THE

ACADEMICAL

SPEAKER.

EXTRACT FROM A SPEECH OF PATRICK HENRY IN THE LEGISLATURE OF VIRGINIA, IN FAVOUR OF PERMITTING THE BRITISH REFUGEES ΤΟ RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES.

MR CHAIRMAN,

THE personal feelings of a politician ought not to be permitted to enter these walls. The question before us is a national one, and in deciding it, if we act wisely, nothing will be regarded but the interest of the nation. On the altar of my country's good, I, for one, am willing to sacrifice all personal resentments, all private wrongs; and I flatter myself that I am not the only man in this house, who is capable of making such a sacrifice.

We have, Sir, an extensive country, without population. What can be a more obvious policy than that this country ought to be peopled? People form the strength and constitute the wealth of a nation. I want to see our vast forests filled up, by some process a little more speedy than the ordinary course of nature. I wish to see these states rapidly ascending to that rank which their natural advantages authorize them to hold among the nations of the earth.

Cast your eyes, Sir, over this extensive country. Observe the salubrity of your climate; the variety and fertility of your soil; and see that soil intersected, in every quarter, by bold navigable streams, flowing to the East and to the West, as if the finger of Heaven were marking out the course of your settlements, inviting you to enterprise, and pointing the way to wealth.

Sir, you are destined, at some period or other, to become a great agricultural and commercial people: the only ques

tion is, whether you choose to reach this point by slow gradations, and at some distant period-lingering on through a long and sickly minority-subjected meanwhile to the machinations, insults and oppressions of enemies foreign and domestic, without sufficient strength to resist and chastise them; or whether you choose rather to rush at once, as it were, to the full enjoyment of those high destinies, and be able to cope, single-handed, with the proudest oppressor of the world.

If you prefer the latter course, as I trust you do,-encourage emigration-encourage the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants of the old world to come and settle in the land of promise.-Make it the home of the skilful, the industrious, the fortunate and the happy, as well as the asylum of the distressed. Fill up the measure of your population as speedily as you can, by the means which Heaven hath placed in your power; and I venture to prophecy there are those now living, who will see this favoured land amongst the most powerful on earth-able, Sir, to take care of herself, without resorting to that policy which is always so dangerous, though sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid.

Yes, Sir, they will see her great in arts and in arms-her golden harvests waving over fields of immeasurable extent― her commerce penetrating the most distant seas, and her cannon silencing the vain boast of those, who now proudly affect to rule the waves.

CONCLUSION OF THE SAME SPEECH.

INSTEAD of refusing permission to the refugees to return, it is your true policy to encourage emigration to this country, by every means in your power. Sir, you must have men. You cannot get along without them. Those heavy forests of timber, under which your lands are groaning, must be cleared away. Those vast riches which cover the face of your soil, as well as those which lie hid in its bosom, are to be developed and gathered only by the skill and enterprise of men. Your timber, Sir, must be worked up into ships, to transport the productions of the soil, and find the best markets for them abroad. Your great want, Sir, is the want of men; and these you must have, and will have speedily, if you are wise.

Do you ask, Sir, how you are to get them? Open your doors, Sir, and they will come in. The population of the old world is full to overflowing. That population is ground, too, by the oppressions of the governments under which they live. Sir, they are already standing on tiptoe upon their native shores, and looking to your coasts with a wishful and longing eye. They see here, a land blessed with natural and political advantages, which are not equalled by those of any other country upon earth-a land on which a gracious Providence hath emptied the horn of abundancea land over which Peace hath now stretched forth her white wings, and where Content and Plenty lie down at every door! Sir, they see something still more attractive than all this. They see a land in which Liberty hath taken up her abode― that Liberty whom they had considered as fabled goddess, existing only in the fancies of the poets. They see her here, a real divinity-her altars rising on every hand, throughout these happy states-her glories chanted by three millions of tongues-and the whole region smiling under her blessed influence.

Sir, let but this our celestial goddess, Liberty, stretch forth her fair hand towards the people of the old worldtell them to come, and bid them welcome-and you will see them pouring in from the North, from the South, from the East, and from the West. Your wilderness will be cleared and settled; your deserts will smile; your ranks will be filled; and you will soon be in a condition to defy the powers of any adversary.

But gentlemen object to any accession from Great Britain-and particularly to the return of the British refugees. Sir, I feel no objection to the return of those deluded people. They have, to be sure, mistaken their own interests most wonderfully, and most wofully have they suffered the punishment due to their offences. But the relations which we bear to them and to their native country are now changed. Their king hath acknowledged our independence. The quarrel is over. Peace hath returned, and found us a free people.

Let us have the magnanimity, Sir, to lay aside our antipathies and prejudices, and consider the subject in a political light. They are an enterprising monied people. They will be serviceable in taking off the surplus produce of our lands, and supplying us with necessaries during the infant state of our manufactures. Even if they be inimical to us,

in point of feeling and principle, I can see no objection, in a political view, to making them tributary to our advantage. And as I have no prejudices to prevent my making use of them, so, Sir, I have no fear of any mischief they can do us.-Afraid of them! What, Sir, shall we, who have laid the proud British lion at our feet, now be afraid of his whelps?

EXTRACT FROM MR BROUGHAM'S DEFENCE OF J. A. WILLIAMS, FOR A LIBEL ON THE CLERGY OF DURHAM.

It is necessary for me to set before you the picture my learned friend was pleased to draw of the Clergy of the Diocese of Durham, and I shall recall it to your minds almost in his own words. According to him, they stand in a peculiarly unfortunate situation; they are, in truth, the most injured of men.

They all, it seems, entertained the same generous sentiments with the rest of their countrymen, though they did not express them in the old, free English manner, by openly condemning the proceedings against the late Queen; and, after the course of unexampled injustice, against which she victoriously struggled, had been followed by the needless infliction of inhuman torture, to undermine a frame whose spirit no open hostility could daunt, and extinguish the life so long embittered by the same foul arts after that great Princess had ceased to harass her enemies after her glorious but unhappy life had closed, and that princely head was at last laid low by death, which, living, all oppression had only the more illustriously exalted-the venerable the Clergy of Durham, I am now told for the first time, though less forward in giving vent to their feelings than the rest of their fellow-citizens-though not so vehement in their indignation at the matchless and unmanly persecution of the Queen-though not so unbridled in their joy at her immortal triumph, nor so loud in their lamentations over her mournful and untimely end-did, nevertheless, in reality, all the while, deeply sympathize with her sufferings, in the bottom. of their reverend hearts!

When all the resources of the most ingenious cruelty hurried her to a fate without parallel-if not so clamorous, they did not feel the least of all the members of the community-their grief was in truth too deep for utterance-sorrow

clung round their bosoms, weighed upon their tongues, stifled every sound-and, when all the rest of mankind, of all sects and of all nations, freely gave vent to the feelings of our common nature, THEIR silence, the contrast which THEY dis played to the rest of their species, proceeded from the great er depth of their affliction; they said the less because they felt the more!

Oh! talk of hypocrisy after this! Most consummate of all hypocrites! After instructing your chosen official advocate to stand forward with such a defence-such an exposition of your motives—to dare utter the word hypocrisy, and complain of those who charged you with it! This is indeed to insult common sense, and outrage the feelings of the whole human race! If you were hypocrites before, you were downright, frank, honest hypocrites to what you have now made yourselves—and surely, for all you have ever done or ever been charged with, your worst enemies must be satiated with the humiliation of this day, its just atonement, and ample retribution!

INJUDICIOUS USE OF MILITARY POWER.

Extract from LORD BYRON'S Speech on the 'Nottingham Frame-breaking Bill.'

Ir has been stated, that persons in the temporary possession of frames connive at their destruction; if this be proved upon inquiry, it were necessary that such material accessaries to the crime should be principals in the punishment. But I did hope, that any measure proposed by his majesty's government for your lordships' decision would have had conciliation for its basis; or, if that were hopeless, that some previous inquiry, some deliberation, would have been deemed requisite; not that we should have been called at once, without examination, and without cause, to pass sentences by wholesale, and sign death-warrants blindfold.

But, admitting that these men had no cause of complaint, that the grievances of them and their employers were alike groundless, that they deserved the worst; what inefficiency, what imbecility, has been evinced in the method chosen to reduce them! Why were the military called out to be made a mockery of-if they were to be called out at all?