The three small volumes here offered to the public have been prepared
in the hope that they would be of some service in showing the great
currents of political thought that have shaped the history of Great
Britain during the past two hundred and fifty years. The effort has
been not so much to make a collection of the most remarkable specimens
of English eloquence, as to bring together the most famous of those
oratorical utterances that have changed, or here tended to change, the
course of English history.
Eliot and Pym formulated the grievances against absolutism, a
contemplation of which led to the revolution that established Anglican
liberty on its present basis. Chatham, Mansfield, and Burke elaborated
the principles which, on the one hand, drove the American colonies
into independence, and, on the other, enabled their independence to
be won and secured. Mackintosh and Erskine enunciated in classical
form the fundamental rights which permanently secured the freedom of
juries and the freedom of the press. Pitt, in the most elaborate as
well as the most important of all his remarkable speeches, expounded
the English policy of continuous opposition to Napoleon; and Fox, in
one of the most masterly of his unrivalled replies, gave voice to that
sentiment which was in favor of negotiations for peace. Canning not
only shaped the foreign policy of the nation during the important years
immediately succeeding the Napoleonic wars, but put that policy into
something like permanent form in what has generally been considered the
masterpiece of his eloquence. Macaulay’s first speech on the Reform
Bill of 1832 was the most cogent advocacy of what proved to be nothing
less than a political revolution; and Cobden, the inspirer and apostle
of Free Trade, enjoys the unique distinction of having reversed the
opinions of a prime-minister by means of his persuasive reasonings.
Bright embodied in a single eloquent address the reasons why so many
have thought the foreign policy of England to be only worthy of
condemnation. Beaconsfield concentrated into one public utterance an
expression of the principles which it has long been the object of the
Conservative party to promulgate and defend; and Gladstone, in one
of his Mid-Lothian speeches, put into convenient form the political
doctrines of the Liberals in regard to affairs both at home and abroad.
It is these speeches, which at one time or another have seemed to go
forth as in some sense the authoritative messages of English history to
mankind, that are here brought together.
The speeches are in almost all cases given entire. A really great
oration is a worthy presentation of a great subject, and such an
utterance does not lend itself readily to abridgment, for the reason
that its very excellence consists of a presentation in just proportion
of all its parts. An orator who has a great message to deliver, and
who fulfils his task in a manner worthy of his subject, excludes
every thing that does not form an essential part of his argument; and
therefore in editing these orations it has seldom been thought wise to
make either reductions or omissions. In a few instances, notably in
the speeches of Fox and Cobden, a few elaborations of purely local and
temporary significance have been excluded; but the omissions in all
cases are indicated by asterisks.
In the introductions to the several speeches an effort has been made
to show not only the political situation involved in the discussion,
but also the right of the orator to be heard. These two objects have
made it necessary to place before the reader with some fulness the
political careers of the speakers and the political questions at issue
when the speeches were made. The illustrative notes at the end of the
volumes are designed simply to assist the reader in understanding such
statements and allusions as might otherwise be obscure.
I cannot submit these volumes to the public without expressing the
hope that they will in some small measure at least contribute to a
juster appreciation of that liberty which we enjoy, and to a better
understanding of the arduous means by which free political institutions
have been acquired.