amongst us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its
magnificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne
a sceptered hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his own originality. A mind,
bold, independent, and decisive,--a will, despotic in its dictates,--an
energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch
of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character,--the most
extraordinary, perhaps, that in the annals of this world ever rose, or
reigned, or fell. Flung into life in the midst of a revolution that
quickened every energy of a people who acknowledge no superior, he
commenced his course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by charity! With
no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed into the
list where rank, and wealth, and genius had arrayed themselves, and
competition fell from him as from the glance of destiny. He knew no motive
but interest,--he acknowledged no criterion but success,--he worshiped no
God but ambition, and with an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of
his idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not
profess, there was no opinion that he dill not promulgate; in the hope of a
dynasty, he upheld the crescent; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before
the cross; the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the
republic; and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the
throne and the tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. A professed
Catholic, he imprisoned the pope; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the
country; and in the name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse, and wore
without shame, the diadem of the Cæsars.
C. Phillips.
LXVI.
A COLLISION OF VICES.
My honorable and learned friend began by telling us that, after all, hatred
is no bad thing in itself "I hate a Tory," says my honorable friend; "and
another man hates a cat; but it does not follow that he would hunt down the
cat, or I the Tory." Nay, so far from it, hatred, if it be properly
managed, is, according to my honorable friend's theory, no bad preface to a
rational esteem and affection. It prepares its votaries for a
reconciliation of differences; for lying down with their most inveterate
enemies, like the leopard and the kid in the vision of the prophet. This
dogma is a little startling, but it is not altogether without precedent. It
is borrowed from a character in a play, which is, I dare say, as great a
favorite with my learned friend as it is with me,--I mean the comedy of the
Rivals; in which Mrs. Malaprop, giving a lecture on the subject of marriage
to her niece (who is unreasonable enough to talk of liking, as a necessary
preliminary to such a union), says, "What have you to do with your likings
and your preferences, child? Depend upon it, it is safest to begin with a
little aversion. I am sure I hated your poor dear uncle like a blackamoor
before we were married; and yet, you know, my dear, what a good wife I made
him." Such is my learned friend's argument, to a hair. But finding that
this doctrine did not appear to go down with the House so glibly as he had
expected my honorable and learned friend presently changed his tack and put
forward a theory which, whether for novelty or for beauty, I pronounce to
be incomparable; and, in short, as wanting nothing to recommend it but a
slight foundation in truth. "True philosophy," says my honorable friend,
"will always continue to lead men to virtue by the instrumentality of their
conflicting vices. The virtues where more than one exists, may live
harmoniously together; but the vices bear mortal antipathy to one another,
and, therefor, furnish to the moral engineer the power by which he can make
each keep the other under controls." Admirable! but upon this doctrine, the
poor man who has but one single vice must be in a very bad way. No fulcrum
no moral power, for effecting his cure! Whereas his more fortunate
neighbor, who has two or more vices in his composition, is in a fair way of
becoming a very virtuous member of society. I wonder how my learned friend
would like to have this doctrine introduced into his domestic
establishment. For instance, suppose that I discharge a servant because he
is addicted to liquor, I could not venture to recommend him to my honorable
and learned friend. It might be the poor man's only fault and therefor
clearly incorrigible; but, if I had the good fortune to find out that he
was also addicted to stealing, might I not with a safe conscience send him
to my learned friend with a strong recommendation, saying "I send you a
man whom I know to be a drunkard; but I am happy to assure you he is also a
thief: you cannot do better than employ him; you will make his drunkenness
counteract his thievery, and no doubt you will bring him out of the
conflict a very moral personage!"
G. Canning.
LXVII.
"MEASURES, NOT MEN"
If I am pushed to the wall, and forced to speak my opinion, I have no
disguise nor reservation:--I do think that this is a time when the
administration of the Government ought to be in the ablest and fittest
hands; I do not think the hands in which it is now placed answer to that
description. I do not pretend to conceal in what quarter I think that
fitness most eminently resides; I do not subscribe to the doctrines which
have been advanced, that, in times like the present, the fitness of
individuals for their political situation is no part of the consideration
to which a member of Parliament may fairly turn his attention. I know not a
more solemn or important duty that a member of Parliament can have to
discharge, than by giving, at fit seasons, a free opinion upon the
character and qualities of public men. Away with the cant of "measures, not
men!" the idle supposition that it is the harness, and not the horses, that
draws the chariot along! No, sir, if the comparison must be made, if the
distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures computatively
nothing. I speak, sir, of times of difficulty and danger; of times when
systems are shaken, when precedents and general rules of conduct fail. Then
it is, that not to this or that measure,--however prudently devised,
however blameless in execution,--but to the energy and character of
individuals, a state must be indebted for its salvation. Then it is that
kingdoms rise or fall in proportion as they are upheld, not by well meant
endeavors (laudable though they may be), but by commanding, overawing
talents,--by able men.
And what is the nature of the times in which we live? Look at France, and
see what we have to cope with, and consider what has made her what she is.
A man! You will tell me that she was great, and powerful, and formidable,
before the days of Bonaparte's government; that he found in her great
physical and moral resources; that he had but to turn them to account,
True, and he did so. Compare the situation in which he found France with
that to which he has raised her. I am no panegyrist of Bonaparte; but I
cannot shut my eyes to the superiority of his talents, to the amazing
ascendency of his genius, Tell me not of his measures and his policy. It is
his genius, his character, that keeps the world in awe. Sir, to meet, to
check, to curb, to stand up against him, we want arms of the same kind. I
am far from objecting to the large military establishments which are
proposed to you. I vote for them, with all my heart. But, for the purpose
of coping with Bonaparte, one great, commanding spirit is worth them all.
G. Canning.
LXVIII.
PARLIAMENTARY REFORM.
My Lords, I do not disguise the intense solicitude which I feel for the
event of this debate, because I know full well that the peace of the
country is involved in the issue. I cannot look without dismay at the
rejection of this measure of parliamentary reform. But, grievous as may be
the consequences of a temporary defeat, temporary it can only be; for its
ultimate, and even speedy success, is certain. Nothing can now stop it. Do
not suffer yourselves to be persuaded that, even if the present ministers
were driven from the helm, any one could steer you through the troubles
which surround you, without reform. But our successors would take up the
task in circumstances far less auspicious. Under them, you would be fain to
grant a bill, compared with which, the one we now proffer you is moderate
indeed.
Hear the parable of the Sibyl; for it conveys a wise and wholesome moral.
"She now appears at your gate, and offers you mildly the volumes--the
precious volumes--of wisdom and peace. The price she asks is reasonable; to
restore the franchise, which, without any bargain, you ought voluntarily to
give. You refuse her terms--her moderate terms;--she darkens the porch no
longer. But soon--for you cannot do without her wares--you call her back.
Again she comes, but with diminished treasures; the leaves of the book are
in part torn away by lawless hands, in part defaced with characters of
blood. But the prophetic maid has risen in her demands;--it is Parliaments
by the year--it is vote by the ballot--it is suffrage by the million! From
this you turn away indignant; and, for the second time, she departs. Beware
of her third coming! for the treasure you must have; and what price she may
next demand, who shall tell? It may even be the mace which rests upon that
woolsack! What may follow your course of obstinacy, if persisted in, I
cannot take upon me to predict, nor do I wish to conjecture. But this I
know full well; that as sure as man is mortal, and to err is human, justice
deferred enhances the price at which you must purchase safety and
peace;--nor can you expect to gather in another crop than they did who went
be fore you, if you persevere in their utterly abominable husbandry of sowing
injustice and reaping rebellion.
But, among the awful considerations that now bow down my mind, there is one
that stands preeminent above the rest. You are the highest judicature in
the realm; you sit here as judges, and decide all causes, civil and
criminal, without appeal. It is a Judge's just duty never to pronounce a
sentence, in the most trifling case, without hearing. Will you make this
the exception? Are you really prepared to determine, but not to hear, the
mighty cause, upon which a Nation's hopes and fears hang? You are? Then
beware of your decision! Rouse not, I beseech you, a peace-loving but a
resolute people! Alienate not from your body the affections of a whole
Empire! As your friend, as the friend of my order, as the friend of my
country, as the faithful servant of my sovereign, I counsel you to assist,
with your uttermost efforts, in preserving the peace, and upholding and
perpetuating the Constitution. Therefore, I pray and exhort you not to
reject this measure. By all you hold most dear--by all the ties that bind
every one of us to our common order and our common country, I solemnly
adjure you--I warn you--I implore you--yea, on my bended knees, I
supplicate you,--reject not this bill!
Lord Brougham.
LXIX.
DENUNCIATION OF SLAVERY.
I trust at length the time has come, when Parliament will no longer bear to
be told, that slave-owners are the best lawgivers on slavery; no longer
suffer our voice to roll across the Atlantic in empty warnings and
fruitless orders. Tell me not of rights,--talk not of the property of the
planter in his slave. I deny his rights,--I acknowledge not the property.
The principles, the feelings of our common nature, rise in rebellion
against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the
sentence is the same, that rejects it.
In vain you tell me of laws that sanction such a claim! There is a law
above all the enactments of human codes,--the same throughout the
world,--the same in all times; such as it was before the daring genius of
Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the source of
power, wealth, and knowledge,--to the others all unutterable woes, such is
it at this day; it is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of
man; and be that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud,
and loathe rapine, and hate blood, they shall reject with indignation the
wild and guilty fantasy, that man can hold property in man!
In vain ye appeal to treaties,--to covenants between nations. The covenants
of the Almighty, whether the old covenant or the new, denounce such unholy
pretensions. To these laws did they of old refer, who maintained the
African trade. Such treaties did they cite, and not untruly; for, by one
shameful compact, you bartered the glories of Blenheim for the traffic in
blood. Yet, in despite of law and of treaty, that infernal traffic is now
destroyed, and its votaries put to death like other pirates. How came this
change to pass? Not, assuredly, by Parliament leading the way; but the
country at length awoke; the indignation of the people was kindled; it
descended in thunder, and smote the traffic, and scattered its guilty
profit to the winds. Now, then, let the planters beware,--let their
assemblies beware,--let the government at home beware,--let the Parliament
beware! The same country is once more awake,--awake to the condition of
negro slavery; the same indignation kindles in the bosom of the same
people; the same cloud is gathering that annihilated the slave-trade; and
if it shall descend again, they, on whom its crash may fall, will not be
destroyed before I have warned them; but I pray that their destruction may
turn away from us the more terrible judgments of God!
Lord Brougham.
LXX.
THE TEACHERS OF MANKIND.
There is nothing which the adversaries of improvement are more wont to make
themselves merry with than what is termed the "march of intellect;" and
here I will confess, that I think, as far as the phrase goes, they are in
the right. It is a very absurd, because a very incorrect expression. It is
little calculated to describe the operation in question. It does not
picture an image at all resembling the proceedings of the true friends of
mankind. It much more resembles the progress of the enemy to all
improvement. The conqueror moves in a march. He stalks onward with the
"pride, pomp, and circumstance of warp,"--banners flying--shouts rending
the air--guns thundering--and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks
of the wounded, and the lamentations for the slain.
Not thus the schoolmaster, in his peaceful vocation. He meditates and
prepares in secret the plans which are to bless mankind; he slowly gathers
round him those who are to further their execution, he quietly, though
firmly, advances in his humble path, laboring steadily, but calmly, till he
has opened to the light all the recesses of ignorance, and torn up by the
roots the weeds of vice. His is a progress not to be compared with anything
like a march; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels
more imperishable than the destroyer of his species, the scourge of the
world, ever won.
Such men--men deserving the glorious title of Teachers of Mankind--I have
found, laboring conscientiously, though, perhaps obscurely, in their
blessed vocation, wherever I have gone. I have found them, and shared their
fellowship, among the daring, the ambitious, the ardent, the indomitably
active French; I have found them among the persevering, resolute,
industrious Swiss; I have found them among the laborious, the warmhearted,
the enthusiastic Germans; I have found them among the high-minded, but
enslaved Italians; and in our own country, God be thanked, their numbers
everywhere abound, and are every day increasing.
Their calling is high and holy; their fame is the property of nations;
their renown will fill the earth in after-ages, in proportion as it sounds
not far off in their own times. Each one of those great teachers of the
world, possessing his soul in peace, performs his appointed course; awaits
in patience the fulfillment of the premises; and, resting from his labors,
bequeathed his memory to the generation whom his works have blessed, and
sleeps under the humble but not inglorious epitaph, commemorating it one in
whom mankind lost a friend, and no man got rid of an enemy."
Lord Brougham.
LXXI.
THE GREATNESS OF WASHINGTON.
Great he was, preëminently great, whether we regard him sustaining alone
the whole weight of campaigns all but desperate, or gloriously terminating
a just warfare by his resources and his courage; presiding over the jarring
elements of his political council, alike deaf to the storms of all
extremes, or directing the formation of a new government for a great
people, the first time that so vast an experiment had ever been tried by
man; or, really, retiring from the supreme power to which his virtue had
raised him over the nation he had created, and whose destinies he had
guided as long as his aid was required,--retiring with the veneration of
all parties, of all nations, of all mankind, in order that the rights of
men might be conserved, and that his example never might be appealed to by
vulgar tyrants.
This is the consummate glory of Washington; a triumphant warrior where the
most sanguine had a right to despair; a successful ruler in all the
difficulties of a course wholly untried; but a warrior, whose sword only
left its sheath when the first law of our nature commanded it to be drawn;
and a ruler who, having tasted of supreme power, gently and ostentatiously
desired that the cup might pass from him, nor would suffer more to wet his
lips than the most solemn and sacred duty to his To his country and his God
required!
To his latest breath did this great patriot maintain the noble character of
a captain the patron of peace, and a statesman the friend of justice.
Dying, he bequeathed to his heirs the sword which he had worn in the war
for liberty, and charged them "never to take it from the scabbard but in
self-defence, or in defence of their country and her freedom;" and
commanded them that, "when it should thus be drawn, they should never
sheathe it, nor ever give it up, but prefer falling with it in their hands
to the relinquishment thereof,"--words, the majesty and simple eloquence
of which are not surpassed in the oratory of Athens and Rome.
It will be the duty of the historian and the sage, in all ages, to let no
occasion pass of commemorating this illustrious man; and, until time shall
be no more, will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom
and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of
Washington!
Lord Brougham.
LXXII.
WASHINGTON, A MAN OF GENIUS.
How many times have we been told that Washington was not a man of genius,
but a person of excellent common sense, of admirable judgement, of rare
virtues! He had no genius, it seems. O no! genius, we must suppose, is the
peculiar and shining attribute of some orator, whose tongue can spout
patriotic speeches; or some versifier, whose muse can hail Columbia; but
not of the man who supported States on his arm, and carried America in his
brain. What is genius? Is it worth anything? Is splendid folly the measure
of its inspiration? Is wisdom its base and summit?--that which it recedes
from, or tends toward? And by what definition do you award the name to the
creator of an epic, and deny it to the creator of a country? On what
principle is it to be lavished on him who sculptures in perishing marble
the image of possible excellence, and withheld from him who built up in
himself a transcendent character, indestructible as the obligations of
duty, and beautiful as her rewards?
Indeed, if by genius of action, you mean will enlightened by intelligence,
and intelligence energized by will,--if force and insight be its
characteristics, and influence its test, and if great effects suppose a
cause proportionally great, a vital, causative mind,--then was Washington
most assuredly a man of genius, and one whom no other American has equalled
in the power of working morally and mentally on other minds. His genius was
of a peculiar kind, the genius of character, of thought and the objects of
thought solidified and concentrated into active faculty. He belongs to that
rare class of men,--rare as Homers and Miltons, rare as Platos and
Newtons,--who have impressed their characters upon nations without
pampering national vices. Such men have natures broad enough to include all
the facts of a people's practical life, and deep enough to discern the
spiritual laws which underlie, animate, and govern those facts.
E. P. Whipple.
LXXIII.
IRISH ALIENS AND ENGLISH VICTORIES.
I should be surprised, indeed, if; while you are doing us wrong, you did
not profess your solicitude to do us justice. From the day on which
Strongbow set his foot upon the shore of Ireland, Englishmen were never
wanting in protestations of their deep anxiety to do us justice;--even
Strafford, the deserter of the people's cause,--the renegade Wentworth who
gave evidence in Ireland of the spirit of instinctive tyranny which
predominated in his character,--even Strafford, while he trampled upon our
rights, and trod upon the heart of the country, protested his solicitude to
do justice to Ireland! What marvel is it, then, that gentlemen opposite
should deal in such vehement protestations? There is, however, one man, of
great abilities,--not a member of this House, but whose talents and whose
boldness have placed him in the topmost place in his party,--who,
disdaining all imposture, and thinking it the best course to appeal
directly to the religious and national antipathies of the people of this
country,--abandoning all reserve, and flinging off the slender veil by
which his political associates affect to cover, although they cannot hide,
their motives,--distinctly and audaciously tells the Irish people that they
are not entitled to the same privileges as Englishmen; and pronounces them,
in any particular which could enter his minute enumeration of the
circumstances by which fellow-citizenship is created, in race, identity,
and religion to be aliens--to be aliens in race--to be aliens in
country--to be aliens in religion! Aliens! Good God! was Arthur, Duke of
Wellington, in the House of Lords,--and did he not start up and exclaim,
"Hold! I have seen the aliens do their duty!"
The Duke of Wellington is not a man of an excitable temperament. His mind
is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his
habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking that, when he heard his
Roman Catholic countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a
phrase as offensive as the abundant vocabulary of his eloquent confederate
could supply,--I cannot help thinking that he ought to have recollected the
many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. "The
battles, sieges, fortunes, that he has passed," to have come back upon him.
He ought to have remembered that, from the earliest achievement in which he
displayed that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals
of modern warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat which has made
his name imperishable,--from Assaye to Waterloo,--the Irish soldiers, with
whom your armies are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory
with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. Whose were the
arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera through the phalanxes that never
reeled to the shock of war before? What desperate valor climbed the steeps
and filled the moats at Badajos? All his victories should have rushed and
crowded back upon his memory,--Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Albuera,
Toulouse, and, last of all, the greatest--
Tell me--for you were there,--I appeal to the gallant soldier before me,
from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an
intrepid breast;--tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when
the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance,--while death fell
in showers when the artillery of France was levelled with a precision of
the most deadly science, when her legions, incited by the voice and
inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to
the onset,--tell me if, for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant
was to be lost, the "aliens" blenched? And when, at length, the moment for
the last and decided movement had arrived, and the valor which had so long
been wisely checked was, at last, let loose,--when, with words familiar
but immortal, the great captain commanded the great assault,--tell me if
Catholic Ireland with less heroic valor than the natives of this your own
glorious country precipitated herself upon the foe? The blood of England,
Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in the same stream, and drenched the same
field. When the chill morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark
together;--in the same deep pit their bodies were deposited; the green
corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls
from heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the
glory shall we not be permitted to participate; and shall we be told as a
requital, that we are estranged from the noble country for whose salvation
our life-blood was poured out?
R. L. Sheil.
LXXIV.
THE ILIAD AND THE BIBLE.