Wellington called the battle of Waterloo, a conflict of giants. I passed an
hour and a half with Mr. Webster, at his request, the evening before this
great effort; and he went over to me, from a very concise brief, the main
topics of the speech which he had prepared for the following day. So calm
and unimpassioned was the memorandum, so entirely was he at ease himself
that I was tempted to think absurdly enough, that he was not sufficiently
aware of the magnitude of the occasion. But I soon perceived that his
calmness was the repose of conscious power. He was not only at ease, but
sportive and full of anecdote; and as he told the Senate playfully the next
day he slept soundly that night on the formidable assault of his gallant
and accomplished adversary. So the great Condé slept on the eve of the
battle of Rocroi; so Alexander slept on the eve of the battle of Arbela;
and so they awoke to deeds of immortal fame.
As I saw him in the evening, (if I may borrow an illustration from his
favorite amusement,) he was as unconcerned and as free of spirit, as some
here have often seen him, while floating in his fishing boat along a hazy
shore, gently rocking on the tranquil tide, dropping his line here and
there, with the varying fortune of the sport. The next morning he was like
some mighty Admiral, dark and terrible, casting the long shadow of his
frowning tiers far over the sea, that seemed to sink beneath him; his broad
pendant streaming at the main, the stars and the stripes at the fore, the
mizzen, and the peak; and bearing down like a tempest upon his antagonist,
with all his canvas strained to the wind and all his thunders roaring from
his broadsides.
E. Everett.
XCI.
WHAT GOOD WILL THE MONUMENT DO.
I am met with the great objection, What good will the Monument do? I beg
leave, sir, to exercise my birthright as a Yankee, and answer this question
by asking two or three more, to which, I believe, it will be quite as
difficult to furnish a satisfactory reply. I am asked, What good will the
monument do? And I ask, What good does anything do? What is good? Does
anything do any good? The persons who suggest this objection, of course
think that there are some projects and undertakings that do good; and I
should therefore like to have the idea of good explained, and analyzed, and
run out to its elements.
When this is done, if I do not demonstrate, in about two minutes, that the
monument does the same kind of good that anything else does, I shall
consent that the huge blocks of granite already laid, should be reduced to
gravel, and carted off to fill up the mill-pond; for that, I suppose, is
one of the good things. Does a railroad or canal do good? Answer, yes. And
how? It facilitates intercourse, opens markets and increases the wealth of
the country. But what is this good for? Why, individuals prosper and get
rich. And what good does that do? Is mere wealth, as an ultimate end,--gold
and silver, without an inquiry as to their use,--are these a good?
Certainly not. I should insult this audience by attempting to prove that a
rich man, as such, is neither better nor happier than a poor one. But as
men grow rich, they live better. Is there any good in this, stopping here?
Is mere animal life--feeding, working, and sleeping like an ox--entitled to
be called good? Certainly not. But these improvements increase the
population. And what? good does that do? Where is the good in counting
twelve millions, instead of six, of mere feeding, working, sleeping
animals? There is, then, no good in the mere animal life, except that it is
the physical basis of that higher moral existence, which resides in the
soul, the heart, the mind, the conscience; in good principles, good
feelings, good actions (and the more disinterested, the more entitled to be
called good) which flow from them. Now, sir, I say that generous and
patriotic sentiments, sentiments which prepare us to serve our country, to
live for our country, to die for our country,--feelings like those which
carried Prescott, and Warren, and Putnam to the battle-field, are
good,--good, humanly speaking, of the highest order. It is good to have
them, good to encourage them, good to honor them, good to commemorate
them;--and whatever tends to animate and strengthen such feelings does as
much right down practical good as filling up low grounds and building
railroads. This is my demonstration.
E. Everett.
XCII.
EMANCIPATION OF THE CATHOLICS OF IRELAND.
This paper, gentlemen, insists upon the necessity of emancipating the
Catholics of Ireland, and that is charged as a part of the libel. If they
had waited another year, if they had kept this prosecution impending for
another year, how much would remain for a jury to decide upon, I should be
at a loss to discover. It seems as if the progress of public information
was eating away the ground of the prosecution. Since the commencement of
the prosecution, this part of the libel has unluckily received the sanction
of the legislature. In that interval our Catholic brethren have obtained
that admission, which, it seems, it was a libel to propose. In what way to
account for this, I am really at a loss. Have any alarms been occasioned by
the emancipation of our Catholic brethren? has the bigoted malignity of any
individuals been crushed? Or, has the stability of the government, or has
that of the country been weakened? Or, are one million of subjects stronger
than three millions? Do you think that the benefit they receive should be
poisoned by the stings of vengeance? If you think so, you must say to them,
"You have demanded your emancipation and you have got it; but we abhor your
persons, we are outraged at your success; and we will stigmatize, by a
criminal prosecution, the adviser of that relief which you have obtained
from the voice of your country."
I ask you, gentlemen, do you think, as honest men, anxious for the public
tranquillity, conscious that there are wounds not yet completely cicatrized
that you ought to speak this language at this time, to men who are too much
disposed to think that in this very emancipation they have been saved from
their own Parliament by the humanity of their Sovereign? Or, do you wish
to prepare them for the revocation of these improvident concessions? Do you
think it wise or humane at this moment to insult them, by sticking up in a
pillory the man who dared to stand forth as their advocate? I put it to
your oaths; do you think that a blessing of that kind, that a victory
obtained by justice over bigotry and oppression, should have a stigma cast
upon it by an ignominious sentence upon men honest and bold enough to
propose that measure? to propose the redeeming of religion from the abuses
of the Church--the reclaiming of three millions of men from bondage, and
giving liberty to all who had a right to demand it--giving, I say, in the
so much censured words of this paper, "Universal Emancipation!"
I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate
with and inseparable from British soil--which proclaims even to the
stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth,
that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius
of Universal Emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have
been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom an
Indian or an African sun may have burned upon him; no matter in what
disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with
what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery;--the
first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god
sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his
body swells beyond the measure of his chains that burst from around him and
he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible
genius of Universal Emancipation.
J. P. Curran.
XCIII.
THE PUBLIC INFORMER.
But the learned gentleman is further pleased to say, that the traverser has
charged the government with the encouragement of informers. This,
gentlemen, is another small fact that you are to deny at the hazard of your
souls, and upon the solemnity of your oaths. You are upon your oaths to say
to the sister country, that the government of Ireland uses no such
abominable instruments of destruction as informers. Let me ask you
honestly, what do you feel, when in my hearing, when in the face of this
audience, you are called upon to give a verdict that every man of us, and
every man of you, know by the testimony of your own eyes to be utterly and
absolutely false? I speak not now of the public proclamation of informers,
with a promise of secrecy and of extravagant reward; I speak not of the
fate of those horrid wretches who have been so often transferred from the
table to the dock, and from the dock to the pillory; I speak of what your
own eyes have seen day after day, during the course of this commission,
from the box where you are now sitting--the number of horrid miscreants who
avowed upon their oaths that they had come from the very seat of government
from the castle, where they had been worked upon by the fear of death and
the hopes of compensation to give evidence against their fellows. I speak
of the well-known fact that the mild and wholesome councils of this
government are holden over these catacombs of living death, where the
wretch that is buried a man, lies till his heart has time to fester and
dissolve, and is then dug up a witness.
Is this fancy, or is it fact? Have you not seen him, after his resurrection
from that tomb, after leaving been dug out of the region of death and
corruption, make his appearance upon the table, the living image of life
and of death, and the supreme arbiter of both? Have you not marked when he
entered, how the stormy wave of the multitude retired at his approach? Have
you not marked how the human heart bowed to the supremacy of his power, in
the undissembled homage of deferential horror? How his glance, like the
lightning of heaven, seemed to rive the body of the accused, and mark it
for the grave, while his voice warned the devoted wretch of woe and
death--a death which no innocence can escape, no art elude, no force
resist, no antidote prevent. There was an antidote a juror's oath----but
even that adamantine chain that bound the integrity of man to the throne of
eternal justice, is solved and melted in the breath that issues from the
informer's mouth. Conscience swings from her mooring, and the appalled and
affrighted juror consults his own safety in the surrender of the victim.
J. P. Curran.
XCIV.
RED JACKET'S SPEECH TO THE MISSIONARY.
Brother, listen to what we say. There was a time when our forefathers owned
this great island. Their seats extended from the rising to the setting sun.
The Great Spirit had made it for the use of Indians. He had created the
buffalo, file deer, and other animals for food. He had made the bear and
the beaver. Their skins served us for clothing. He had scattered them over
the country, and taught us how to take them. He had caused the earth to
produce corn for bread. All this He had done for his red children, because
He loved them. If we had some disputes about our hunting-ground, they were
generally settled without the shedding of much blood. But an evil day came
upon us. Your forefathers came across the great water, and landed on this
island. Their numbers were small. They found friends and not enemies. They
told us they had fled from their own country for fear of wicked men, and
asked for a small seat. We took pity on them; granted their request; and
they sat down amongst us. We gave them corn and meat; they gave us poison
in return.
The white people, brother, had now found our country. Tidings were carried
back, and more came amongst us. Yet we did not fear them. We took them to
be friends. They called us brothers. We believed them and gave them a
larger seat. At length their numbers had greatly increased. They wanted
more land; they wanted our country. Our eyes were opened, and our minds
became uneasy. Wars took place. Indians were hired to fight against
Indians, and many of our people were destroyed. They also brought strong
liquor amongst us. It was strong and powerful and has slain thousands.
Brother, our seats were once large, and yours were small. You have now
become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our
blankets. You have got our country but are not satisfied; you want to force
your religion upon us. You say that you are sent to instruct us how to
worship the Great Spirit agreeably to his mind; and, if we do not take hold
of the religion which you white people teach, we shall be unhappy
hereafter. We are told that you have been preaching to the white people in
this place. These people are our neighbors. We are acquainted with them. We
will wait a little while, and see what effect your preaching has upon them.
If we find it does them good, makes them honest, and less disposed to cheat
Indians, we will then consider again of what you have said. Brother, you
have now heard our answer to your talk, and this is all we have to say at
present.
Cram.
XCV.
PARTITION OF POLAND.
Now, sir, what was the conduct of your own allies to Poland? Is there a
single atrocity of the French, in Italy, in Switzerland, in Egypt, if you
please, more unprincipled and inhuman than that of Russia, Austria, and
Prussia, in Poland? What has there been in the conduct of the French to
foreign powers; what in the violation of solemn treaties; what in the
plunder, devastation, and dismemberment of unoffending countries; what in
the horrors and murders perpetrated upon the subdued victims of their rage
in any district which they have overrun, worse than the conduct of those
three great powers in the miserable, devoted, and trampled-on kingdom of
Poland, and who have been, or are, our allies in this war for religion and
social order, and the rights of nations? "Oh! but you regretted the
partition of Poland! " Yes, regretted! You regretted the violence, and that
is all you did. You united yourself with the actors; you, in fact, by your
acquiescence, confirmed the atrocity. But they are your allies; and though
they overran and divided Poland, there was nothing, perhaps, in the manner
of doing it which stamped it with peculiar infamy and disgrace. The hero of
Poland [Swarrow], perhaps, was merciful and mild! He was "as much superior
to Bonaparte in bravery, and in the discipline which he maintained, as he
was superior in virtue and humanity! " He was animated by the purest
principles of Christianity, and was restrained in his career by the
benevolent precepts which it inculcates! Was he? Let unfortunate Warsaw,
and the miserable inhabitant's of the suburb of Praga in particular, tell!
What do we understand to have been the conduct of this magnanimous hero,
with whom, it seems, Bonaparte is not to be compared? He entered the suburb
of Praga, the most populous suburb of Warsaw; and there he let his soldiery
loose on the miserable, unarmed, and unresisting people. Men, women, and
children, nay, infants at the breast, were doomed to one indiscriminate
massacre. Thousands of them were inhumanly, wantonly butchered! And for
what? Because they had dared to join in a wish to meliorate their own
condition as a people, and to improve their Constitution, which had been
confessed by their own Sovereign to be in want of amendment. And such is
the hero upon whom the cause of religion and social order is to repose! And
such is the man whom we praise for his discipline and his virtue, and whom
we hold out as our boast and our dependence; while the conduct of Bonaparte
unfits him to be even treated with as an enemy?
C. J. Fox.
XCVI.
NATIONAL DISGRACE.
Sir, we may look in vain to the events of former times for a disgrace
parallel to what we have suffered. Louis the Fourteenth, a monarch often
named in our debates, and whose reign exhibits more than any other the
extremes of prosperous and of adverse fortune, never, in the midst of his
most humiliating distresses, stooped to so despicable a sacrifice of all
that can be dear to man. The war of the succession, unjustly begun by him,
had reduced his power, had swallowed up his armies and his navies, had
desolated his provinces, had drained his treasures, and deluged the earth
with the blood of the best and most faithful his subjects. Exhausted by his
various calamities, he offered his enemies at one time to relinquish all
the objects for which he had begun the war. That proud monarch sued for
peace, and was content to receive it from our moderation. But when it was
made a condition of that peace, that he should turn his arms against his
grandson, and compel him by force to relinquish the throne of
Spain,--humbled, exhausted, conquered as he was, misfortune had not yet
bowed his spirit to conditions so hard as these.
We know the event. He persisted still in the war, until the folly and
wickedness of Queen Anne's ministers enabled him to conclude the peace of
Utrecht, on terms considerably less disadvantageous even than those he had
himself proposed. And shall we, sir, the pride of our age, the terror of
Europe, submit to this humiliating sacrifice of our honor? Have we suffered
a defeat at Blenheim? Shall we, with our increasing prosperity, our widely
diffused capital, our navy, the just subject of our common exultation,
ever-flowing coffers, that enable us to give back to the people what, in
the hour of calamity, we were compelled to take from them; flushed with a
recent triumph over Spain, and yet more than all, while our old rival and
enemy was incapable of disturbing us, shall it be for us to yield to what
France disdained in the hour of her sharpest distress, and exhibit
ourselves to the world, the sole example in its annals of such an abject
and pitiful degradation?
C. J. Fox.
XCVII.
A POLITICAL PAUSE.
Where, then, sir, is this war, which is prolific of all these horrors, to
be carried? Where is it to stop? Not till we have established the house of
Bourbon! Or, at least, not until we have had due "experience" of
Bonaparte's intentions! And all this without an intelligible motive. All
this because you may gain a better peace a year or two hence! So that we
are called upon to go on merely as a speculation. We must keep Bonaparte
for some time longer at war, as a state of probation! Gracious God, sir! is
war a state of probation? Is peace a rash system? Is it dangerous for
nations to live in amity with each other? Are your vigilance, your police
your common powers of observation, to be extinguished by putting an end to
the horrors of war? Cannot this state of probation be as well undergone
without adding to the catalogue of human sufferings?
"But we must pause!" says the honorable gentleman. What! must the bowels
of Great Britain be torn out her best blood be spilled--her treasures
wasted--that you may make an experiment? Put yourselves oh! that you would
put yourselves on the field of battle, and learn to judge of the sort of
horrors that you excite! In former wars a man might, at least, have some
feeling, some interest, that served to balance, in his mind, the
impressions which a scene of carnage and of death must inflict.
If a man had been present at the battle of Blenheim, for instance, and had
inquired the motive of the battle, there was not a soldier engaged who
could not have satisfied his curiosity, and even, perhaps, allayed his
feelings. They were fighting, they knew, to repress the uncontrolled
ambition of the Grand Monarch.
But if a man were present now at the field of slaughter, and were to
inquire for what they were fighting--"Fighting!" would be the answer;
"they aren't fighting; they are pausing." "Why is that man expiring? " Why
is that other writhing with agony? What means this implacable fury? " The
answer must be, "You are quite wrong, sir, you deceive yourself--they are
not fighting, do not disturb them they are merely pausing! This man is not
expiring with agony--that man is not dead he is only pausing! Lord help
you, sir! they are not angry with one another; they have now no cause of
quarrel; but their country thinks that there should be a pause. All that
you see, sir, is nothing like fighting--there is no harm, nor cruelty, nor
bloodshed in it, whatever: it is nothing more than a political pause! It
is merely to try an experiment--to see whether Bonaparte will not, behave
himself better than heretofore; and in the mean time we have agreed to
pause in pure friendship!"
And is this the way, sir, that you are to show yourselves the advocates of
order? You take up a system calculated to uncivilize the world--to destroy
order,--to trample on religion,--to stifle in the heart, not merely the
generosity of a noble sentiment, but the affections of social nature; and
in the prosecution of this systems you spread terror and devastation all
around you.
C. J. Fox
XCVIII.
WASHINGTON'S SWORD AND FRANKLIN'S STAFF.
The Sword of Washington! The Staff of Franklin! O, sir, what associations
are linked in adamant with these names! Washington, whose sword was never
drawn but in the cause of his country, and never sheathed when wielded in
his country's cause! Franklin, the philosopher of the thunder-bolt, the
printing-press, and the ploughshare! What names are these in the scanty
catalogue of the benefactors of human kind! Washington and Franklin! What
other two men whose lives belong to the eighteenth century of Christendom,
have left a deeper impression of themselves upon the age in which they
lived, and upon all after-time? Washington, the warrior and the
legislator! In war, contending, by the wager of battle, for the
Independence of his country, and for the freedom of the human race,--ever
manifesting, amidst its horrors, by precept and by example, his reverence
for the laws of peace, and for the tenderest sympathies of humanity; in
peace, soothing the ferocious spirit of discord, among his own countrymen,
into harmony and union, and giving to that very sword, now presented to his
country, a charm more potent than that attributed, in ancient times, to the
lyre of Orpheus.
Franklin! The mechanic of his own fortune; teaching, in early youth, under
the shackles of indigence, the way to wealth, and, in the shade of
obscurity, the path to greatness; in the maturity of manhood, disarming the
thunder of its terrors, the lightning of its fatal blast; and wresting from
the tyrant's hand the still more afflictive sceptre of oppression: while
descending the vale of years, traversing the Atlantic Ocean, braving, in
the dead of winter, the battle and the breeze, bearing in his hand the
Charter of Independence, which he had contributed to form, and tendering,
from the self-created nation to the mightiest monarchs of Europe, the
olive-branch of peace, the mercurial wand of commerce, and the amulet of
protection and safety to the man of peace, on the pathless ocean, from the
inexorable cruelty and merciless rapacity of war.
And, finally, in the last stage of life, with fourscore winters upon his
head, under the torture of an incurable disease, returning to his native
land, closing his days as the chief magistrate of his adopted commonwealth,
after contributing by his counsels under the Presidency of Washington, and
recording his name under the sanction of devout prayer invoked by him to
God,--to that Constitution under the authority of which we are assembled,
as the Representatives of the North American People, to receive, in the
name of them and for them, these venerable relics of the wise, the valiant,
and the good founders of our great confederated Republic, these sacred
symbols of our golden age. May they be deposited among the archives of our
Government! And may every American, who shall hereafter behold them,
ejaculate a mingled offering of praise to that Supreme Ruler of the
Universe, by whose tender mercies our Union has been hitherto preserved,
through all the vicissitudes and revolutions of this turbulent world; and
of prayer for the continuance of these blessings, by the dispensations of
Providence to our beloved country, from age to age, till time shall be no
more!
J. Q. Adams.
XCIX.
THE RIGHT OF PETITION BY WOMEN.