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earth which swallows up the friends of virtue, and drinks the blood of the just.

Truth! friendship! my country! sacred objects, sentiments dear to my heart, accept my last sacrifice. My life was devoted to you, and will render you and glorious.

my

death easy Just heaven! enlighten this unfortunate people for whom I desired liberty.—Liberty!—It is for noble minds. It is not for weak beings who enter into a composition with guilt, and cover selfishness and cowardice with the name of prudence. It is not for corrupt wretches, who rise from the bed of debauchery, or from the mire of indigence, to feast their eyes on the blood that streams from the scaffold. It is the portion of a people who delight in humanity, practice justice, despise their flatterers, and respect the truth. While you are not such a people, Oh my fellow-citizens! you will talk in vain of liberty: instead of liberty you will have licentiousness, of which you will all fall victims in your turns; you will ask for bread, and dead bodies will be given you; and you will at last bow down your necks to the yoke.

I have neither concealed my sentiments nor my opinions. I know that a Roman lady was sent to the scaffold for lamenting the death of her son. I know that in times of delusion and party rage, he who dares avow himself the friend of the proscribed, exposes himself to their fate. But I despise death; I never feared any thing but guilt, and I will not purchase life at the expense of a base subterfuge. Wo to the times! wo to the people among whom doing homage to disregarded truth can be attended with danger; and happy he who in such circumstances is bold enough to brave it!

15.

ENTERPRISING SPIRIT OF NEW-ENGLAND.-Burke.

As to the wealth, Mr. Speaker, which the colonies have drawn from the sea by their fisheries, you had all that matter fully opened at your bar. You surely thought those acquisitions of value; for they seemed even to excite your envy; and yet the spirit by which that enterprising employment has been exercised, ought rather, in my opinion, to have raised your esteem and admiration. And pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it?— Pass by the other parts and look at the manner in which the people of New-England have of late carried on the whale fishery.

Whilst we follow them amongst the tumbling mountains of

ice and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay, and Davis' Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting place in the progress of their victorious industry.

Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them, than the accumulated winter of both the poles. We know that while some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along the coasts of Brazil. No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

When I contemplate these things; when I know that the colonies in general, owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of a watchful and suspicious government, but that through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt, and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

16. LOVE OF COUNTRY.-Minto.

Gentlemen, We have but one question to resolve-shall we defend our country, or resign it?

And first, I ask-What is that country?—what is this golden prize for which we are to contend ?—a country, rich in all the blessings that are derived from a free and equal government ;— a government which seems to have grown and matured itself by the continued exercise of wisdom in the lawgivers, and virtue in the people, through a long series of ages; which has been sanctioned by the applause, and even by the acknowledged

envy of the whole world; but the excellence of which is yet better proved by the unceasing progress of the people in every species of prosperity and happiness; a government which knows no distinction amongst us in the protection of the laws; which enables every man of every degree, alike to acquire the fair fruits of honesty, industry, of useful talents, of genius, and even of fortune; and, when acquired, secures alike to all the firm possession of their own; a government which, thus perfect in theory, has been administered through the whole at least of our generation, by the most virtuous, the most just, the most benevolent man in the nation. Such is the sovereign whom we are summoned to renounce: such the government which we are commanded, by an insolent stranger, to exchange for his foreign yoke.

Let me ask once again, what is that country we would defend? It is that in which we have all drawn our first breath; which has reared us kindly to strength and manhood, which has been our mother and our tender nurse; it is that in which the ashes of our fathers are deposited; it has been our cradle, and it is the hallowed tomb of our ancestors. It is that in which we have contracted the most sacred engagements, the dearest relations of human life; here we have found the companions of our childhood, the friends of our youth, the gentle partners of our lives; here our memory points at every turn to some haunt of infancy, to the scene of some endearing hour, of some treasured recollection in maturer age; in fine, to some resistless motive of love and filial duty To sum up all in one word, it is our country! our dear native land! That monster never breathed, so far distorted from the forms of nature, whose bosom has not acknowledged that strongest instinct, that most universal passion, that most rational and virtuous affection of all those which God has implanted in the breasts of his creatures—the love of his country.

17. FUTURE PUNISHMENT.-Lamont.

Future punishment is, of all evils, the most dreadful; and, therefore, of all evils, the most to be avoided. The calamities which mortals inherit, in their earthly tabernacle, are slight and transitory-soon fly off, and die for ever. But those woes which fester in the souls of bad men after death, are at once intolerable and interminable. Their exquisite acuteness can

only be equaled by their endless duration. At that awful period, when these woes commence, the sons of vice must take up their abode in the dismal habitations of darkness and despair ; in which reside only demons, and the spirits of malevolent men! They must make their bed in hell; a dreadful bed indeed! where rest comes neither day nor night, where the voice of gladness is never heard, where peace and joy can never enter; "but the smoke of their torments ascendeth for ever and ever;" where the soul is ever forced upwards, by the desire of happiness; but is ever pressed downwards by the weight of iniquity; whilst this melancholy reflection ever prays upon the heart—all the treasures of celestial felicity might have been mine, had not my own obstinate wickedness barred against me the gates of heaven. There the worm of conscience never dies, and the fire of appetite is never quenched. There the tears of grief are never banished from the eye, nor the heavings of sorrow from the heart. There the understanding, like a condemned criminal, is shut up in a dark dungeon, to brood for ever on its own calamity. There the passions burn with unquenchable desire, and are perpetually racked with despair of enjoyment. There the memory serves as a cruel engine, to rake up the ashes of guilty deeds, to overwhelm the soul in an abyss of sorrow-whilst remorse, like a gnawing vulture, feeds upon the soul. There are wounds without balm, pains without ease, distress without relief, afflictions without pity, sufferings without limit, and anxiety without interval.

All this might yet be borne, did ever hope, that sweet cordial of calamity, break through the sullen gloom, and, with the fair prospects of deliverance, cheer the wretched sufferer. But, alas alas! there even hope, the last refuge of unhappy minds, is for ever excluded; and nothing presents itself, but the gloom of despair, and the blackness of darkness for ever and ever. Just God! how wretched is the situation of thy creatures, when they desert thee, the fountain of life; violate the laws of thy government, and wilfully pursue their own destruction!

18.

IMPOSSIBILITY OF CONQUERING AMERICA.- -Chatham.

It has been usual, on similar occasions of difficulty and distress, for the crown to make application to this house, the great hereditary council of the nation, for advice and assistance. As it is the right of parliament to give, so it is the duty of the

crown to ask it. But on this day, and in this extremely momentous exigency, no reliance is reposed on your councilsno advice is asked of parliament; but the crown from itself, and by itself, declares an unalterable determination to pursue its own preconcerted measures; and what measures, my lords? Measures which have produced hitherto nothing but disappointments and defeats. I cannot, my lords, I will not join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. This, my lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment: it is not a time for adulation; the smoothness of flattery cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the throne in the language of truth. We must, if possible, dispel the darkness and delusion which envelop it; and display, in its full danger and genuine colors, the ruin which is brought to our doors. Can ministers still presume to expect support in their infatuation! Can parliament be so dead to its dignity and duty as to give their support to measures thus obtruded and forced upon them? Measures, my lords, which have reduced this great and flourishing empire to scorn and contempt. But yesterday, "and England might have stood against the world.—Now, none so poor to do her reverence." The people whom we at first despised as rebels, but whom we now acknowledge as enemies, are abetted against you, supplied with every military store, their interest consulted, and their ambassadors entertained by your inveterate enemy; and our ministers do not and dare not interpose with dignity and effect. The desperate state of our army abroad is in part known. No man more highly esteems and honors the English troops than I do I know their virtues and their valor: I know they can achieve any thing except impossibilities: and I know that the conquest of English-America is an impossibility. You cannot, my lords, you cannot conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst, but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. You may swell every expense, and strain every effort, accumulate every assistance, and extend your traffick to the shambles of every German despot; your attempts for ever will be vain and impotent; doubly so, indeed, from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your adversaries, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop remained in my country, I never would lay down my armsnever, never, never.

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