LITMIR.BIZ

      "I have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself among nations reluctant of our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince, surrounded by his subjects, addressing the governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. 'Who is it,' said the jealous ruler of the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure – 'who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in summer? Who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that rears up the shade of these lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend it,' said the warrior, throwing his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and, depend upon it, nothing but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection."18

      "Hereafter, when these things shall be history, your age of thraldom and poverty, your sudden resurrection, commercial redress, and miraculous armament, shall the historian stop to declare, that here the principal men amongst us fell into mimic traces of gratitude: they were awed by a weak ministry, and bribed by an empty treasury; and when liberty was within their grasp, and the temple opened her folding-doors, and the arms of the people clanged, and the zeal of the nation urged and encouraged them on, that they fell down, and were prostituted at the threshold.

      "I will not be answered by a public lie in the shape of an amendment: neither, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, unless it be the ambition to break your chains, and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied as long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking in his rags: he may be naked, he shall not be in irons. And I do see the time is at hand, the spirit is gone forth, the declaration is planted: and though great men should apostatise, yet the cause will live: and though the public speaker should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ which conveyed it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, shall not die with the prophet, but survive him."19

      "Christians!" says he, in the exordium of his discourse, "it is not surprising that the memory of a great queen – the daughter, the wife, the mother of monarchs – should attract you from all quarters to this melancholy ceremony; it will bring forcibly before your eyes one of those awful examples which demonstrate to the world the vanity of which it is composed. You will see in her single life the extremes of human things: felicity without bounds, miseries without parallel; a long and peaceable enjoyment of one of the most noble crowns in the universe – all that birth and grandeur could confer that was glorious – all that adversity and suffering could accumulate that was disastrous; the good cause attended at first with some success, then involved in the most dreadful disasters. Revolutions unheard of, rebellion long restrained, at length reigning triumphant; no curb there to license, no laws in force. Majesty itself violated by bloody hands – usurpation and tyranny, under the name of liberty – a fugitive queen, who can find no retreat in her three kingdoms, and was forced to seek in her native country a melancholy exile. Nine sea voyages undertaken against her will by a queen, in spite of wintry tempests – a throne unworthily overturned, and miraculously re-established. Behold the lessons which God has given to kings! thus does He manifest to the world the nothingness of its pomps and its grandeur. If our words fail, if language sinks beneath the grandeur of such a subject, the simple narrative is more touching than aught that words can convey. The heart of a great queen, formerly elevated by so long a course of prosperity, then steeped in all the bitterness of affliction, will speak in sufficiently touching language; and if it is not given to a private individual to teach the proper lessons from so mournful a catastrophe, the King of Israel has supplied the words – 'Hear, O ye great of the earth! Take lessons, ye rulers of the world!'"20

      "They call me a tyrant! If I were so, they would fall at my feet: I should have gorged them with gold, assured them of impunity to their crimes, and they would have worshipped me. Had I been so, the kings whom we have conquered would have been my most cordial supporters. It is by the aid of scoundrels you arrive at tyranny. Whither tend those who combat them? To the tomb and immortality! Who is the tyrant that protects me? What is the faction to which I belong? It is yourselves! What is the party which, since the commencement of the Revolution, has crushed all other factions – has annihilated so many specious traitors? It is yourselves; it is the people; it is the force of principles! This is the party to which I am devoted, and against which crime is everywhere leagued. I am ready to lay down my life without regret. I have seen the past; I foresee the future. What lover of his country would wish to live, when he can no longer succour oppressed innocence? Why should he desire to remain in an order of things where intrigue eternally triumphs over truth – where justice is deemed an imposture – where the vilest passions, the most ridiculous fears, fill every heart, instead of the sacred interests of humanity? Who can bear the punishment of seeing that horrible succession of traitors, more or less skilful in concealing their hideous vices under the mask of virtue, and who will leave to posterity the difficult task of determining which was the most atrocious? In contemplating the multitude of vices which the Revolution has let loose pell-mell with the civic virtues, I own I sometimes fear that I myself shall be sullied in the eyes of posterity by their calumnies. But I am consoled by the reflection that, if I have seen in history all the defenders of liberty overwhelmed by calumny, I have seen their oppressors die also. The good and the bad disappear alike from the earth; but in very different conditions. No, Chaumette! 'Death is not an eternal sleep!' – Citizens, efface from the tombs that maxim, engraven by sacrilegious hands, which throws a funeral pall over nature, which discourages oppressed innocence: write rather, 'Death is the commencement of immortality!' I leave to the oppressors of the people a terrible legacy, which well becomes the situation in which I am placed: it is the awful truth, 'Thou shalt die!'"21

      "It is impossible for any but the most careless observer, to avoid remarking the great differences which distinguish the oratory of ancient from that of modern times. The immeasurable superiority of the former is far from being the only, or even the principal, of these diversities: that proceeds, in part, from the greater power of the languages, especially the Greek – the instrument wielded by the great masters of diction; and in so far the superiority must for ever remain undiminished by any efforts on the part of modern rhetoricians. If, in such varied and perfect excellencies, the most prominent shall be selected, then doubtless is the palm due to that entire and uninterrupted devotion which throws the speaker's whole soul into his subject, and will not even – no, not for an instant – suffer a rival idea to cross

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