lutely unattainable object fail to be productive of misery to an individual of madness and confusion to a people. As the inhabitants of those burning climates which lie beneath a tropical sun sigh for the coolness of the mountain and the grove, so (all history instructs us) do nations which have basked for a time in the torrent blaze of an unmitigated liberty, too often call upon the shades of despotism, even of military despotism, to cover them.

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Our lot is happily cast in the temperate zone of freedom: the clime best suited to the development of the moral qualities of the human race; to the cultivation of their faculties, and to the security as well as the improvement of their virtues: a clime not exempt, indeed, from variations of the elements, but variations which purify while they agitate the atmosphere that we breathe. Let us be sensible of the advantages which it is our happiness to enjoy. Let us guard with pious gratitude the flame of genuine liberty, that fire from heaven, of which our constitution is the holy depository; and let us not, for the chance of rendering it more intense and more radiant, impair its purity or hazard its extinction!

366. SPEECH AT PLYMOUTH IN THE YEAR 1823, UPON THE OCCASION OF BEING PRESENTED WITH THE FREEDOM OF THAT TOWN.

But while we thus control even our feelings by our duty, let it not be said that we cultivate peace, either because we fear, or because we are unprepared, for war; on the contrary, if eight months ago the government did not hesitate to proclaim that the country was prepared for war, if war should be unfortunately necessary, every month of peace that has since passed, has but made us so much the more capable of exertion. The resources created by peace are means of war. In cherishing those resources we but accumulate those means. Our present repose is no more a proof of inability to act, than the state of inertness and inactivity in which I have seen those mighty masses that float in the waters above your town, is a proof they are devoid of strength, and incapable of being fitted out for action. You well know, gentlemen, how soon one of those stupendous masses, now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness, - how soon, upon any call of patriotism, or of necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and motion; how soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage; how quickly it would put forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of strength, and awaken its dormant thunder. Such as is one of these magnificent machines when springing from inaction into a display of its might, such is England herself, while apparently passive and motionless she silently concentrates the power to be put forth on an adequate occasion. But God forbid that that occasion shouldarise. After a war sustained for nearly a quarter of a century, — some

times single-handed, and with all Europe arranged at times against her or at her side, — England needs a period of tranquillity, and may enjoy it without fear of misconstruction. Long may we be enabled, gentlemen, to improve the blessings of our present situation, to cultivate the arts of peace, to give to commerce, now reviving, greater extension and new spheres of employment, and to confirm the prosperity now generally diffused throughout this island.

LORD BROUGHAM. 1779-1868.

FROM THE SPEECH ON THE REFORM BILL.

367. PERIL OF DENYING JUST Reforms.

My Lords, I do not disguise the intense solicitude I feel for the event of this debate, because I know full well that the peace of the country is involved in the issue. I cannot look without dismay at the rejection of this measure. But grievous as may be the consequences of a temporary defeat, temporary it can only be; for its ultimate and even speedy success is certain. Nothing can now stop it. Do not suffer yourselves to be persuaded that, even if the present ministers were driven from the helm, any one could steer you through the troubles which surround you without reform. But our successors would take up the task in circumstances far less auspicious. Under them you would be fain to grant a bill, compared with which, the one we now proffer you is moderate indeed. Hear the parable of the Sybil; for it conveys a wise and wholesome moral. She now appears at your gate, and offers you mildly the volumes, the precious volumes, of wisdom and peace. The price she asks is reasonable; to restore the franchise which, without any bargain, you ought voluntarily to give. You refuse her terms, her moderate terms. She darkens the porch no longer. But soon, for you cannot do without her wares, you call her back. Again she comes, but with diminished treasures. The leaves of the book are in part torn away by lawless hands, in part defaced with characters of blood. But the prophetic Maid has risen in her demands; it is Parliaments by the Year; it is Vote by the Ballot; it is Suffrage by the Million! From this you turn away indignant, and for a second time she departs. Beware of her third coming for the treasure you must have; and what price she may next demand who shall tell? It may be even the mace which rests upon that woolsack. What may follow if your course of obstinacy is persisted in, I cannot take upon me to predict, nor do I wish to conjecture. But this I know, that as sure as man is mortal, and to err is human, justice deferred enhances the price at which you must purchase safety and peace; nor can you expect to gather in another crop than they did who went before you, if you persevere in their utterly abominable husbandry of sowing injustice and reaping rebellion. *

You are the highest judicature in this realm. It is a judge's first duty never to pronounce sentence, in the most trifling case, without hearing. Will you make this the exception? Are you really prepared to determine, but not to hear, the mighty cause upon which a nation's hopes and fears hang? You are! Then beware of your decision! Rouse not a peace-loving, b resolute people. Alienate not from your body the affections of a whole empire. I counsel you to assist with your uttermost effort in preserving the peace, in upholding and perpetuating the constitution. Therefore I pray and exhort you not to reject this measure. By all you hold dear, by all the ties that bind every one of us to our common order and our common country, I solemnly adjure you, I warn you, I implore you, yes, on my bended knees, I supplicate you, reject not this bill.

FROM THE SPEECH FOR THE IMMEDIATE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES.

368. SLAVERY OPPOSED TO THE LAW of Nature.

I trust that at length the time is come when Parliament will no longer bear to be told that slave-owners are the best lawgivers on slavery; no longer allow an appeal from the British public to such communities as those in which the Smiths and the Grimsdalls are persecuted to death for teaching the Gospel to the negroes, and the Mosses holden in affectionate respect for torture and murder; no longer suffer our voice to roll across the Atlantic in empty warnings and fruitless orders. Tell me not of rights; talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves. I deny the right; I acknowledge not the property. The principles, the feelings of our common nature, rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding, or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you tell me of the laws that sanction such a crime! There is a law above all the enactments of human codes, - the same throughout the world the same in all times, such as it was before the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the sources of power, wealth, and knowledge, to another, all unutterable woes, such as it is this day. It is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loath rapine, and abhor blood, they will reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy, that man can hold property in man! In vain you appeal to treaties, to covenants between nations: the covenants of the Almighty, whether the Old covenant or the New, denounce such unholy pretensions. To those laws did they of old refer who maintained the African trade. Such treaties did they cite, and not untruly; for by one shameful compact you bartered the glories of Blenheim for the traffic in blood. Yet despite of law and treaty, that infernal traffic is now destroyed, and

its votaries put to death like other pirates. How came this change to pass? Not assuredly by Parliament leading the way; but the country at length awoke; the indignation of the people was kindled; it descended in thunder, and smote the traffic, and scattered its guilty profits to the winds. Now, then, let the planters beware - let their assemblies beware let the government at home beware - let the Parliament beware! The same country is once more awake - awake to the condition of negro slavery; the same indignation kindles in the bosom of the same people; the same cloud is gathering that annihilated the slave trade; and, if it shall descend again, they on whom its crash may fall, will not be destroyed before I have warned them; but I pray that their destruction may turn away from us the more terrible judgments of God.

EDWARD IRVING. 1792-1834.

FROM THE "ORATIONS FOR THE WORD OF GOD."

369. THE Object of Miracles.

There was a time when each revelation of the Word of God had an introduction into this earth which neither permitted men to doubt whence it came, nor wherefore it was sent. If, at the giving of each several truth, a star was not lighted up in heaven, as at the birth of the Prince of Truth, there was done upon the earth a wonder, to make her children listen to the message of their Maker. The Almighty made bare his arm; and, through mighty acts shown by his holy servants, gave demonstration of his truth, and found for it a sure place among the other matters of human knowledge and belief.

But now the miracles of God have ceased, and nature, secure and unmolested, is no longer called on for testimonies to her Creator's voice. No burning bush draws the footsteps to his presence-chamber; no invisible voice holds the ear awake; no hand cometh forth from the obscure to write his purposes in letters of flame. The vision is shut up, and the testimony is sealed, and the word of the Lord is ended, and this solitary volume, with its chapters and verses, is the sum total of all for which the chariot of heaven made so many visits to the earth, and the Son of God himself tabernacled and dwelt among us.

FROM THE "ORATIONS FOR JUDGMENT TO COME."

370. ANTICIPATION OF A FUTURE WORLD OF GLORY.

Yet shall the happy creatures have enough to do, and to enjoy, though there be no misery to comfort, nor evil to stem, nor grief, over whose departure to rejoice. Of how many cheap exquisite joys

are these five senses the inlets! and who is he that can look upon the beautiful scenes of the morning, lying in the freshness of the dew, and the joyful light of the risen sun, and not be happy? Cannot God create another world many times more fair? and cast over it a mantle of light many times more lovely? and wash it with purer dew than ever dropped from the eyelids of the morning? Can he not shut up winter in his hoary caverns, or send him howling over another domain? Can he not form the crystal eye more full of sweet sensations, and fill the soul with a richer faculty of conversing with nature, than the most gifted poet did ever possess? Think you the creative function of God is exhausted upon this dark and troublous ball of earth? or that this body and soul of human nature are the masterpiece of his architecture? Who knows what new enchantment of melody, what new witchery of speech, what poetry of conception, what variety of design, and what brilliancy of execution, he may endow the human faculties withal-in what new graces he may clothe nature, with such various enchantment of hill and dale, woodland, rushing streams, and living fountains; with bowers of bliss and Sabbath scenes of peace, and a thousand forms of disporting creatures, so as to make all the world hath beheld to seem like the gross picture with which you catch infants; and to make the Eastern tale of romances, and the most rapt imagination of Eastern poets, like the ignorant prattle and rude structures which first delight the nursery and afterwards ashame our riper years.