Court of Massachusetts, Ipswich, April, 1817 ['* The following are the facts relating to the case : " Major Goodridge of Bangor, Maine, professed to have been robbed of a large sum of money at nine o'clock on the night of December 19, 1816, while travelling on horseback, near the bridge between Exeter and New bury port. In the encounter with the robbers he received a pistol wound in his left hand ; he was then dragged from his horse into a field, beaten until insensible, and robbed. On recovering, he procured the assistance of several per- sons, and with a lantern returned to the place of the robbery and found his watch and some papers. The next day he went to Newburyport, and remained ill for several weeks, suffering from delirium caused by the shock. When he recovered he set about the discovery of the robbers. His story seemed so probable that he had the sympathy of all the country-folk. He at once charged with the crime Levi and Laban Kenniston, two poor men, who lived in an obscure part of the town of Newmarket, New Hamp- shire, and finding some of his money (which he had previously marked) in their cellar, he had them arrested, and held for trial. By and by a few of the people began to doubt the story of Good- ridge ; this led him to renewed efforts, and he arrested the toll gatherer, Mr. Pearson, in whose house, by the aid of a conjuror, he found some of his money. On examination by the magistrate, Pearson was discharged. " It now became necessary to find some accomplice of the Ken- nistons, and he arrested one Taber of Boston, whom he had seen (he said) on his way up, and from whom he had obtained his in- formation against the Kennistons. In Taber's house was found some of the money ; he was accordingly bound over for trial with the Kennistons. As none of these men lived near the scene of the 216 DANIEL WEBSTER 217 robbery, Mr. Jackman, who, soon after the robbery, had gone to New York, was arrested, his house searched, and some of the money found in the garret. The guilt of these men seemed so con- clusive that no eminent member of the Essex bar would undertake their defence. A few of those who mistrusted Goodridge deter- mined to send to Suffolk County for counsel. " Mr. Webster had been well known in New Hampshire, and his services were at once secured ; without having time to examine any of the details of the case as he had arrived at Ipswich on the night before the trial he at once undertook the defence of the Kennistons and secured their acquittal. The indictment against Taber was nol prossed. Later, he defended Jackman and secured his acquittal. Mr. Pearson brought action against Goodrich for malicious prosecution, and was awarded $2,000, but Goodridge took the poor debtor's oath and left the State." Webster's Select Speeches, A. J. George, Heath & Co.] GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY It is true that the offence charged in the indictment in this case is not capital ; but perhaps this can hardly be considered as favor- able to the defendants. To those who are guilty, and without hope of escape, no doubt the lightness of the penalty of transgression gives consolation. But if the defendants are innocent, it is more natural for them to be thinking upon what they have lost by that alteration of the law which has left high- way robbery no longer capital, than upon what the guilty might gain by it. They have lost those great privileges in their trial, which the law allows in capital cases, for the protection of innocence against unfounded accusation. They have lost the right of being previously furnished with a copy of the indictment, and a list of the government wit- nesses. They have lost the right of peremptory challenge ; and, notwithstanding the prejudices which they know have been excited against them, they must show legal cause of challenge, in each 218 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING individual case, or else take the jury as they find it. They have lost the benefit of assignment of counsel by the court. They have lost the benefit of the Commonwealth's process to bring in witnesses in their behalf. When to these circumstances it is added that they are strangers, almost wholly with- out friends, and without the means for preparing their defence, it is evident they must take their trial under great disadvantages. But without dwelling on these considerations, I proceed, Gentlemen of the Jury, to ask your atten- tion to those circumstances which cannot but cast doubts on the story of the prosecutor. In the first place, it is impossible to believe that a robbery of this sort could have been committed by three or four men without previous arrangement and concert, and of course without the knowledge of the fact that Goodridge would be there, and that he had money. They did not go on the highway, in such a place, in a cold December's night, for the general purpose of attacking the first passenger, running the chance of his being somebody who had money. It is not easy to believe that a gang of robbers existed, that they acted systematically, com- municating intelligence to one another, and meet- ing and dispersing as occasion required, and that this gang had their head-quarters in such a place as Newburyport. No town is more distinguished for the general correctness of the habits of its citizens ; and it is of such a size that every man in it may be known to all the rest. The pursuits, occupations, and habits of every person within it are within the observation of his neighbors. A suspicious stranger would be instantly observed, and all his movements could be easily traced. This is not the place to be DANIEL WEBSTER 219 the general rendezvous of a gang 1 of robbers. Of- fenders of this sort hang on the skirts of large towns. From the commission of their crimes they hasten into the crowd, and hide themselves in the populousness of great cities. If it be wholly improbable that a gang existed in such a place for the purpose of general plunder, the next inquiry is, is there any reason to think that there was a special or particular combination, for the single purpose of robbing the prosecutor ? Now it is material to observe, that not only is there no evi- dence of any such combination, but also, that cir- cumstances existed which render it next to impossi- ble that the defendants could have been parties to such a combination, or even that they could have any knowledge of the existence of any such man as Good- ridge, or that any person, with money, was expected to come from the eastward, and to be near Essex Bridge, at or about nine o'clock, the evening when the robbery is said to have been committed. One of the defendants had been for some weeks in Newburyport, the other passed the bridge from New Hampshire at twelve o'clock on the 19th of Decem- ber, 1816. At this time Goodridge had not yet arrived at Exeter, twelve or fourteen miles from the bridge. How, then, could either of the defendants know that he was coming ? Besides, he says that no- body on the road, so far as he is aware, knew that he had money, and nothing happened till he reached Exeter, according to his account, from which it might be conjectured that such was the case. Here, as he relates it, it became known that he had pistols ; and he must wish you to infer that the plan to rob him was laid here, at Exeter, by some of the persons who inferred that he had money from his being armed. 220 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING Who were these persons ? Certainly not the defend- ants, or either of them. Certainly not Taber. Cer- tainly not Jackman. Were they persons of suspicious characters ? Was he in a house of a suspicious char- acter ? On this .point he gives us no information. He has either not taken the pains to inquire, or he chooses not to communicate the result of his in- quiries. Yet nothing could be more important, since he seems compelled to lay the scene of the plot against him at Exeter, than to know who the persons were that he saw, or who saw him, at that place. On the face of the facts now proved, nothing could be more improbable than that the plan of robbery was concerted at Exeter. If so, why should those who concerted it send forward to Newburyport to engage the defendants, especially as they did not know that they were there ? What should induce any persons so suddenly to apply to the defendants to assist in a robbery ? There was nothing in their per- sonal character or previous history that should in- duce this. Nor was there time for all this. If the prosecutor had not lingered on the road, for reasons not yet discovered, he must have been in Newburyport long before the time at which he states the robbery to have been committed. How, then, could any one expect to leave Exeter, come to Newburyport, fifteen miles, there look out for and find out assistants for a high- way robbery, and get back two miles to a conven- ient place for the commission of the crime ? That any body should have undertaken to act thus is wholly improbable ; and, in point of fact, there is not the least proof of any body's travelling, that after- noon, from Exeter to Newburyport, or of any person who was at the tavern at Exeter having left it DANIEL WEBSTER 221 that afternoon. In all probability, nothing of this sort could have taken place without being capable of detection and proof. In every particular, the prosecutor has wholly failed to show the least prob- ability of a plan to rob him having been laid at Exeter. But how comes it that Goodridge was nearly or quite four hours and a half in travelling a distance which might have been travelled in two hours or two hours and a half. He says he missed his way, and went the Salisbury road. But some of the jury know that this could not have delayed him more than five or ten minutes. He ought to be able to give some better account of this delay. Failing, as he seems to do, to create any belief that a plan to rob him was arranged at Exeter, the prosecutor goes back to Alfred, and says he saw there a man whom Taber resembles. But Taber is proved to have been at that time, and at the time of the robbery, in Boston. This is proved beyond question. It is so certain, that the Solicitor-Gen- eral has not pressed the indictment against him. There is an end, then, of all pretence of the adop- tion of a scheme of robbery at Alfred. This leaves the prosecutor altogether unable to point out any manner in which it should become known that he had money, or in which a design to rob him should originate. It is next to be considered whether the prosecu- tor's story is either natural or consistent. But, on the threshold of the inquiry, every one puts the question, What motive had the prosecutor to be guilty of that abominable conduct of feigning a rob- bery. It is difficult to assign motives. The jury do not know enough of his character or circumstances. 222 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING Such things have happened, and may happen again. Suppose he owed money in Boston, and had it not to pay ? Who knows how high he might estimate the value of a plausible apology ? Some men have also a whimsical ambition for distinction. There is no end to the variety of modes in which human vanity exhibits itself. A story of this nature excites the public sympathy. It attracts general attention. It causes the name of the prosecutor to be celebrated as a man who has been attacked, and, after a manly resistance, overcome by robbers ; and who has re- newed his resistance as soon as returning life and sensation enabled him, and, after a second conflict, has been quite subdued, beaten and bruised out of all sense and sensation, and finally left for dead on the field. It is not easy to say how far such motives, trifling and ridiculous as most men would think them, might influence the prosecutor, when con- nected with any expectation of favor or indulgence, if he wanted such, from his creditors. It is to be remembered that he probably did not see all the consequences of his conduct, if his robbery be a pretence. He might not intend to prosecute any body. But he probably found, and indeed there is evidence to show, that it was necessary for him to do something to find out the authors of the alleged robbery. He manifested no particular zeal on this subject. He was in no haste. He appears rather to have been pressed by others to do that which, if he had really been robbed, we should sup- pose he would have been most earnest to do, the earliest moment. But could he so seriously wound himself ? Could he or would he shoot a pistol-bullet through his hand, in order to render the robbery probable, and DANIEL WEBSTER 323 to obtain belief in his story ? All exhibitions are subject to accidents ? Whether they are serious or farcical, they may, in some particulars, not proceed exactly as they are designed to do. If we knew that this shot through the hand, if made by himself, must have been intentionally made by himself, it would be a circumstance of greater weight. The bullet went through the sleeve of his coat. He might have intended it should go through nothing else. It is quite certain he did not receive the wound in the way he described. He says he was pulling or thrusting aside the robber's pistol, and while his hand was on it, it was fired, and the con- tents passed through his hand. This could not have been so, because no part of the contents went through the hand, except the ball. There was powder on the sleeve of his coat, and from the ap- pearance one would think the pistol to have been three or four feet from the hand when fired. The fact of the pistol-bullet being fired through the hand, is doubtless a circumstance of importance. It may not be easy to account for it ; but it is to be weighed with other circumstances. It is most extraordinary, that, in the whole case, the prosecutor should prove hardly any fact in any way but by his own oath. He chooses to trust every thing on his own credit with the jury. Had he the money with him which he mentions? If so, his clerks or persons connected with him in business must have known it ; yet no witness is produced. Nothing can be more important than to prove that he had the money. Yet he does not prove it. Why should he leave this essential fact without further support ? He is not surprised with this defence, he knew what it would be. He knew that nothing could 224 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING be more important than to prove that, in truth, he did possess the money which he says he lost ; yet he does not prove it. All that he saw, and all that he did, and everything that occurred to him until the alleged robbery, rests solely on his own credit. He does not see fit to corroborate any fact by the testimony of any witness. So he went to New York to arrest Jackman. He did arrest him. He swears positively that he found in his possession papers which he lost at the time of the robbery ; yet he neither produces the papers themselves, nor the per- sons who assisted him in the search. In like manner, he represents his intercourse with Taber at Boston. Taber, he says, made certain con- fessions. They made a bargain for a disclosure or confession on one side, and a reward on the other. But no one heard these confessions except Goodridge himself. Taber now confronts him, and pronounces this part of his story to be wholly false ; and there is nobody who can support the prosecutor. A jury cannot too seriously reflect on this part of the case. There are many most important allega- tions of fact, which, if true, could easily be shown by other witnesses, and yet are not so shown. How came Mr. Goodridge to set out from Bangor, armed in this formal and formidable manner ? How came he to be so apprehensive of robbery? The reason he gives is completely ridiculous. As the foundation of his alarm, he tells a story of a robbery which he had heard of, but which, as far as appears, no one else ever heard of ; and the story itself is so perfectly absurd, it is difficult to resist the belief that it was the product of his imagination at the mo- ment. He seems to have been a little too confident that an attempt would be made to rob him. The DANIEL WEBSTER 225 manner in which he carried his money, as he says, indicated a strong expectation of this sort. His gold he wrapped in a cambric cloth, put it into a shot bag, and then into a portmanteau. One parcel of bills, of a hundred dollars in amount, he put into his pocket-book ; another, of somewhat more than a thousand dollars, he carried next his person, under- neath all his clothes. Having disposed of his money in this way, and armed himself with two good pis- tols, he set out from Bangor. The jury will judge whether this extraordinary care of his money, and of this formal arming of himself to defend it, are not circumstances of a very suspicious character. He stated that he did not travel in the night ; that he would not so much expose himself to robbers. He said that, when he came near Alfred, he did not go into the village, but stopped a few miles short, because night was coming on, and he would not trust himself and his money out at night. He rep- resents himself to have observed this rule constantly and invariably until he got to Exeter. Yet, when the time came for the robbery, he was found out at night. He left Exeter about sunset, intending to go to Newburyport, fifteen miles distant, that even- ing. When he is asked how this should happen, he says that he had no fear of robbers after he left the District of Maine. He thought himself quite safe when he arrived at Exeter. Yet he told the jury that at Exeter he thought it necessary to load his pistols afresh. He asked for a private room at the inn. He told the persons in attendance that he wished such a room for the purpose of changing his clothes. He charged them not to suffer him to be interrupted. But he now testifies that his ob- ject was not to change his dress, but to put new 226 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING loading into his pistols. What sort of a story is this? He says he now felt himself out of all danger from robbers, and was therefore willing to travel at night. At the same time he thought himself in very great danger from robbers, and therefore took the utmost pains to keep his pistols well loaded and in good order. To account for the pains he took about loading his pistols at Exeter, he says it was his invariable practice, every day after he left Bangor, to discharge and load again one or both of his pistols ; that he never missed doing this ; that he avoided doing it at the inns, lest he should create suspicion, but that he did it, while alone, on the road every day. How far this is probable the jury will judge. It will be observed that he gave up his habits of cau- tion as he approached the place of the robbery. He then loaded his pistols at the tavern, where persons might and did see him ; and he then also travelled in the night. He passed the bridge over Merri- mac River a few minutes before nine o'clock. He was now at a part of his progress where he was within the observation of other witnesses, and some- thing could be known of him besides what he told of himself. Immediately after him, passed the two persons, Shaw and Keyser, with their wagons. Close upon them followed the mail-coach. Now, these wagons and the mail must have passed within three rods, at most, of Goodridge, at the very time of the robbery. They must have been very near the spot, the very moment of the attack ; and if he was under the robbers' hands as long as he represents, or if they stayed on the spot long enough to do half what he says they did, they must have been there DANIEL WEBSTER 227 when the wagons and the stage passed. At any rate, it is next to impossible, by any computation of time, to put these carriages so far from the spot, that the drivers should not have heard the cry of murder, which he says he raised, or the report of the two pistols, which he says were discharged. In three-quarters of an hour, or an hour, he returned, and repassed the bridge. The jury will next naturally look to the appear- ances exhibited on the field after the robbery. The portmanteau was there. The witnesses say that the straps which fastened it to the saddle had been neither cut nor broken. They were carefully un- buckled. This was very considerate for robbers. It had been opened, and its contents were scattered about the field. The pocket-book, too, had been opened, and many papers it contained found on the ground. Nothing valuable was lost but money. The robbers did not think it well to go off at once with the portmanteau and the pocket-book. The place was so secure, so remote, so unfrequented ; they were so far from the highway, at least one full rod ; there were so few persons passing, probably not more than four or five then in the road, within hearing of the pistols and the cries of Goodridge ; there being, too, not above five or six dwelling- houses, full of people, within the hearing of the re- port of a pistol; these circumstances were all so favorable to their safety, that the robbers sat down to look over the prosecutor's papers, carefully exam- ined the contents of his pocket-book and portman- teau, and took only the things which they needed ! There was money belonging to other persons. The robbers did not take it. They found out it was not the prosecutor's, and left it. It may be said to be 228 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING favorable to the prosecutor's story that the money which did not belong- to him, and the plunder of which would seem to be the most probable induce- ment he could have to feign a robbery, was not taken. But the jury will consider whether this cir- cumstance does not bear quite as strongly the other way, and whether they can believe that robbers could have left this money, either from accident or design. The robbers, by Goodridge's account, were ex- tremely careful to search his person. Having found money in his portmanteau and in his pocket-book, they still forthwith stripped him to the skin, and searched until they found the sum which had been so carefully deposited under his clothes. Was it likely, that, having found money in the places where it is ordinarily carried, robbers should proceed to search for more, where they had no reason to sup- pose more would be found ? Goodridge says that no person knew of his having put his bank-notes in that situation. On the first attack, however, they proceeded to open one garment after another, until they penetrated to the treasure, which was beneath them all. The testimony of Mr. Howard is material. He ex- amined Goodridge's pistol, which was found on the spot, and thinks it had not been fired at all. If this be so, it would follow that the wound through the hand was not made by this pistol ; but then, as the pistol is now discharged, if it had not been fired, he is not correct in swearing that he fired it at the rob- bers, nor could it have been loaded at Exeter, as he testified. In the whole case, there is nothing, perhaps, more deserving consideration, than the prosecutor's state- DANIEL WEBSTER 229 ment of the violence which the robbers used toward him. He says he was struck with a heavy club, on the back part of his head. He fell senseless to the ground. Three or four rough-handed villains then dragged him to the fence, and through it or over it, with such force as to break one of the boards. They then plundered his money. Presently he came to his senses ; perceived his situation ; saw one of the robbers sitting or standing near ; he valiantly sprang upon, and would have overcome him, but the ruffian called out for his comrades, who returned, and altogether they renewed their attack upon, sub- dued him, and redoubled their violence. They struck him heavy blows ; they threw him violently to the ground ; they kicked him in the side ; they choked him ; one of them, to use his own words, jumped upon his breast. They left him only when they supposed they had killed him. He went back to Pearson's, at the bridge, in a state of delirium, and it was several hours before his recollection came to him. This is his account. Now, in point of fact, it is certain that on no part of his person was there the least mark of this beating and wounding. The blow on the head, which brought him senseless to the ground, neither broke the skin, nor caused any tumor, nor left any mark whatever. He fell from his horse onto the frozen ground, without any appear- ance of injury. He was drawn through or over the fence with such force as to break the rail, but not so as to leave any wound or scratch on him. A sec- ond time he is knocked down, kicked, stamped upon, choked, and in every way abused and beaten till sense had departed, and the breath of life hardly re- mained ; and yet no wound, bruise, discoloration, or mark of injury was found to result from all this. 230 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING Except the wound in his hand, and a few slight punctures in his left arm, apparently made with his own penknife, which was found open on the spot, there was no wound or mark which the surgeons, upon repeated examinations, could anywhere dis- cover. This is a story not to be believed. No mat- ter who tells it, it is so impossible to be true, that all belief is set at defiance. No man can believe it. All this tale of blows which left no marks, and of wounds which could not be discovered, must be the work of imagination. If the jury can believe that he was robbed, it is impossible they can believe his account of the manner of it. With respect, next, to delirium. The jury have heard the physicians. Two of them have no doubt it was all feigned. Dr. Spofford spoke in a more guarded manner, but it was very evident his opin- ion agreed with theirs. In the height of his rav- ing, the physician who was present said to others, that he could find nothing the matter with the man, and that his pulse was perfectly regular. But con- sider the facts which Dr. Balch testifies. He sus- pected the whole of this illness and delirium to be feigned. He wished to ascertain the truth. While he or others were present, Goodridge appeared to be in the greatest pains and agony from his wounds. He could not turn himself in bed, nor be turned by others, without infinite distress. His mind, too, was as much disordered as his body. He was con- stantly raving about robbery and murder. At length the physicians and others withdrew, and left him alone in the room. Dr. Balch returned softly to the door, which he had left partly open, and there he had a full view of his patient, unobserved by him. Goodridge was then very quiet. His in- DANIEL WEBSTER 231 coherent exclamations had ceased. Dr. Balch saw him turn over without inconvenience. Pretty soon he sat up in bed, and adjusted his neckcloth and his hair. Then, hearing footsteps on the staircase, he instantly sank into the bed again ; his pains all returned, and he cried out against robbers and murderers as loud as ever. Now, these facts are all sworn to by an intelligent witness, who cannot be mistaken in them ; a respectable physician, whose veracity or accuracy is in no way impeached or questioned. After this, it is difficult to retain any good opinion of the prosecutor. Robbed or not robbed, this was his conduct ; and such conduct necessarily takes away all claim to sympathy and respect. The jury will consider whether it does not also take away all right to be believed in anything. For if they should be of opinion that in any one point he has intentionally misrepresented facts, he can be believed in nothing. No man is to be convicted on the testimony of a witness whom the jury has found wilfully violating the truth in any particular. The next part of the case is the conduct of the prosecutor in attempting to find out the robbers, after he had recovered from his illness. He sus- pected Mr. Pearson, a very honest, respectable man, who keeps the tavern at the bridge. He searched his house and premises. He sent for a conjuror to come, with his metallic rods and witch-hazel, to find the stolen money. Goodridge says now, that he thought he should find it, if the conjuror's instru- ments were properly prepared. He professes to have full faith in the art. Was this folly, or fraud, or a strange mixture of both ? Pretty soon after the last search, gold pieces were actually found near Mr. Pearson's house, in the manner stated by the 232 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING female witness. How came they there? Did the robber deposit them there ? That is not possible. Did he accidentally leave them there ? Why should not a robber take as good care of his money as others, ? It is certain, too, that the gold pieces were not put there at the time of the robbery, because the ground was then bare ; but when these pieces were found, there were several inches of snow below them. When Goodridge searched here with his conjuror, he was on this spot, alone and unobserved, as he thought. Whether he did not, at that time, drop his gold into the snow, the jury will judge. When he came to this search, he proposed something very ridiculous. He proposed that all persons about to assist in the search should be examined, to see that they had nothing which they could put into Pearson's posses- sion, for the purpose of being found there. But how was this examination to be made ? Why, truly, Goodridge proposed that every man should examine himself, and that, among others, he would examine himself, till he was satisfied he had nothing in his pockets which he could leave at Pearson's, with the fraudulent design of being afterward found there, as evidence against Pearson. What construction would be given to such conduct ? As to Jackman, Goodridge went to New York and arrested him. In his room he says he found paper coverings of gold, with his own figures on them, and pieces of an old and useless receipt, which he can identify, and which he had in his possession at the time of the robbery. He found these things lying on the floor in Jackman's room. What should in- duce the robbers, when they left all other papers, to take this receipt? And what should induce Jack- man to carry it to New York, and keep it, with the DANIEL WEBSTER 233 coverings of the gold, in a situation where it was likely to be found, and used as evidence against him? There is no end to the series of improbabilities growing out of the prosecutor's story. One thing especially deserves notice. Wherever Goodridge searches, he always finds something ; and what he finds, he always can identify and swear to, as being his. The thing found has always some marks by which he knows it. Yet he never finds much. He never finds the mass of his lost treasure. He finds just enough to be evidence, and no more. These are the circumstances which tend to raise doubts of the truth of the prosecutor's relation. It is for the jury to say, whether it would be safe to convict any man for this robbery until these doubts shall be cleared up. No doubt they are to judge him candidly ; but they are not to make everything yield to a regard to his reputation, or a desire to vindicate him from the suspicion of a fraudulent prosecution. He stands like other witnesses, except that he is a very interested witness ; and he must hope for credit, if at all, from the consistency and general probability of the facts to which he testifies. The jury will not convict the prisoners to save the pros- ecutor from disgrace. He has had every oppor- tunity of making out his case. If any person in the State could have corroborated any part of his story, that person he could have produced. He has had the benefit of full time, and good counsel, and of the Commonwealth's process, to bring in his wit- nesses. More than all, he has had an opportunity of telling his own story, with the simplicity that belongs to truth, if it were true, and the frankness 234 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING and earnestness of an honest man, if he be such. It is for the jury to say, under their oaths, how he has acquitted himself in these particulars, and whether he has left their minds free from doubt as to the truth of his narration. But if Goodrich were really robbed, is there sat- isfactory evidence that the defendants had a hand in the commission of this offence ? The evidence relied on is the finding of the money in their house. It appears that these defendants lived tog-ether, and, with a sister, constituted one family. Their father lived in another part of the same house, and with his wife constituted another and distinct fam- ily. In this house, some six weeks after the rob- bery, the prosecutor made a search ; and the result has been stated by the witnesses. Now, if the money had been passed or used by the defendants it might have been conclusive. If found about their persons, it might have been very strong proof. But, under the circumstances of this case, the mere finding of money in their house, and that only in places where the prosecutor had previously been, is no evidence at all. With respect to the gold pieces, it is certainly true that they were found in Good- ridge's track. They were found only where he had been, and might have put them. When the sheriff was in the house and Good- ridge in the cellar, gold was found in the cellar. When the sheriff was up stairs and Goodridge in the rooms below, the sheriff was called down to look for money where Goodridge directed, and there money was found. As to the bank-note, the evidence is not quite so clear. Mr. Leavitt says he found a note in a drawer in a room in which none of the party had before been ; that he thought it an DANIEL WEBSTER 235 uncurrent or counterfeit note, and not a part of Goodridge's money, and left it where lie found it without further notice. An hour or two afterward, Upton perceived a note in the same drawer, Good- ridge being then with or near him, and called to Leavitt. Leavitt told him that he had discovered that note before, but that it could not be Good- ridge's. It was then examined. Leavitt says he looked at it, and saw writing on the back of it. Upton says he looked at it, and saw writing on the back of it. He says also that it was shown to Good- ridge, who examined it in the same way that he and Leavitt examined it. None of the party at this time suspected it to be Goodridge's. It was then put into Leavitt's pocket-book, where it remained till evening, when it was taken out at the tavern ; and then it turns out to be, plainly and clearly, one of Goodridge's notes, and has the name of " James Poor, Bangor," in Goodridge's own handwriting, on the back of it. The first thing that strikes one in this account is, Why was not this discovery made at the time. Goodridge was looking for notes, as well as gold. He was looking for Boston notes, for such he had lost. He was looking for ten-dollar notes, for such he had lost. He was looking for notes which he could recognize and identify. He would, therefore, naturally be particularly attentive to any writing or marks upon such as he might find. Under these circumstances, a note is found in the house of the supposed robbers. It is a Boston note, it is a ten-dollar note, it has writing on the back of it ; that writing is the name of his town and the name of one of his neighbors ; more than all, that writing is his own handwriting! Notwithstanding all this, neither Goodridge, nor Upton, nor the 236 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING sheriff, examined it so as to see whether it was Goodridge's money. Notwithstanding it so fully resembled, in all points, the money they were look- ing for, and notwithstanding they also saw writing on the back of it, which, they must know, if they read it, would probably have shown where it came from, neither of them did so far examine it as to see any proof of its being Goodridge's. This is hardly to be believed. It must be a pretty strong faith in the prosecutor that could credit this story. In every part of it, it is improbable and ab- surd. It is much more easy to believe that the note was changed. There might have been, and there probably was, an uncurrent or counterfeit note found in the drawer by Leavitt. He certainly did not at the time think it to be Goodridge's, and he left it in the drawer where he found it. Before he saw it again, the prosecutor had been in that room, and was in or near it when the sheriff was again called in and asked to put that bill in his pocket-book. How do the jury know that this was the same note which Leavitt had before seen? Or suppose it was. Leavitt carried it to Coffin's ; in the evening he pro- duced it, and, after having been handed about for some time among the company, it turns out to be Goodridge's note, and to have upon it infallible marks of identity. How do the jury know that a sleight of hand had not changed the note at Coffin's ? It is suffi- cient to say, the note might have been changed. It is not certain that this is the note which Leavitt first found in the drawer, and this not being certain, it is not proof against the defendants. Is it not extremely improbable, if the defendants are guilty, that they should deposit the money in the places where it was found ? Why should they put it DANIEL WEBSTER 237 in small parcels in so many places, for no end but to multiply the chances of detection ? Why, especially, should they put a doubloon in their father's pocket- book ? There is no evidence, nor any ground of sus- picion, that the father knew of the money being- in his pocket-book. He swears he did not know it. His general character is unimpeached, and there is nothing- against his credit. The inquiry at Stratham was calculated to elicit the truth ; and, after all, there is not the slightest reason to suspect that he knew that the doubloon was in his pocket-book. What could possibly induce the defendants to place it there ? No man can conjecture a reason. On the other hand, if this is a fraudulent proceeding on the part of the prosecutor, this circumstance could be explained. He did not know that the pocket-book, and the garment in which it was found, did not be- long to one of the defendants. He was as likely, therefore, to place it there as elsewhere. It is very material to consider that nothing was found in that part of the house which belonged to the defendants. Every thing was discovered in the father's apart- ments. They were not found, therefore, in the pos- session of the defendants, any more than if they had been discovered in any other house in the neighbor- hood. The two tenements, it is true, were under the same roof ; but they were not on that account the same tenements. They were as distinct as any other houses. Now how should it happen that the several parcels of money should all be found in the father's possession ? He is not suspected, certainly there is no reason to suspect him, of having had any hand either in the commission of the robbery or the con- cealing of the goods. He swears he had no knowl- edge of any part of this money being in his house. 238 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING It is not easy to imagine how it came there, unless it be supposed to have been put there by some one who did not know what part of the house belonged to the defendants and what part did not. The witnesses on the part of the prosecution have testified that the defendants, when arrested, mani fested great agitation and alarm ; paleness over- spread their faces, and drops of sweat stood on their temples. This satisfied the witnesses of the defend- ants' guilt, and they now state the circumstances as being indubitable proof. This argument manifests, in those who use it, an equal want of sense and sen- sibility. It is precisely fitted to the feeling and the intellect of a bum-bailiff. In a court of justice it de- serves nothing but contempt. Is there nothing that can agitate the frame or excite the blood but the consciousness of guilt ? If the defendants were in- nocent, would they not feel indignation at this unjust accusation? If they saw an attempt to produce false evidence against them, would they not be an- gry ? And, seeing the production of such evidence, might they not feel fear and alarm ? And have in- dignation, and anger, and terror, no power to affect the human countenance or the human frame ? Miserable, miserable, indeed, is the reasoning which would infer any man's guilt from his agitation when he found himself accused of a heinous offence ; when he saw evidence which he might know to be false and fraudulent brought against him ; when his house was filled, from the garret to the cellar, by those whom he might esteem as false witnesses ; and when he himself, instead of being at liberty to ob- serve their conduct and watch their motions, was a prisoner in close custody in his own house, with the fists of a catch-poll clenched upon his throat. DANIEL WEBSTER 239 The defendants were at Newburyport the after- noon and evening of the robbery. For the greater part of the time they show where they were, and what they were doing. Their proof, it is true, does not apply to every moment. But when it is consid- ered that, from the moment of their arrest, they have been in close prison, perhaps they have shown as much as could be expected. Few men, when called on afterwards, can remember, and fewer still can prove, how they have passed every hour of an even- ing. At a reasonable hour they both came to the house where Laban had lodged the night before. Nothing suspicious was observed in their manner or conversation. Is it probable they would thus come unconcernedly into the company of others, from a field of robbery, and, as they must have supposed, of murder, before they could have ascertained whether the stain of blood was not on their garments ? They remained in the place a part of the next day. The town was alarmed ; a strict inquiry was made of all strangers, and of the defendants among others. Nothing suspicious was discovered. They avoided no inquiry, nor did they leave the town in any haste. The jury has had an opportunity of seeing the de- fendants. Does their general appearance indicate that hardihood which would enable them to act this cool, unconcerned part ? Is it not more likely they would have fled ? From the time of the robbery to the arrest, five or six weeks, the defendants were engaged in their usual occupations. They are not found to have passed a dollar of money to any body. They con- tinued their ordinary habits of labor. No man saw money about them, nor any circumstance that might lead to a suspicion that they had money. Nothing 240 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING occurred tending in any degree to excite suspicion against them. When arrested, and when all this array of evidence was brought against them, and when they could hope in nothing but their inno- cence, immunity was offered them again if they would confess. They were pressed, and urged, and allured, by every motive which could be set before them, to acknowledge their participation in the offence, and to bring out their accomplices. They steadily protested that they could confess nothing because they knew nothing. In defiance of all the discoveries made in their house, they have trusted to their innocence. On that, and on the candor and discernment of an enlightened jury, they still rely. If the jury are satisfied that there is the highest improbability that these persons could have had any previous knowledge of Goodridge, or been con- cerned in any previous concert to rob him ; if their conduct that evening and the next day was marked by no circumstances of suspicion ; if from that mo- ment until their arrest nothing appeared against them ; if they neither passed money, nor are found to have had money ; if the manner of the search of their house, and the circumstances attending it, excite strong suspicions of unfair and fraudulent practises ; if, in the hour of their utmost peril, no promises of safety could draw from the defendants any confession affecting themselves or others, it will be for the jury to say whether they can pronounce them guilty. REPLY TO FLOOD HENEY GKATTAN House of Commons, October 28, 1783 IT has been said by Mr. Flood, that " the pen would fall from the hand, and the foetus of the mind would die unborn," if men had not a privilege to maintain a right in the Parliament of England to make law for Ireland. The affectation of zeal, and a burst of forced and metaphorical conceits, aided by the arts of the press, gave an alarm which, I hope, was momentary, and which only exposed the artifice of those who were wicked, and the haste of those who were deceived. But it is not the slander of an evil tongue that can defame me. I maintain my reputation in public and in private life. No man who has not a bad character can ever say that I deceived ; no country can call me cheat. But I will suppose such a public character. I will suppose such a man to have exist- ence. I will begin with his character in its political cradle, and I will follow him to the last state of po- litical dissolution. I will suppose him, in the first stage of his life, to have been intemperate ; in the second, to have been corrupt ; and in the last, seditious ; that after an envenomed attack on the persons and measures of a succession of viceroys, and after much declama- tion against their illegalities and their profusion, 241 242 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING he took office, and became a supporter of govern- ment when the profusion of ministers had greatly increased, and their crimes multiplied beyond exam- ple; when your money bills were altered without reserve by the Council ; when an embargo was laid on your export trade, and a war declared against the liberties of America. At such a critical mo- ment, I will suppose this gentleman to be corrupted by a great sinecure office to muzzle his declama- tion, to swallow his invectives, to give his assent and vote to the ministers, and to become a sup- porter of government, its measures, its embargo, and its American war. I will suppose that he was suspected by the government that had bought him, and in consequence thereof, that he thought proper to resort to the acts of a trimmer, the last sad refuge of disappointed ambition ; that, with respect to the Constitution of his country, that part, for instance, which regarded the Mutiny Bill, when a clause of reference was introduced, whereby the articles of war, which were, or hereafter might be, passed in England, should be current in Ireland without the interference of her Parliament when such a clause was in view, I will suppose this gentleman to have absconded. Again, when the bill was made perpet- ual, I will suppose him again to have absconded ; but a year and a half after the bill had passed, then I will suppose this gentleman to have come forward, and to say that your Constitution had been de- stroyed by the Perpetual Bill. With regard to that part of the Constitution that relates to the law of Poynings, I will suppose the gentleman to have made many a long, very long disquisition before he took office, but, after he received office, to have been as silent on that subject as before he had been lo- HENRY GEATTAN 243 quacious. That, when money bills, under color of that law, were altered, year after year, as in 1775 and 1776, and when the bills so altered were re- sumed and passed, I will suppose that gentleman to have absconded or acquiesced, and to have sup- ported the minister who made the alteration; but when he was dismissed from office, and a member introduced a bill to remedy this evil, I will suppose that this gentleman inveighed against the mischief, against the remedy, and against the person of the introducer, who did that duty which he himself for seven years had abandoned. With respect to that part of the Constitution which is connected with the repeal of the 6th of George the First, when the inadequacy of the repeal was debating in the House, I will suppose this gentleman to make no kind of objection ; that he never named, at that time, the word renunciation ; and that, on the division on that subject, he absconded ; but when the office he had lost was given to another man, that he came for- ward, and exclaimed against the measure ; nay, that he went into the public streets to canvass for sedi- tion; that he became a rambling incendiary, and endeavored to excite a mutiny in the Volunteers against an adjustment between Great Britain and Ireland, of liberty and repose, which he had not the virtue to make, and against an administration who had the virtue to free the country without buy- ing the members. With respect to commerce, I will suppose this gentleman to have supported an embargo which lay on the country for three years, and almost destroyed it ; and when an address in 1778, to open her trade, was propounded, to remain silent and inactive. And with respect to that other part of her trade, 244 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING which regarded the duty on sugar, when the mer- chants were examined in 1778, on the inadequate protecting- duty, when the inadequate duty was voted, when the act was recommitted, when another duty was proposed, when the bill returned with the inadequate duty substituted, when the altered bill was adopted, on every one of those questions I will suppose the gentleman to abscond ; but a year and a half after the mischief was done, he out of office, I will suppose him to come forth, and to tell his country that her trade had been destroyed by an inadequate duty on English sugar, as her Constitu- tion had been ruined by a Perpetual Mutiny Bill ! In relation to three-fourths of our fellow-subjects, the Catholics, when a bill was introduced to grant them rights of property and religion, I will suppose this gentleman to have come forth to give his nega- tive to their pretensions. In the same manner, I will suppose him to have opposed the institution of the Volunteers, to which we owe so much, and that he went to a meeting in his own county to prevent their establishment; that he himself kept out of their associations ; that he was almost the only man in this House that was not in uniform, and that he never was a Volunteer until he ceased to be a place- man, and until he became an incendiary. With regard to the liberties of America, which were inseparable from ours, I will suppose this gen- tleman to have been an enemy, decided and unre- served ; that he voted against her liberty, and voted, moreover, for an address to send four thousand Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans ; that he called these butchers " armed negotiators," and stood with a metaphor in his mouth, and a bribe in his pocket, a champion against the rights of Amer- HENRY GRATTAK 245 ica, the only hope of Ireland, and the only refuge of the liberties of mankind. Thus defective in every relationship whether to Constitution, commerce, or toleration, I will suppose this man to have added much private improbity to public crimes ; that his probity was like his patriotism, and his honor on a level with his oath. He loves to deliver panegyrics on himself. I will interrupt him and say, " Sir, you are much mistaken if you think that your talents have been as great as your life has been reprehen- sible. You began your parliamentary career with an acrimony and personality which could have been justified only by a supposition of virtue. After a rank and clamorous opposition you became, on a sudden, silent ; you were silent for seven years ; you were silent on the greatest questions ; and you were silent for money ! In 1773, while a negotiation was pending to sell your talents and your turbulence, you absconded from your duty in Parliament ; you forsook your law of Poynings ; you forsook the questions of economy, and abandoned all the old themes of your former declamation. You were not at that period to be found in the House. You were seen, like a guilty spirit, haunting the lobby of the House of Commons, watching the moment in which the question should be put, that you might vanish. You were descried with a criminal anxiety, retiring from the scenes of your past glory ; or you were perceived coasting the upper benches of this House like a bird of prey, with an evil aspect and a sepul- chral note, meditating to pounce on its quarry. These ways they were not the ways of honor you prac- tised pending a negotiation which was to end either in your sale or your sedition. The former taking place, you supported the rankest measures that ever 246 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING came before Parliament ; the embargo of 1776, for instance, "O, fatal embargo, that breach of law, and ruin of commerce ! " You supported the unpa- ralleled profusion and jobbing- of Lord Harcourt's scandalous ministry the address to support the American war the other address to send four thou- sand men, which you had yourself declared to be necessary for the defence of Ireland, to fight against the liberties of America, to which you had declared yourself a friend. You, sir, who delight to utter execrations against the American commissioners of 1778, on account of their hostility to America you, sir, who manufacture stage thunder against Mr. Eden for his anti-American principles you, sir, whom it pleases to chant a hymn to the immortal Hampden you, sir, approved of the tyranny exer- cised against America ; and you, sir, voted four thousand Irish troops to cut the throats of the Americans fighting for their freedom, fighting for your freedom, fighting for the great principle, LIB- ERTY ! But you found, at last (and this should be an eternal lesson to men of your craft and cunning), that the king had only dishonored you ; the court had bought, but would not trust you ; and, having voted for the worst measures, you remained, for seven years, the creature of salary, without the con- fidence of government. Mortified at the discovery and stung by disappointment, you betake yourself to the sad expedients of duplicity. You try the sorry game of a trimmer in your progress to the acts of an incendiary. You give no honest support either to the government or the people. You, at the most critical period of their existence, take no part ; you sign no non-consumption agreement ; you are no Volunteer ; you oppose no Perpetual Mutiny HENRY GRATTAN 247 Bill ; no altered Sugar Bill ; you declare that you lament that the Declaration of Bight should have been brought forward ; and observing, with regard to both prince and people, the most impartial treach- ery and desertion, you justify the suspicion of your Sovereign, by betraying the government, as you had sold the people, until, at last, by this hollow con- duct, and for some other steps, the result of morti- fied ambition, being dismissed, and another person put in your place, you fly to the ranks of the Volun- teers and canvass for mutiny ; you announce that the country was ruined by other men during that period in which she had been sold by you. Your logic is, that the repeal of a declaratory law is not the repeal of a law at all, and the effect of that logic is, an English act affecting to emancipate Ireland, by exercising over her the legislative authority of the British Parliament. Such has been your con- duct ; and at such conduct every order of your fel- low-subjects have a right to exclaim! The mer- chant may say to you the constitutionalist may say to you the American may say to you and I, / now say, and say to your beard, sir you are not an honest man I " THE NEW SOUTH HENKY W. GKADY New England Society, New York, December 22, 1886 " THERE was a South of slavery and secession that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedom that South, thank God, is living, breath- ing, growing every hour." These words, delivered from the immortal lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tam- many Hall, in 1866, true then, and truer now, I shall make my text to-night. Mr. President and Gentlemen : Let me express to you my appreciation of the kindness by which I am permitted to address you. I make this abrupt ac- knowledgment advisedly, for I feel that if, when I raised my provincial voice in this ancient and august presence, I could find courage for no more than the opening sentence, it would be well if, in that sentence, I had met in a rough sense my obligation as a guest, and had perished, so to speak, with courtesy on my lips and grace in my heart. Permitted, through your kindness, to catch my second wind, let me say that I appreciate the signifi- cance of being the first Southerner to speak at this board, which bears the substance, if it surpasses the semblance of original New England hospitality, and honors a sentiment that in turn honors you, but in which my personality is lost and the compliment to my people made plain. 248 HENRY W. GRADY 249 I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy to- night. I ani not troubled about those from whom I come. You remember the man whose wife sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, and who, trip- ping- on the top step, fell, with such casual interrup- tions as the landings afforded, into the basement ; and, while picking himself up, had the pleasure of hearing his wife call out : " John, did you break the pitcher? " o, I didn't," said John, "but I be dinged if I don't." So, while those who call to me from behind may inspire me with energy, if not with courage, I ask an indulgent hearing from you. I beg that you will bring your full faith in American fairness and frank- ness to judgment upon what I shall say. There was an old preacher once who told some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read in the morning. The boys, finding the place, glued together the connect- ing pages. The next morning he read on the bottom of one page : " When Noah was one hundred and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife, who was " then turning the page, " one hundred and forty cubits long, forty cubits wide, built of gopher wood, and covered with pitch inside and out." He was naturally puzzled at this. He read it again, verified it, and then said : " My friends, this is the first time I ever met this in the Bible, but I accept it as an evidence of the assertion that we are fear- fully and wonderfully made." If I could get you to hold such faith to-night, I could proceed cheerfully to the task I otherwise approach with a sense of con- secration Pardon me one word, Mr. President, spoken for the sole purpose of getting into the volumes that go 250 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING out annually freighted with the rich eloquence of your speakers the fact that the Cavalier, as well as the Puritan, was on the continent in its early days, and that he was " up and able to be about." I have read your books carefully and I find no mention of that fact, which seems to me an important one for preserving a sort of historical equilibrium, if for nothing else. Let me remind you that the Virginia Cavalier first challenged France on this continent ; that Cavalier John Smith gave New England its very name, and was so pleased with the job that he has been handing his own name around ever since ; and that while Miles Standish was cutting off men's ears for courting a girl without her parents' consent, and forbidding men to kiss their wives on Sunday, the Cavalier was courting everything in sight ; and that the Almighty had vouchsafed great increase to the Cavalier colon- ies, the huts in the wilderness being as full as the nests in the woods. But having incorporated the Cavalier as a fact in your charming little book, I shall let him work out his own salvation, as he has always done with en- gaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as to his merits. Why should we ? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived as such. The virtues and traditions of both, happily, still live for the in- spiration of their sons and the saving of the old fashion. Both Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of the first Revolution, and the American citizen, supplanting both, and stronger than either, took possession of the republic bought by their com- mon blood and fashioned to wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government and estab- lishing the voice of the people as the voice of God. HENRY W. GRADY 251 My friend, Dr. Talmage, has told you that the typical American has yet to come. Let me tell you that he has already come. Great types, like valu- able plants, are slow to flower and fruit. But from the union of these colonist Puritans and Cavaliers, from the straightening of their purposes and the crossing- of their blood, slowly perfecting through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the first who comprehended within him- self all the strength and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of this republic, Abraham Lincoln. He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier ; for in his ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his great soul the faults of both were lost. He was greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American, and that in his homely form were first gathered the vast and thril- ling forces of his ideal government charging it with such tremendous meaning, and so elevating it above human suffering, that martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life consecrated, from the cradle, to human liberty. Let us, each cherishing the traditions and honoring his fathers, build with reverent hands to the type of his simple but sublime life, in which all types are honored ; and in our common glory as Americans there will be plenty and some to spare for your forefathers and for mine. In speaking to the toast with which you have honored me, I accept the term, " The New South," as in no sense disparaging to the old. Dear to me, sir, is the home of my childhood, and the traditions of my people. I would not, if I could, dim the glory they won in peace and war, or by word or deed take aught from the splendor and grace of 252 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING their civilization, never equalled, and perhaps never to be equalled in its chivalric strength and grace. There is a New South, not through protest against the old, but because of new conditions, new adjust- ments, and, if you please, new ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address myself, and to the con- sideration of which I hasten, lest it become the Old South before I get to it. Age does not endow all things with strength and virtue, nor are all new things to be despised. The shoemaker who put over his door, " John Smith's shop, founded 1760," was more than matched by his young rival across the street who hung out this sign : " Bill Jones. Established 1886. No old stock kept in this shop." /"Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master hand, the picture of your returning armies. He has told you how, in the pomp and circumstance of war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes. Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late war ? An army that marched home in de- feat and not in victory ; in pathos and not in splen- dor, but in glory that equalled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever welcomed heroes home. Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as ? buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds ; having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and, lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia hills, HENRY W. GRADY 25B pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey. What does he find ? let me ask you who went to your homes eager to find, in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for four years' sacrifice what does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so pros- perous and beautiful ? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barn empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless ; his social system, feudal in its magnifi- cence, swept away ; his people without law or legal status ; his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions gone ; without money, credit, employment, material training and besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence the establishment of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves. u What does he do this hero in gray, with a heart of gold ? Does he sit down in sullenness and de- spair ? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter, The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow ; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plough ; and the fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June ; women reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a garment, gave their hands to work. There was little bitter- ness in all this. Cheerfulness and frankness pre- 254 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING vailed, " Bill Arp " struck the keynote when he said : " Well, I killed as many of them as they did of me, and now I am going- to work." Or the soldier returning- home after defeat and roasting- some corn on the roadside, who made the remark to his com- rades : " You may leave the South if you want to, but I am going- to Sandersville, kiss my wife and raise a crop, and if the Yankees fool with me any more I will whip 'em again." I want to say to Gen- eral Sherman who is considered an able man in our parts, though some people think he is kind of care- less about fire that from the ashes he left us in 1864 we have raised a brave and beautiful city ; that somehow or other we have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or mem- ory. But in all this what have we accomplished ? What is the sum of our work ? We have found out that in the general summary the free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We have planted the school- house on the hilltop and made it free to white and black. We have sowed towns and cities in the place of theories, and put business above politics. We have learned that the $400,000,000 annually re- ceived from our cotton crop will make us rich, when the supplies that make it are home raised. We have reduced the commercial rate of interest from twenty -four to four per cent., and are floating four per cent, bonds. We have learned that one North- ern immigrant is worth fifty foreigners, and have smoothed the path to the southward, wiped out the place where Mason and Dixon's line used to be, and hung out our latchstring to you and yours. We have reached the point that marks perfect har- HENRY W. GRADY 255 mony in every household, when the husband con- fesses that the pies which his wife cooks are as good as those his mother used to bake ; and we admit that the sun shines as brightly and the moon as softly as it did " before the war." We have estab- lished thrift in the city and country. We have fallen in love with work. We have restored com- forts to homes from which culture and elegance never departed. We have let economy take root and spread among us as rank as the crab-grass which sprung from Sherman's cavalry camps, until we are ready to lay odds on the Georgia Yankee, as he manufactures relics of the battlefield in a one- story shanty and squeezes pure olive oil out of his cotton seed, against any down-easter that ever swapped wooden nutmegs for flannel sausages in the valley of Vermont. Above all, we know that we have achieved in these " piping times of peace," a fuller independence for the South than that which our fathers sought to win in the forum by their eloquence, or compel on the field by their swords. It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had a part, how- ever humble, in this work. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the uplifting and up- building of the prostrate and bleeding South, mis- guided, perhaps, but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave, and generous always. In the record of her social, industrial, and political restoration we await with confidence the verdict of the world. But what of the negro ? Have we solved the problem he presents, or progressed in honor and equity toward the solution ? Let the record speak to the point. No section shows a more prosperous laboring population than the negroes of the South ; 256 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING none in fuller sympathy with the employing- and land-owning class. He shares our school fund, has the fullest protection of our laws, and the friendship of our people. Self-interest, as well as honor, de- mands that they should have this. Our future, our very existence, depends upon our mxrking out this problem in full and exact justiceJ^We understand that when Lincoln signed the EmaTtMpation Procla- mation, your victory was assured ; for he then com- mitted you to the cause of human liberty, against which the arms of man cannot prevail ; while those of our statesmen who trusted to make slavery the corner-stone of the Confederacy doomed us to defeat as far as they could, committing us to a cause that reason could not defend or the sword maintain in the sight of advancing civilization. Had Mr. Toombs said, which he did not say, that he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill, he would have been foolish, for he might have known that whenever slavery became entangled in war it must perish, and that the chattel in human flesh ended forever in New England when your fathers not to be blamed for parting with what did not pay sold their slaves to our fathers, not to be praised for knowing a paying thing when they saw it. The relations of the Southern people with the negro are close and cordial. We remember with what fidelity for four years he guarded our defence- less women and children, whose husbands and fath- ers were fighting against his freedom. To his credit be it said that whenever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in open battle ; and when at last he raised his black and humble hands that the shackles might be struck off, those hands were inno- cent of wrong against his helpless charges, and HENRY W. GRADY 257 worthy to be taken in loving grasp by every man who honors loyalty and devotion. Ruffians have maltreated him, rascals have misled him, philanthropists established a bank for him, but the South with the North protest against injustice to this simp^^M sincere people. To liberty and enfranchisenM as far as the law can carry the negro. The^^tnust be left to conscience and common sense. li^should be left to those among whom his lot is cast, with whom he is indissolubly connected, and whose prosperity depends upon their possessing his intelligent sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept with him in spite of calumnious assertions to the contrary by those who assume to speak for us, or by frank opponents. Faith will be kept with him in the future, if the South holds her reason and integrity. But have we kept faith with you ? In the fullest sense, yes. When Lee surrendered I don't say when Johnston surrendered, because I understand he still alludes to the time when he met General Sher- man last as the time when he " determined to aban- don any further prosecution of the struggle " when Lee surrendered, I say, and Johnston quit, the South became, and has been, loyal to the Union. We fought hard enough to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accepted as final the arbi- trament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found her jewel in the toad's head of de- feat. The shackles that had held her in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the negro slave were broken. Under the old regime the negroes were slaves to the South, the South was a slave to the system. The lod plantation, with its simple police regulations 258 PRACTICAL PUBLIC SPEAKING and its feudal habit, was the only type possible un- der slavery. Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people, as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions, is gathered at the heart, filling tha^jjtii affluent rupt- ure, but leaving the body chill afl Bbrless. The old South rested everyth^BKi slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The new South presents a perfect Democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular movement a social system com- pact and closely knitted, less splendid on the sur- face but stronger at the core ; a hundred farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every palace, and a diversified industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age. The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of a growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full- statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the ex- panding horizon, she understands that her emanci- pation came because in the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed and her brave armies were beaten. This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apol- ogy. The South has nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle between the States was war and not rebellion, revolution and not conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions if I did not HENRY W. GRADY 259 make this plain in this presence. The South has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hills a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men, that of a brave and simple man who died in a brave and sim- ple faith. Not for all the glories of New England from Plymouth Rock all the way would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the feet of that shaft I shall send my children's children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory, which I honor as I do noth- ing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in His Almighty Hand, and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil the American Union saved from the wreck of war. This message, Mr. President, comes to you from consecrated ground. Every foot of the soil about the city in which I live is sacred as a battle-ground of the republic. Every hill that invests it is hal- lowed to you by the blood of your brothers who died for your victory, and doubly hallowed to us by the blood of those who died hopeless, but undaunted, in defeat ^sacred soil to all of us, rich with memo- .0