The American Union Speaker Part 4

The wand of British invincibility was broken when the flag of the Guerriere came down. That one event was worth more to the Republic than all the money which has ever been expended for the navy. Since that day the navy has had no stain upon its escutcheon, but has been cherished as your pride and glory. And the American sailor has established a reputation throughout the world,--in peace and in war, in storm and in battle,--for heroism and prowess unsurpa.s.sed. He shrinks from no danger, he dreads no foe, he yields to no superior. No shoals are too dangerous, no seas too boisterous, no climate too rigorous for him. The burning sun of the tropic cannot make him effeminate, nor can the eternal winter of the polar seas paralyze his energies.

R. F. Stockton.

XI.

MORALITY, THE FOUNDATION OF NATIONAL GREATNESS.

When we look forward to the probable growth of this country; when we think of the millions of human beings who are to spread over our present territory; of the career of improvement and glory open to this new people; of the impulse which free inst.i.tutions, if prosperous, may be expected to give to philosophy, religion, science, literature, and arts; of the vast field in which the experiment is to be made, of what the unfettered powers of man may achieve; of the bright page of history which our fathers have filled, and of the advantages under which their toils and virtues have placed us for carrying on their work;--when we think of all this, can we help, for a moment, surrendering ourselves to bright visions of our country's glory before which all the glories of the past are to fade away?

Is it presumption to say that, if just to ourselves and all nations, we shall be felt through this whole continent, that we shall spread our language, inst.i.tutions, and civilization, through a wider s.p.a.ce than any nation has yet filled with a like beneficent influence? And are we prepared to barter these hopes, this sublime moral empire, for conquests by force?

Are we prepared to sink to the level of unprincipled nations, to content ourselves with a vulgar, guilty greatness, to adopt in our youth maxims and ends which must brand our future with sordidness, aggression, and shame?

This country cannot, without peculiar infamy, run the common race of national rapacity. Our origin, inst.i.tutions, and position are peculiar, and all favor an upright honorable course.

Why cannot we rise to n.o.ble conceptions of our destiny? Why do we not feel, that our work as a nation is to carry freedom, religion, science, and a n.o.ble form of human nature over this continent? And why do we not remember, that to diffuse these blessings we must first cherish them in our own borders; and that whatever deeply and permanently corrupts us, will make our spreading influence a curse, not a blessing, to this new world? I am not prophet enough to read our fate. I believe, indeed, that we are to make our futurity for ourselves. I believe, that a nation's destiny lies in its character, in the principles which govern its policy, and bear rule in the hearts of its citizens. I take my stand on G.o.d's moral and eternal law. A nation, renouncing and defying this, cannot be free, cannot be great.

W. E. Channing.

XII.

INTEMPERANCE.

Among the evils of intemperance, much importance is given to the poverty of which it is the cause. But this evil, great as it is, is yet light, in comparison with the essential evil of intemperance. What matters it, that a man be poor, if he carry into his poverty the spirit, energy, reason, and virtues of a man? What matters it, that a man must, for a few years, live on bread and water? How many of the richest are reduced, by disease, to a worse condition than this? Honest, virtuous, n.o.ble-minded poverty, is comparatively a light evil. The ancient philosopher chose it, as a condition of virtue. It has been the lot of many a Christian.

The poverty of the intemperate man owes its great misery to its cause. He who makes himself a beggar, by having made himself a brute, is miserable indeed. He who has no solace, who has only agonizing recollections and harrowing remorse, as he looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his ragged children, has indeed to bear a crushing weight of woe. That he suffers, is a light thing. That he has brought on himself this suffering by the voluntary extinction of his reason, that is the terrible thought, the intolerable curse.

Intemperance is to be pitied and abhorred for its own sake, much more than for its outward consequences. These owe their chief bitterness to their criminal source. We speak of the miseries which the drunkard carries to his family. But take away his own brutality, and how lightened would be these miseries! We talk of his wife and children in rags. Let the rags continue; but suppose them to be the effects of an innocent cause. Suppose his wife and children bound to him by a strong love, which a life of labor for their support, and of unlearned kindness has awakened; suppose them to know that his toils for their welfare had broken down his frame; suppose him able to say, "We are poor in this world's goods, but rich in affection and religious trust. I am going from you; but I leave you to the Father of the fatherless, and to the widow's G.o.d." Suppose this; and how changed these rags!--how changed the cold, naked room! The heart's warmth can do much to withstand the winter's cold;--and there is hope, there is honor, in this virtuous indigence.

What breaks the heart of the drunkard's wife? It is not that he is poor, but that he is a drunkard. Instead of that bloated face, now distorted with pa.s.sion, now robbed of every gleam of intelligence, if the wife could look on an affectionate countenance, which had, for years, been the interpreter of a well-principled mind and faithful heart, what an overwhelming load would be lifted from her! It is a husband, whose touch is polluting, whose infirmities are the witness of his guilt, who has blighted all her hopes, who has proved false to the vow which made her his; it is such a husband who makes home a h.e.l.l,--not one whom toil and disease and Providence have cast on the care of wife and children.

We look too much at the consequences of vice,--too little at the vice itself. It is vice which is the chief weight of what we call its consequences,--vice, which is the bitterness in the cup of human woe.

W. E. Channing.

XIII.

INCONSISTENT EXPECTATIONS.

This world may be considered as a great mart of commerce, where fortune exposes to our view various commodities,--riches, ease, tranquillity, fame, integrity, knowledge. Everything is marked at a settled price,--our time, our labor, our ingenuity, is so much ready money, which we are to lay out to the best advantage. Examine, compare, choose, reject; but stand to your own judgment, and do not, like children, when you have purchased one thing, repine that you do not possess another which you did not purchase.

Such is the force of well-regulated industry that a steady and vigorous exertion of our faculties, directed to one end, will generally insure success. Would you, for instance, be rich? Do you think that single point worth the sacrifice of everything else? You may then be rich. Thousands have become so, from the lowest beginnings, by toil, and patient diligence, and attention to the minutest articles of expense and profit. But you must give up the pleasures of leisure, of mental ease, of a free, unsuspicious temper. If you preserve your integrity, it must be a coa.r.s.e-spun and vulgar honesty. Those high and lofty notions of morals which you brought with you from the schools, must be considerably lowered, and mixed with the baser alloy of a jealous and worldly-minded prudence. You must learn to do hard, lf not unjust things; and as for the nice embarra.s.sments of a delicate and ingenuous spirit, it is necessary to get rid of them as fast as possible.

You must shut your heart against the Muses, and be content to feed your understanding with plain household truths. In short, you must not attempt to enlarge your ideas, or polish your taste, or refine your sentiments, but must keep on in one beaten track, without turning aside either to the right or to the left. "But you say, I cannot submit to drudgery like this; I feel a spirit above it." 'Tis well, be above it then; only do not repine that you are not rich.

Is knowledge the pearl of price in your estimation? That, toy may be purchased by steady application, and long solitary study and reflection.

Bestow these, and you shall be learned. "But," says the man of letters, "what a hardship is it, that many an illiterate fellow, who cannot construe the motto of the arms on his coach, shall raise a fortune and make a figure, while I have little more than the common conveniences of life!" Was it, then, to raise a fortune, that you consumed the sprightly hours of youth in study and retirement? Was it to be rich that you grew pale over the midnight lamp, and distilled the sweetness from the Greek and Roman springs? You have then mistaken your path, and ill employed your industry.

"What reward have I then, for all my labor?" What reward! A large, comprehensive soul, well purged from vulgar fears, and perturbations, and prejudices; able to comprehend and interpret the works of man,--of G.o.d; a rich, flourishing, cultivated mind, furnished with inexhaustible stores of entertainment and reflection; a perpetual spring of fresh ideas, and the conscious dignity of superior intelligence. Good Heaven! What other reward can you ask besides!

"But is it not some reproach upon the economy of Providence, that such a one, who is a mean, dirty fellow, should have ama.s.sed wealth enough to buy half a nation?" Not in the least. He made himself a mean, dirty fellow for that very end. He has paid his health, his conscience, his liberty for it; and will you envy him his bargain? Will you hang your head and blush in his presence, because he outshines you in equipage and show? Lift up your brow with a n.o.ble confidence, and say to yourself "I have not these things, it is true; but it is because I have not sought, because I have not desired them; it is because I possess something better. I have chosen my lot; I am content and satisfied." The characteristic mark of a great and n.o.ble mind is to choose some high and worthy object, and pursue that object through life.

Mrs. Barbauld.

XIV.

THE PATRIOT'S SWORD VINDICATED.

But my Lord, I dissented from the resolutions before us, for other reasons.

I dissented from them, because I felt that my giving them my a.s.sent, I should have pledged myself to the unqualified repudiation of physical force in all countries, at all times, and under every circ.u.mstance. This I could not do. For, my Lord, I do not abhor the use of arms in the vindication of national rights. There are times, when arms will alone suffice, and when political ameliorations call for a drop of blood, and many thousand drops of blood. Opinion, I admit, will operate against opinion. But, as the honorable member for Kilkenny has observed, force must be used against force. The soldier is proof against an argument, but he is not proof against a bullet The man that will listen to reason, let him be reasoned with. But it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone prevail against battalioned despotism.

Then, my Lord, I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral, nor do I conceive it profane to say that the King of Heaven--the Lord of Hosts! the G.o.d of Battles!--bestows his benediction upon those who unsheathe the sword in the hour of a nation's peril. From that evening, on which, in the valley of Bethulia, he nerved the arm of the Jewish girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, down to our day in which he has blessed the insurgent chivalry of the Belgian priest, his almighty hand hath ever been stretched forth from his Throne of Light, to consecrate the flag of freedom--to bless the patriot's sword! Be it in the defense, or be it in the a.s.sertion of a people's liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred weapon; and if, my Lord, it has sometimes taken the shape of the serpent and reddened the shroud of the oppressor with too deep a dye, like the anointed rod of the High Priest, it has at other times, and as often, blossomed into celestial flowers to deck the freeman's brow.

Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my Lord, for, in the pa.s.ses of the Tyrol, it cut to pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and, through those cragged pa.s.ses, struck a path to fame for the present insurrectionist of Inspruck!

Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my Lord; for at its blow, a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and by its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of its crimson light, the crippled Colony sprang into the att.i.tude of a proud Republic--prosperous, limitless, and invincible!

Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my Lord; for it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium--scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps--and knocked their flag and scepter, their laws and bayonets into the sluggish waters of the Scheldt.

My Lord, I learned that it was the right of a nation to govern herself--not in this hall, but upon the ramparts of Antwerp. This, the first article of a nation's creed, I learned upon those ramparts, where freedom was justly estimated, and the possession of the precious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood.

My Lord, I honor the Belgians, I admire the Belgians, I love the Belgians for their enthusiasm, their courage, their success; and I, for one, will not stigmatize, for I do not abhor the means by which they obtained a citizen king, a chamber of deputies.

T. F. Meagher.

XV.

ON BEING FOUND GUILTY OF TREASON.

A jury of my countrymen have found me guilty of the crime for which I stood indicted. For this I entertain not the slightest feeling of resentment towards them. Influenced, as they must have been, by the charge of the lord chief justice, they could have found no other verdict. What of that charge?

Any strong observations on it I feel sincerely would ill befit the solemnity of this scene; but I would earnestly beseech of you, my Lord,--you who preside on that bench,--when the pa.s.sions and prejudices of this hour have pa.s.sed away, to appeal to your own conscience, and to ask of it, was your charge as it ought to have been, impartial and indifferent between the subject and the crown?

My Lords, you may deem this language unbecoming in me, and perhaps it will seal my fate. But I am here to speak the truth, whatever it may cost; I am here to regret nothing I have ever done--to retract nothing I have ever said. I am here to crave, with no lying lip the life I consecrate to the liberty of my country. Far from it, even here--here, where the thief the libertine, the murderer, have left their footprints in the dust; here on this spot, where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I see my early grave in an appointed soil opened to receive me--even here, encircled by these terrors, the hope which has beckoned me to the perilous sea upon which I have been wrecked still consoles, animates, enraptures me.

No; I do not despair of my poor old country--her peace, her liberty, her glory. For that country I can do no more than bid her hope. To lift this island up,--to make her a benefactor to humanity, instead of being the meanest beggar in the world; to restore her to her native powers and her ancient const.i.tution,--this has been my ambition, and this ambition has been my crime. Judged by the law of England, I know this crime entails the penalty of death; but the history of Ireland explains this crime, and justifies it. Judged by that history, I am no criminal, I deserve no punishment. Judged by that history the treason of which I stand convicted loses all its guilt, is sanctioned as a duty, will be enn.o.bled as a sacrifice. With these sentiments, my Lord, I await the sentence of the court.

Having done what I felt to be my duty,--having spoken what I felt to be the truth, as I have done on every other occasion of my short career,--I now bid farewell to the country of my birth, my pa.s.sion, and my death; the country whose misfortunes have invoked my sympathies; whose factions I have sought to still; whose intellect I have prompted to a lofty aim; whose freedom has been my fatal dream. I offer to that country, as a proof of the love I bear her, and the sincerity with which I thought and spoke and struggled for her freedom, the life of a young heart, and with that life all the hopes, the honors the endearments, of a happy and an honored home.

p.r.o.nounce, then, my Lords, the sentence which the laws direct, and I will be prepared to hear it. I trust I shall be prepared to meet its execution.

I hope to be able, with a pure heart and perfect composure, to appear before a higher tribunal--a tribunal where a judge of infinite goodness as well as of justice will preside, and where, my Lords, many, many of the judgments of this world will be reversed.

T. F. Meagher.

XVI.

ADDRESS TO THE AMERICAN TROOPS BEFORE THE BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND.

The time is now near at hand, which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under G.o.d, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of a brave resistance or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or to die. Our own, our country's honor, calls upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion; and, if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us, then, rely on the goodness of our cause and the aid of the Supreme Being, in whose hands victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and n.o.ble actions. The eyes of all our countrymen are now upon us; and we shall have their blessings and praises, if happily we are the instrument of saving them from the tyranny meditated against them.

Let us, therefore, animate and encourage each other, and allow the whole world that a freeman contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.

Liberty, property, life, and honor, are all at stake. Upon your courage and conduct rest the hopes of our bleeding and insulted country. Our wives, children, and parents expect safety from us only; and they have every reason to believe that Heaven will crown with success so just a cause. The enemy will endeavor to intimidate by show and appearance; but remember they have been repulsed on various occasions by a few brave Americans. Their cause is bad,--their men are conscious of it; and, if opposed with firmness and coolness on their first onset, with our advantage of works, and knowledge of the ground, the victory is most a.s.suredly ours. Every good soldier will be silent and attentive, wait for orders, and reserve his fire until he is sure of doing execution.

Washington.