Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study Part 3

I believe in woman-suffrage for the sake of woman herself. I believe in it because I am the son of a woman and the husband of a woman and the father of a prospective woman. I remember that at one of the first woman-suffrage meetings I ever attended one of the first speakers was an odd fellow from the neighboring town, considered half a lunatic. That didn't make much impression in those days when we were all considered a little crazy, but he was a little crazier than the rest of us. He pushed forward on the platform, seeming impatient to speak, and throwing his old hat down by his side, he said, "I don't know much about this subject nor any other; but I know this, my mother was a woman." I thought it was the best condensed woman-suffrage argument I ever heard in my life.

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

From "For Self-respect and Self-protection." When the people complain they must either be right or in error. If they be right, we are in duty bound to inquire into the conduct of the ministers and to punish those who appear to have been most guilty. If they be in error, we ought still to inquire into the conduct of our ministers in order to convince the people that they have been misled. We ought not, therefore, in any question relating to inquiry, to be governed by our own sentiments. We must be governed by the sentiments of our const.i.tuents if we are resolved to perform our duty both as true representatives of the people and as faithful subjects of our king. LORD CHATHAM.

From "Second Speech on Sir Robert Walpole."

For this great evil some immediate remedy must be provided; and I confess, my lords, I did hope that his Majesty's servants would not have suffered so many years of peace to relapse without paying some attention to an object which ought to engage and interest all. I flattered myself I should see some barriers thrown up in defense of the const.i.tution; some impediment formed to stop the rapid progress of corruption. I doubt not we all agree that something must be done. I shall offer my thoughts, such as they are, to the consideration of the House; and I wish that every n.o.ble lord that hears me would be as ready as I am to contribute his opinion to this important service. I will not call my own sentiments crude and undigested. It would he unfit for me to offer anything to your lordships which I had not well considered; and this subject, I own, has not long occupied my thoughts. I will now give them to your lordships without reserve. LORD CHATHAM.

From "Speech On the State of the Nation."

We have the freedom and freshness of a youthful nationality. We can trace out new paths which must be followed by our successors; we have a right to plant wherever we please the trees under shade of which they will sit. The independence which we thus enjoy, and the freedom to originate which we can claim, are in themselves privileges, but privileges that carry with them great responsibilities. JOHN WILLIAM DAWSON.

From "On the Progress of Science in Canada."

From your great cities and teeming prairies, from your learned altars and countless cottages, from your palaces on sea and land, from your millions on the waters and your multiplied millions on the plains, let one united cheering voice meet the voice that now comes so earnest from the South, and let the two voices go up in harmonious, united, eternal, ever-swelling chorus, Flag of our Union! wave on; wave ever! Ay, for it waves over freemen, not subjects; over States, not provinces; over a union of equals, not of lords and va.s.sals; over a land of law, of liberty, and peace, not of anarchy, oppression, and strife! BENJAMIN HARVEY HILL.

From "On the Perils of the Nation."

It is really astonishing to hear such an argument seriously urged in this House. But, say these gentlemen, if you found yourself upon a precipice, would you stand to inquire how you were led there before you considered how to get off? No, sir; but if a guide had led me there I should very probably be provoked to throw him over before I thought of anything else. At least I am sure I should not trust to the same guide for bringing me off; and this, sir, is the strongest argument that can be used for an inquiry. LORD CHATHAM.

From "Speech on Sir Robert Walpole."

But let us hope for better things. Let us trust in that gracious Being who has. .h.i.therto held our country as in the hollow of his hand. Let us trust to the virtue and the intelligence of the people, and to the efficacy of religious obligation. Let us trust to the influence of Washington's example. Let us hope that that fear of heaven which expels all other fear, and that regard to duty which transcends all other regard, may influence public men and private citizens, and lead our country still onward in her happy career. Full of these gratifying antic.i.p.ations and hopes, let us look forward to the end of that century which is now commenced. A hundred years hence other disciples of Washington will celebrate his birth, with no less of sincere admiration than we now commemorate it. When they shall meet, as we now meet, to do themselves and him that honor, so surely as they shall see the blue summits to his native mountains rise in the horizon, so surely as they shall behold the river on whose banks he lived, and on whose banks he rests, still flowing on toward the sea, so surely may they see, as we now see, the flag of the Union floating on the top of the capitol; and then, as now, may the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country! DANIEL WEBSTER.

From "The Character of Washington."

I am now talking of the invisible realities of another world, of inward religion, of the work of G.o.d upon a poor sinner's heart. I am now talking of a matter of great importance, my dear hearers; you are all concerned in it, your souls are concerned in it, your eternal salvation is concerned in it. You may be all at peace, but perhaps the devil has lulled you asleep into a carnal lethargy and security, and will endeavor to keep you there till he get you to h.e.l.l, and there you will be awakened; but it will be dreadful to be awakened and find yourselves so fearfully mistaken, when the great gulf is fixt, when you will be calling to all eternity for a drop of water to cool your tongue and shall not obtain it. GEORGE WHITEFIELD.

From "On the Method of Grace."

Why, sir, have I been so careful in bringing down with great particularity these distinctions? Because in my judgment there are certain logical consequences following from them as necessarily as various corollaries from a problem in Euclid. If we are at war, as I think, with a foreign country, to all intents and purposes, how can a man here stand up and say that he is on the side of that foreign country and not be an enemy to his country? BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER.

From "Character and Results of War."

My lords, this awful subject, so important to our honor, const.i.tution, and our religion, demands the most solemn and effectual inquiry. And again I call upon your lordships, and the united powers of the State, to examine it thoroughly and decisively and to stamp upon it an indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. And again I implore those holy prelates of our religion to do away these iniquities from among us. Let them perform an ill.u.s.tration; let them purify this House and this country from this sin. LORD CHATHAM.

From "The Attempt to Subjugate America."

Now, there are three questions before the people of the country to-day, and they are all public, all unselfish, all patriotic, all elevated, and all enn.o.bling as subjects of contemplation and of action. They are the public peace in this large and general sense that I have indicated. They are the public faith, without which there is no such thing as honorable national life; and the public service, which unless pure and strong and n.o.ble makes all the pagans of free government but doggerel in our ears.

WILLIAM MAXWELL EVARTS.

From "The Day We Celebrate."

Indeed, gentlemen, Washington's farewell address is full of truths important at all times, and particularly deserving consideration at the present. With a sagacity which brought the future before him, and made it like the present, he saw and pointed out the dangers that even at this moment most imminently threaten us. I hardly know how a greater service of that kind could now be done to the community than by a renewed and wide diffusion of that admirable paper, and an earnest invitation to every man in the country to reperuse and consider it. Its political maxims are invaluable; its exhortations to love of country and to brotherly affection among citizens, touching; and the solemnity with which it urges the observance of moral duties, and impresses the power of religious obligation, gives to it the highest character of truly disinterested, sincere, parental advice. DANIEL WEBSTER.

From "The Character of Washington."

Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence; or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression or the miseries of my countrymen. The proclamation of the provisional government speaks for our views; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarily or debas.e.m.e.nt at home, or subjection, humiliation, or treachery from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor for the same reason that I would resist the foreign and domestic oppressor; in the dignity of freedom I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and its enemy should enter only by pa.s.sing over my lifeless corpse. Am I, who lived but for my country, and who have subjected myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor and the bondage of the grave only to give my countrymen their rights and my country her independence--am I to be loaded with calumny and not suffered to resent or repel it? No, G.o.d forbid! ROBERT EMMET.

From "Speech when under Sentence of Death."

When the law is the will of the people, it will be uniform and coherent; but fluctuation, contradiction, and inconsistency of councils must be expected under those governments where every evolution in the ministry of a court produces one in the State--such being the folly and pride of all ministers, that they ever pursue measures directly opposite to those of their predecessors. SAMUEL ADAMS.

From "American Independence."

I refer to the past not in malice, for this is no day for malice, but simply to place more distinctly in front the gratifying and glorious change which has come both to our white fellow citizens and ourselves and to congratulate all upon the contrast between now and then, the new dispensation of freedom with its thousand blessings to both races, and the old dispensation of slavery with its ten thousand evils to both races--white and black. In view, then, of the past, the present, and the future, with the long and dark history of our bondage behind us, and with liberty, progress and enlightenment before us, I again congratulate you upon this auspicious day and hour. FREDERICK DOUGLa.s.s.

From "Inauguration of the Freedmen's Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln."

In all popular tumults the worst men bear the sway at first. Moderate and good men are often silent for fear of modesty, who in good time may declare themselves. Those who have any property to lose are sufficiently alarmed already at the progress of these public violences and violations to which every man's dwelling, person, and property are hourly exposed.

Numbers of such valuable men and good subjects are ready and willing to declare themselves for the support of government in due time, if government does not fling away its own authority. LORD MANSFIELD.

From "The Right of England to Tax America."

In jurisprudence, which reluctantly admits any new adjunct, and counts in its train a thousand champions ready to rise in defense of its formularies and technical rules, the victory has been brilliant and decisive. The civil and the common law have yielded to the pressure of the times, and have adopted much which philosophy and experience have recommended, altho it stood upon no test of the pandects and claimed no support from the feudal polity. Commercial law, at least so far as England and America are concerned, is the creation of the eighteenth century. It started into life with the genius of Lord Mansfield, and, gathering in its course whatever was valuable in the earlier inst.i.tutes of foreign countries, had reflected back upon them its own superior lights, so as to become the guide and oracle of the commercial world.

JOSEPH STORY.