_A Study in Climax_
1. My lords, these are the securities which we have in all the
constituent parts of the body of this House. We know them, we reckon
them, rest upon them, and commit safely the interests of India and of
humanity into your hands. Therefore it is with confidence that, ordered
by the Commons,
I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain in
Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.
I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain, whose
national character he has dishonored.
I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights,
and liberties he has subverted, whose properties he has destroyed,
whose country he has laid waste and desolate.
I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice
which he has violated.
I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly
outraged, injured, and opprest in both sexes, in every age, rank,
situation, and condition of life.--_Impeachment of Warren Hastings:_
EDMUND BURKE.
_Suggestions to the Public Speaker_
2. I am now requiring not merely great preparation while the speaker is
learning his art but after he has accomplished his education. The most
splendid effort of the most mature orator will be always finer for being
previously elaborated with much care. There is, no doubt, a charm in
extemporaneous elocution, derived from the appearance of artless,
unpremeditated effusion, called forth by the occasion, and so adapting
itself to its exigencies, which may compensate the manifold defects
incident to this kind of composition: that which is inspired by the
unforeseen circumstances of the moment, will be of necessity suited to
those circumstances in the choice of the topics, and pitched in the tone
of the execution, to the feelings upon which it is to operate. These are
great virtues: it is another to avoid the besetting vice of modern
oratory--the overdoing everything--the exhaustive method--which an
off-hand speaker has no time to fall into, and he accordingly will take
only the grand and effective view; nevertheless, in oratorical merit,
such effusions must needs be very inferior; much of the pleasure they
produce depends upon the hearer's surprize that in such circumstances
anything can be delivered at all, rather than upon his deliberate
judgment, that he has heard anything very excellent in itself. We may
rest assured that the highest reaches of the art, and without any
necessary sacrifice of natural effect, can only be attained by him who
well considers, and maturely prepares, and oftentimes sedulously
corrects and refines his oration. Such preparation is quite consistent
with the introduction of passages prompted by the occasion, nor will the
transition from one to the other be perceptible in the execution of the
practised master.--_Inaugural Discourse:_ LORD BROUGHAM.
_A Study in Fervent Appeal_
3. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry,
peace, peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next
gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of
resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we
here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life
so dear or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and
slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may
take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!--_The War
Inevitable:_ PATRICK HENRY.
_A Study in Dignity and Style_
4. In retiring as I am about to do, forever, from the Senate, suffer me
to express my heartfelt wishes that all the great and patriotic objects
of the wise framers of our Constitution may be fulfilled; that the high
destiny designed for it may be fully answered; and that its
deliberations, now and hereafter, may eventuate in securing the
prosperity of our beloved country, in maintaining its rights and honor
abroad, and upholding its interests at home. I retire, I know, at a
period of infinite distress and embarrassment. I wish I could take my
leave of you under more favorable auspices; but without meaning at this
time to say whether on any or on whom reproaches for the sad condition
of the country should fall, I appeal to the Senate and to the world to
bear testimony to my earnest and continued exertions to avert it, and to
the truth that no blame can justly attach to me.--_Farewell Address:_
HENRY CLAY.
_A Study in Strength and Diction_
5. For myself, I believe there is no limit fit to be assigned to it by
the human mind, because I find at work everywhere, on both sides of the
Atlantic, under various forms and degrees of restriction on the one
hand, and under various degrees of motive and stimulus on the other, in
these branches of the common race, the great principle of the freedom of
human thought, and the respectability of individual character. I find
everywhere an elevation of the character of man as man, an elevation of
the individual as a component part of society. I find everywhere a
rebuke of the idea that the many are made for the few, or that
government is anything but an agency for mankind. And I care not beneath
what zone, frozen, temperate, or torrid; I care not of what complexion,
white, or brown; I care not under what circumstances of climate or
cultivation--if I can find a race of men on an inhabited spot of earth
whose general sentiment it is, and whose general feeling it is, that
government is made for man--man, as a religious, moral, and social
being--and not man for government, there I know that I shall find
prosperity and happiness.--_The Landing at Plymouth:_ DANIEL WEBSTER.
_A Study in Patriotic Feeling_
6. Friends, fellow citizens, free, prosperous, happy Americans! The men
who did so much to make you are no more. The men who gave nothing to
pleasure in youth, nothing to repose in age, but all to that country
whose beloved name filled their hearts, as it does ours, with joy, can
now do no more for us; nor we for them. But their memory remains, we
will cherish it; their bright example remains, we will strive to imitate
it; the fruit of their wise counsels and noble acts remains, we will
gratefully enjoy it.
They have gone to the companions of their cares, of their dangers, and
their toils. It is well with them. The treasures of America are now in
heaven. How long the list of our good, and wise, and brave, assembled
there! How few remain with us! There is our Washington; and those who
followed him in their country's confidence are now met together with him
and all that illustrious company.--_Adams and Jefferson:_ EDWARD EVERETT.
_A Study in Clearness of Expression_
7. I can not leave this life and character without selecting and
dwelling a moment on one or two of his traits, or virtues, or
felicities, a little longer. There is a collective impression made by
the whole of an eminent person's life, beyond, and other than, and apart
from, that which the mere general biographer would afford the means of
explaining. There is an influence of a great man derived from things
indescribable, almost, or incapable of enumeration, or singly
insufficient to account for it, but through which his spirit transpires,
and his individuality goes forth on the contemporary generation. And
thus, I should say, one grand tendency of his life and character was to
elevate the whole tone of the public mind. He did this, indeed, not
merely by example. He did it by dealing, as he thought, truly and in
manly fashion with that public mind. He evinced his love of the people
not so much by honeyed phrases as by good counsels and useful service,
_vera pro gratis_. He showed how he appreciated them by submitting sound
arguments to their understandings, and right motives to their free will.
He came before them, less with flattery than with instruction; less with
a vocabulary larded with the words humanity and philanthropy, and
progress and brotherhood, than with a scheme of politics, an
educational, social and governmental system, which would have made them
prosperous, happy and great.--_On the Death of Daniel Webster:_
RUFUS CHOATE.
_A Study of Oratorical Style_
8. And yet this small people--so obscure and outcast in condition--so
slender in numbers and in means--so entirely unknown to the proud and
great--so absolutely without name in contemporary records--whose
departure from the Old World took little more than the breath of their
bodies--are now illustrious beyond the lot of men; and the Mayflower is
immortal beyond the Grecian Argo or the stately ship of any victorious
admiral. Tho this was little foreseen in their day, it is plain now how
it has come to pass. The highest greatness surviving time and storm is
that which proceeds from the soul of man. Monarchs and cabinets,
generals and admirals, with the pomp of courts and the circumstance of
war, in the gradual lapse of time disappear from sight; but the pioneers
of truth, the poor and lowly, especially those whose example elevates
human nature and teaches the rights of man, so that government of the
people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the
earth, such harbingers can never be forgotten, and their renown spreads
coextensive with the cause they served.--_The Qualities that Win:_
CHARLES SUMNER.
_A Study in Profound Thinking_
9. There is something greater in the age than its greatest men; it is
the appearance of a new power in the world, the appearance of the
multitude of men on the stage where as yet the few have acted their
parts alone. This influence is to endure to the end of time. What more
of the present is to survive? Perhaps much of which we now fail to note.
The glory of an age is often hidden from itself. Perhaps some word has
been spoken in our day which we have not designed to hear, but which is
to grow clearer and louder through all ages. Perhaps some silent thinker
among us is at work in his closet whose name is to fill the earth.
Perhaps there sleeps in his cradle some reformer who is to move the
church and the world, who is to open a new era in history, who is to
fire the human soul with new hope and new daring. What else is to
survive the age? That which the age has little thought of, but which is
living in us all; I mean the soul, the immortal spirit. Of this all ages
are the unfoldings, and it is greater than all. We must not feel, in
the contemplation of the vast movements in our own and former times, as
if we ourselves were nothing. I repeat it, we are greater than all. We
are to survive our age, to comprehend it, and to pronounce its
sentence.--_The Present Age:_ W. E. CHANNING.
_A Study of Sustained Power_
10. Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back with me to the
commencement of the century, and select what statesman you please. Let
him be either American or European; let him have a brain the result of
six generations of culture; let him have the ripest training of
university routine; let him add to it the better education of practical
life; crown his temples with the silver locks of seventy years, and show
me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most sanguine admirer will
wreathe a laurel, rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of
this negro,--rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature,
content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust a state to the
blood of its sons,--anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking
his station by the side of Roger Williams, before any Englishman or
American had won the right; and yet this is the record which the history
of rival states makes up for this inspired black of St.
Domingo.--_Toussaint L'Ouverture:_ WENDELL PHILLIPS.
_Study in Beauty of Language_
11. He faced his audience with a tranquil mien and a beaming aspect that
was never dimmed. He spoke, and in the measured cadence of his quiet
voice there was intense feeling, but no declamation, no passionate
appeal, no superficial and feigned emotion. It was simple colloquy--a
gentleman conversing. Unconsciously and surely the ear and heart were
charmed. How was it done?--Ah! how did Mozart do it, how Raffael?
The secret of the rose's sweetness, of the bird's ecstacy, of the
sunset's glory--that is the secret of genius and of eloquence. What was
heard, what was seen, was the form of noble manhood, the courteous and
self-possest tone, the flow of modulated speech, sparkling with
matchless richness of illustration, with apt allusion and happy anecdote
and historic parallel, with wit and pitiless invective, with melodious
pathos, with stinging satire, with crackling epigram and limpid humor,
like the bright ripples that play around the sure and steady prow of the
resistless ship. Like an illuminated vase of odors, he glowed with
concentrated and perfumed fire. The divine energy of his conviction
utterly possest him, and his
"Pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in his cheek, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say his body thought."
Was it Pericles swaying the Athenian multitude? Was it Apollo breathing
the music of the morning from his lips?--No, no! It was an American
patriot, a modern son of liberty, with a soul as firm and as true as was
ever consecrated to unselfish duty, pleading with the American
conscience for the chained and speechless victims of American
inhumanity.--_Eulogy of Wendell Phillips:_ GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.
_A Study in Powerful Delivery_
12. I thank you very cordially, both friends and opponents, if opponents
you be, for the extreme kindness with which you have heard me. I have
spoken, and I must speak in very strong terms of the acts done by my
opponents. I will never say that they did it from passion; I will never
say that they did it from a sordid love of office; I have no right to
use such words; I have no right to entertain such sentiments; I
repudiate and abjure them; I give them credit for patriotic motives--I
give them credit for those patriotic motives which are incessantly and
gratuitously denied to us. I believe we are all united in a fond
attachment to the great country to which we belong; to the great empire
which has committed to it a trust and function from Providence, as
special and remarkable as was ever entrusted to any portion of the
family of man. When I speak of that trust and that function I feel that
words fail. I can not tell you what I think of the nobleness of the
inheritance which has descended upon us, of the sacredness of the duty
of maintaining it. I will not condescend to make it a part of
controversial politics. It is a part of my being, of my flesh and blood,
of my heart and soul. For those ends I have labored through my youth and
manhood, and, more than that, till my hairs are gray. In that faith and
practise I have lived, and in that faith and practise I shall
die.--_Midlothian Speech:_ WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.
_A Study in Purity of Style_
13. Is this a reality? or is your Christianity a romance? is your
profession a dream? No, I am sure that your Christianity is not a
romance, and I am equally sure that your profession is not a dream. It
is because I believe this that I appeal to you with confidence, and that
I have hope and faith in the future. I believe that we shall see, and at
no very distant time, sound economic principles spreading much more
widely among the people; a sense of justice growing up in a soil which
hitherto has been deemed unfruitful; and, which will be better than
all--the churches of the United Kingdom--the churches of Britain
awaking, as it were, from their slumbers, and girding up their loins to
more glorious work, when they shall not only accept and believe in the
prophecy, but labor earnestly for its fulfilment, that there shall come
a time--a blessed time--a time which shall last forever--when "nation
shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any
more."--_Peace:_ JOHN BRIGHT.
_A Study in Common Sense and Exalted Thought_
14. My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole
subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an
object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never
take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no
good object can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied
still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and on the sensitive point,
the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will
have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were
admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in this
dispute there is still no single good reason for precipitate action.
Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who
has never yet forsaken this favored land are still competent to adjust
in the best way all our present difficulty. In your hands, my
dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, are the momentous
issues of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no
conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath
registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the
most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend" it.--_The First
Inaugural Address:_ ABRAHAM LINCOLN.