the question of the hour. By every obligation of man or States it behooves
you in this extremity to conquer-as your devotion to the gods and your
concord among yourselves encourage you to hope--or to bear all things but
slavery. Other nations may bend to servitude; the birthright and the
distinction of the people of Rome is liberty.
Cicero.
CXLIX.
EXTRACT FROM DEMOSTHENES.
Yes, Athenians, I repeat it, you yourselves are the contrivers of your own
ruin. Lives there a man who has confidence enough to deny it? Let him
arise, and assign, if he can, any other cause of the success and prosperity
of Philip. "But," you reply, "what Athens may have lost in reputation
abroad, she has gained in splendor at home. Was there ever a greater
appearance of prosperity? a greater face of plenty? Is not the city
enlarged? Are not the streets better paved, houses repaired and
beautified?" Away with such trifles! Shall I be paid with counters? An old
square new vamped up! a fountain! an aqueduct! are these acquisitions to
brag of? Cast your eye upon the magistrate under whose ministry you boast
these precious improvements. Behold the despicable creature, raised all at
once from dirt to opulence; from the lowest obscurity to the highest
honors. Have not some of these upstarts built private houses and seats,
vying with the most sumptuous of our public palaces? And how have their
fortunes and their power increased, but as the commonwealth has been ruined
and impoverished?
To what are we to impute these disorders, and to what cause assign the
decay of a State so powerful and flourishing in past times? The reason is
plain. The servant is now become the master. The magistrate was then
subservient to the people: all honors, dignities, and preferments, were
disposed by the voice and favor of the people; but the magistrate, now, has
usurped the right of the people, and exercises an arbitrary authority over
his ancient and natural lord. You, miserable people! the meanwhile, without
money, without friends,--from being the ruler, are become the servant;
from being the master, the dependent: happy that these governors, into
whose hands you have thus resigned your own power, are so good and so
gracious as to continue your poor allowance to see plays.
Believe me, Athenians, if, recovering from this lethargy, you would assume
the ancient spirit and freedom of your fathers if you would be your own
soldiers and own commanders, confiding no longer your affairs in foreign or
mercenary hands--if you would charge yourselves with your own defense,
employing abroad, for the public, what you waste in unprofitable pleasures
at home, the world might once more behold you making a figure worthy of
Athenians. "You would have us, then, (you say,) do service in our armies
in our own persons; and, for so doing, you would have the pensions we
receive in time of peace, accepted as pay in time of war. Is it thus we are
to understand you?" Yes, Athenians, 't is my plain meaning. I would make
it a standing rule, that no person, great or little, should be the
better for the public money, who would grudge to employ it for the public
service. Are we in peace? the public is charged with your subsistence. Are
we in war, or under a necessity, as at this time, to enter into a war? let
your gratitude oblige you to accept, as pay in defence of your benefactors,
what you receive, in peace, as mere bounty. Thus, without any
innovation--without altering or abolishing anything but pernicious
novelties, introduced for the encouragement of sloth and idleness--by
converting only for the future, the same funds, for the use of the
serviceable, which are spent, at present, upon the unprofitable, you may be
well served in your armies--your troops regularly paid--justice duly
administered--the public revenues reformed and increased--and every member
of the commonwealth rendered useful to his country according to his age and
ability without any further burden to the State.
This, O men of Athens, is what my duty prompted me to represent to you upon
this occasion.--May the gods inspire you to determine upon such measures,
as may be most expedient, for the particular and general good of our
country!
CL.
EXTRACT FROM DEMOSTHENES ON THE CROWN.
Athens never was once known to live in a slavish, though a secure obedience
to unjust and arbitrary power. No; our whole history is one series of noble
contests for preëminence; the whole period of our existence hath been spent
in braving dangers, for the sake of glory and renown. And so highly do you
esteem such conduct, so consonant to the Athenian character that those of
your ancestors who were most distinguished in the pursuit of it, are ever
the most favorite objects of your praise--and with reason. For who can
reflect without astonishment upon the magnanimity of those men, who
resigned their lands, gave up their city and embarked in their ships, to
avoid the odious state of subjection?--who chose Themistocle, the adviser
of this conduct, to command their forces and, when Cyrsilus proposed that
they should yield to the terms prescribed, stoned him to death? Nay the
public indignation was not yet allayed. Your very wives inflicted the same
vengeance on his wife. For the Athenians of that day looked out for no
speaker, no general to procure them a state of prosperous slavery. They had
the spirit to reject even life, unless they were allowed to enjoy that life
in freedom. Should I then attempt to assert that it was I who inspired you
with sentiments worthy of your ancestors, I should meet the just resentment
of every hearer. No; it is my point to show, that such sentiments are
properly your own--that they were the sentiments of my country, long before
my days. I claim but my share of merit, in having acted on such principles,
in every part of my administration. He, then, who condemns every part of my
administration, he who directs you to treat me with severity, as one who
hath involved the State in terrors and dangers, while he labors to deprive
me of present honor, robs you of the applause of all posterity. For, if you
now pronounce, that, as my public conduct hath not been right, Ctesiphon
must stand condemned it must be thought that you yourselves have acted
wrong, not that you owe your present state to the caprice of fortune. But
it cannot be! No, my countrymen! it cannot be you have acted wrong, in
encountering danger bravely, for the liberty and the safety of all Greece.
No! by those generous souls of ancient times, who were exposed at Marathon!
By those who stood arrayed at Platæa! By those who encountered the Persian
fleet at Salamis! Who fought at Artemisium! No! by all those illustrious
sons of Athens, whose remains lie deposited in the public monuments.
CLI.
QUEEN ELIZABETH.
The reign of Queen Elizabeth may be considered as the opening of the modern
history of England, especially in its connection with the modern system of
Europe, which began about that time to assume the form that it preserved
till the French Revolution. It was a very memorable period, of which the
maxims ought to be engraven on the head and heart of every Englishman.
Philip the Second, at the head of the greatest empire then in the world
openly was aiming at universal domination. To the most extensive and
opulent dominions, the most numerous and disciplined armies, the most
renowned captains, the greatest revenue, he added also the most formidable
power over opinion. Elizabeth was among the first objects of his hostility.
That wise and magnanimous princess placed herself in the front of the
battle for the liberties of Europe. Though she had to contend at home with
his fanatical faction, which almost occupied Ireland, which divided
Scotland, and was not of contemptible strength in England, she aided the
oppressed inhabitants of the Netherlands in their just and glorious
resistance to his tyranny; she aided Henry the Great in suppressing the
abominable rebellion which anarchical principles had excited and Spanish
arms had supported in France, and after a long reign of various fortune, in
which she preserved her unconquered spirit through great calamities and
still greater dangers, she at length broke the strength of the enemy, and
reduced his power within such limits as to be compatible with the safety of
England and of all Europe. Her great heart inspired her with a higher and a
nobler wisdom--which disdained to appeal to the low and sordid passions of
her people even for the protection of their low and sordid interests,
because she knew, or, rather, she felt that there are effeminate, creeping,
cowardly, short-sighted passions, which shrink from conflict, even in
defence of their own mean objects. In a righteous cause she roused those
generous affections of her people, which alone teach boldness, constancy,
and foresight, and which are therefore the only safe guardians of the
lowest as well as the highest interests of a nation. In her memorable
address to the army, when the invasion of her kingdom was threatened by
Spain, this woman of heroic spirit disdained to speak to them of their ease
and their commerce, and their wealth and their safety. No! She touched
another chord--she spoke of their national honor, of their dignity as
Englishmen, of "the foul scorn that Parma or Spain should dare to invade
the borders of her realms." She breathed into them those grand and powerful
sentiments, which exalt vulgar men into heroes which led them into the
battle of their country armed with holy and irresistible enthusiasm; which
ever cover with their shield all the ignoble interests that base
calculation, and cowardly selfishness tremble to hazard, but shrink from
defending.
J. Mackintosh.
CLII.
THE FREE PRESS.
Gentlemen, there is one point of view in which this case seems to merit
your most serious attention. The real prosecutor is the master of the
greatest empire the world ever saw; the defendant is a defenseless,
proscribed exile. I consider this case, therefore, as the first of a long
series of conflicts between the greatest power in the world and the only
Free Press remaining in Europe. Gentlemen, this distinction of the English
Press is new--it is a proud and melancholy distinction. Before the great
earthquake of the French Revolution had swallowed up all the asylums of
free discussion on the Continent, we enjoyed that privilege, indeed, more
fully than others; but we did not enjoy it exclusively. It existed, in
fact, where it was not protected by law; and the wise and generous
connivance of governments was daily more and more secured by the growing
civilization of their subjects. In Holland, in Switzerland, in the imperial
towns of Germany, the press was either legally or practically free. Holland
and Switzerland are no more; and, since the commencement of this
prosecution, fifty imperial towns have been erased from the list of
independent States by one dash of the pen. Three or four still preserve a
precarious and trembling existence. I will not say by what compliances they
must purchase its continuance. I will not insult the feebleness of States,
whose unmerited fall I do most bitterly deplore.
One asylum of free discussion is still inviolate. There is still one spot
in Europe where man can fully exercise his reason on the most important
concerns of society, where he can boldly publish his judgment on the acts
of the proudest and most powerful tyrants. The Press of England is still
free. It is guarded by the free Constitution of our forefathers. It is
guarded by the hearts and arms of Englishmen; and, I trust I may venture to
say that if it be to fall, it will fall only under the ruins of the British
Empire. It is an awful consideration, gentlemen. Every other monument of
European liberty has perished. That ancient fabric which has been gradually
raised by the wisdom and virtues of our fathers still stands. It stands,
thanks be to God! solid and entire--but it stands alone, and it stands
amid ruins. Believing, then, as I do, that we are on the eve of a great
struggle--that this is only the first of a long series of conflicts between
reason and power that you have now in your hands committed to your trust,
the protection of the only Free Press remaining in Europe, now confined to
this kingdom; and addressing you therefore as the guardians of the most
important interests of mankind--convinced that the unfettered exercise of
reason depends more on your present verdict than on any other that was ever
delivered by a jury,--I trust I may rely with confidence on the issue--I
trust that you will consider yourselves as the advanced guard of
Liberty--as having this day to fight the first battle of free discussion
against the most formidable enemy that it ever encountered!
J. Mackintosh.
CLIII.
THE LIBERTY OF THE PRESS.
The liberty of the press, on general subjects, comprehends and implies as
much strict observance of positive law as is consistent with perfect purity
of intention, and equal and useful society. What that latitude is, cannot
be promulgated in the abstract, but must be judged in the particular
instance, and consequently, upon this occasion, must be judged of by you
without forming any possible precedent for any other case.
If gentlemen, you are firmly persuaded of the singleness and purity of the
author's intentions, you are not bound to subject him to infamy, because in
the zealous career of a just and animated composition, he happens to
have tripped with his pen into an intemperate expression in one or two
instances of a long work. If this severe duty were binding on your
conscience, the liberty of the press would be an empty sound, and no man
could venture to write on any subject, however pure his purpose, without an
attorney at one elbow and a counsel at the other.
From minds thus subdued by the terrors of punishment, there could issue no
works of genius to expand the empire of human reason, nor any masterly
compositions on the general nature of government, by the help of which the
great commonwealths of mankind have founded their establishments; much less
any of those useful applications of them to critical conjunctures, by
which, from time to time, our own Constitution, by the exertion of patriot
citizens, has been brought back to its standard. Under such terrors, all
the great lights of science and civilization must be extinguished; for men
cannot communicate their free thoughts to one another with a lash held over
their heads. It is the nature of everything that is great and useful both
in the animate and inanimate world, to be wild and irregular, and we must
be contented to take them with the alloys which belong to them, or live
without them. Genius breaks from the fetters of criticism, but its
wanderings are sanctioned by its majesty and wisdom when it advances in its
path: subject it to the critic, and you tame it into dulness. Mighty rivers
break down their banks in the winter, sweeping away to death the flocks
which are fattened on the soil that they fertilize in the summer: the few
may be saved by embankments from drowning, but the flock must perish for
hunger. Tempests occasionally shake our dwellings and dissipate our
commerce; but they scourge before them the lazy elements, which without
them would stagnate into pestilence. In like manner, Liberty herself, the
last and best gift of God to his creatures, must be taken Just as she is:
you might pare her down into bashful regularity, and shape her into a
perfect model of severe, scrupulous law, but she would then be Liberty no
longer; and you must be content to die under the lash of this inexorable
justice which you had exchanged for the banners of Freedom.
Lord Erskine.
CLIV.
BRITISH TYRANNY IN INDIA.
I am driven in the defence of my client, to remark, that it is mad and
preposterous to bring to the standard of justice and humanity the exercise
of a dominion founded upon violence and terror. It may and must be true
that Mr. Hastings has repeatedly offended against the rights and privileges
of Asiatic government, if he was the faithful deputy of a power which could
not maintain itself for an hour without trampling upon both. He may and
must have offended against the laws of God and nature, if he was the
faithful viceroy of an empire wrested in blood from the people to whom God
and nature had given it. He may and must have preserved that unjust
dominion over timorous and abject nations by a terrifying overbearing,
insulting superiority, If he was the faithful administrator of your
government, which, leaving no root in consent or affection no foundation in
similarity of interests--no support from any one principle which cements
men together in society, could only be upheld by alternate stratagem and
force. The unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from
the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by
the knavery and strength of civilization, still occasionally start up in
all the vigor and intelligence of insulted nature. To be governed at all,
they must be governed with a rod of iron; and our empire in the East would,
long since, have been lost to Great Britain, if civil skill and military
prowess had not united their efforts to support an authority--which Heaven
never gave--by means which it never can sanction.
Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of
considering the subject, and I can account for it. I have not been
considering it through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of
man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them
myself among reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what
they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them
in my youth from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince
surrounded by his subjects, addressing the Governor of a British colony,
holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered
eloquence. "Who is it," said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached
upon by the restless foot of English adventure--"who is it that causes this
river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean?
Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them
again in summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests,
and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being
who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to
in; and by this title we will defend it," said the warrior, throwing down
his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation.
These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and depend
upon it, nothing but fear will control where it is vain to look for
affection.
If England, from a lust of ambition and dominion, will insist on
maintaining despotic rule over distant and hostile nations, beyond all
comparison more numerous and extended than herself, and gives commission to
her viceroys to govern them with no other instructions than to preserve
them, and to secure permanently their revenues, with what color of
consistency or reason can she place herself in the moral chair, and affect
to be shocked at the execution of her own orders; adverting to the exact
measure of wickedness and injustice necessary to their execution, and,
complaining only of the excess as the immorality, considering her authority
as a dispensation for breaking the commands of God, and the breach of them
as only punishable when contrary to the ordinances of man? Such a
proceeding, gentlemen, begets serious reflection. It would be better,
perhaps, for the masters and the servants of all such governments to join
in supplication, that the great Author of violated humanity may not
confound them together in one common judgment.
Lord Erskine.
CLV.
DECLARATION OF RIGHT.
I might as a constituent, come to your bar and demand my liberty. I do call
upon you by the laws of the land, and their violation; by the instructions
of eighteen counties; by the arms, inspiration, and providence of the
present moment--tell us the rule by which we shall go; assert the law of
Ireland; declare the liberty of the land! I will not be answered by a
public lie, in the shape of an amendment; nor, speaking for the subjects'
freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this
our island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I have
no ambition, unless it be to break your chain and contemplate your glory. I
never will be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a
link of the British chain clanking to his rags. He may be naked,--he shall
not be in irons. And I do see the time at hand; the spirit is gone forth;
the Declaration of Right is planted; and though great men should fall off,
yet the cause shall live; and though he who utters this should die, yet
the immortal fire shall outlast the humble organ who conveys it, and the
breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man will not die with the
prophet, but survive him.
H. Grattan.
CLVI.
POLITICS AND RELIGION.
That religion has, in fact, nothing to do with the politics of many who
profess it, is a melancholy truth. But that it has of right, no concern
with political transactions, is quite a new discovery. If such opinions,
however, prevail, there is no longer any mystery in the character of those
whose conduct in political matters violates every precept and slanders
every principle of the religion of Christ. But what is politics? Is it not
the science and the exercise of civil rights and civil duties? And what is
religion? Is it not an obligation to the service of God, founded on his
authority, and extending to all our relations, personal and social? Yet
religion has nothing to do with politics? Where did you learn this maxim?
The Bible is full of directions for your behavior as citizens. It is plain,
pointed; awful in its injunctions on ruler and ruled as such: yet religion
has nothing to do with politics! You are commanded "in all your ways to
acknowledge Him." In everything, by prayer and supplication, with
thanksgiving, to let your requests be made known unto God "And whatsoever
ye do, in word or deed, to do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." Yet
religion has nothing to do with politics! Most astonishing! And is there
any part of your conduct in which you are, or wish to be, without law to
God, and not under the law of Jesus Christ? Can you persuade yourselves
that political men and measures are to undergo no review in the judgment to
come? That all the passion and violence, the fraud and falsehood and
corruption, which pervade the system of party, and burst out like a flood
at the public elections, are to be blotted from the catalogue of
unchristian deeds, because they are politics? Or that a minister of the
gospel may see his people, in their political career, bid defiance to their
God in breaking through every moral restraint, and keep a guiltless
silence, because religion has nothing to do with politics? I forbear to
press the argument farther; observing only that many of our difficulties
and sins may be traced to this pernicious notion. Yes, if our religion had
had more to do with our politics; if, in the pride of our citizenship, we
had not forgotten our Christianity; if we had prayed more and wrangled less
about the affairs of our country, it would have been infinitely better for
us at this day
J. M. Mason
STANDARD SELECTIONS.
POETRY
CLVII.
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.
O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming--
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming!
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
O say, does that Star-spangled Banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!