trials have been had, and punishments have been inflicted. They will find, indeed, almost every page of the history of Ireland darkened by bloodshed, by seizures, by trials, and by punishments. But what has been the effect of these measures? They have, indeed, been successful in quelling the disturbances of the moment; but they never have gone to their cause, and have only fixed deeper the poisoned barb that rankles in the heart of Ireland. Can one believe one's ears, when one hears respectable men talk so lightly—nay, almost so wishfully-of civil war? Do they reflect what a countless multitude of ills those three short syllables contain? It is well, indeed, for the gentlemen of England, who live secure under the protecting shadow of the law, whose slumbers have never been broken by the clashing of angry swords, whose harvests have never been trodden down by the conflict of hostile feet, it is well for them to talk of civil war, as if it were some holiday pastime, or some sport of children:

66

They jest at scars who never felt a wound."

But, that gentlemen from unfortunate and ill-starred Ireland, who have seen with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears, the miseries which civil war produces, — who have known, by their own experience, the barbarism, ay, the barbarity, which it engenders, that such persons should look upon civil war as anything short of the last and greatest of national calamities, - is to me a matter of the deepest and most unmixed astonishment. I will grant, if you will, that the success of such a war with Ireland would be as signal and complete as would be its injustice; I will grant, if you will, that resistance would soon be extinguished with the lives of those who resisted; I will grant, if you will, that the crimsoned banner of England would soon wave, in undisputed supremacy, over the smoking ashes of their towns, and the blood-stained solitude of their fields. But I tell you that

England herself never would permit the achievement of such a conquest; England would reject, with disgust, laurels that were dyed in fraternal blood; England would recoil, with loathing and abhorrence, from the bare contemplation of so devilish a triumph!

18. UNION WITH GREAT BRITAIN, 1800.-Henry Grattan.

The minister misrepresents the sentiments of the people, as he has before traduced their reputation. He asserts, that after a calm and mature consideration, they have pronounced their judgment in favor of an Union. Of this assertion not one syllable has any warrant in fact, nor in the appearance of fact. I appeal to the petitions of twenty-one counties in evidence. To affirm that the judgment of a nation against is for; to assert that she has said ay when she has pronounced nay; to make the falsification of her sentiments the foundation of her ruin, and the ground of the Union; to affirm that her Parliament, Constitution, liberty, honor, property, are taken away by her own authority, — there is, in such artifice, an effrontery, a hardihood, an insensibility, that can best be answered by sensations of astonishment and disgust.

The Constitution may be for a time so lost. The character of the country cannot be so lost. The ministers of the Crown will, or may, perhaps, at length find that it is not so easy, by abilities however great, and by power and corruption however irresistible, to put down forever an ancient and respectable Nation. Liberty may repair her golden beams, and with redoubled heat animate the country. The cry of loyalty will not long continue against the principles of liberty. Loyalty is a noble, a judicious, and a capacious principle; but in these countries loyalty, distinct from liberty, is corruption, not loyalty.

The cry of disaffection will not, in the end, avail against the principle of liberty. I do not give up the country. I see her in a swoon, but she is not dead. Though in her

tomb she lies helpless and motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her cheek a glow of beauty:

“Thou art not conquered; Beauty's ensign yet

Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks,

And Death's pale flag is not advanced there.'

While a plank of the vessel sticks together, I will not leave her. Let the courtier present his flimsy sail, and carry the light bark of his faith with every new breath of wind; I will remain anchored here, with fidelity to the fortunes of my country, faithful to her freedom, faithful to her fall!

19. REPLY TO LORD NORTH, 1774.-Col. Barré.

Sir, this proposition is so glaring; so unprecedented in any former proceedings of Parliament; so unwarranted by any delay, denial or provocation of justice, in America; so big with misery and oppression to that country, and with danger to this, that the first blush of it is sufficient to alarm and rouse me to opposition. It is proposed to stigmatize a whole people as persecutors of innocence, and men incapable of doing justice; yet you have not a single fact on which to ground that imputation! I expected the noble lord would have supported this motion by producing instances in which officers of Government in America had been prosecuted with unremitting vengeance, and brought to cruel and dishonorable deaths, by the violence and injustice of American juries. But he has not produced one such instance; and I will tell you more, sir, — he cannot produce one! The instances which have happened are directly in the teeth of his proposition. Col. Preston and the soldiers who shed the blood of the people were fairly tried, and fully acquitted. It was an American jury, a New England jury, a Boston jury, which tried and acquitted them. Col. Preston has, under his hand, publicly declared that the inhabitants of the very town in which their fellow-citizens had been sac

rificed were his advocates and defenders.

Is this the return

you make them? Is this the encouragement you give them to persevere in so laudable a spirit of justice and moderation? But the noble Lord says, "We must now show the Americans that we will no longer sit quiet under their insults." Sir, I am sorry to say that this is declamation unbecoming the character and place of him who utters it. In what moment have you been quiet? Has not your Government, for many years past, been a series of irritating and offensive measures, without policy, principle or moderation? Have not your troops and your ships made a vain and insulting parade in their streets and in their harbors? Have you not stimulated discontent into disaffection, and are you not now goading disaffection into rebellion? Can you expect to be well informed when you listen only to partisans? Can you expect to do justice when you will not hear the accused?

Let the banners be once spread in America, and you are an undone people. You are urging this desperate, this destructive issue. In assenting to your late Bill, I resisted the violence of America at the hazard of my popularity there. I now resist your frenzy at the same risk here. I know the vast superiority of your disciplined troops over the Provincials; but beware how you supply the want of discipline by desperation! What madness is it that prompts you to attempt obtaining that by force which you may more certainly procure by requisition? The Americans may be flattered into anything; but they are too much like yourselves to be driven. Have some indulgence for your own likeness; respect their sturdy English virtue; retract your odious exertions of authority, and remember that the first step towards making them contribute to your wants is to reconcile them to your Government.

20. ENMITY TOWARD GREAT BRITAIN.-R. Choate.

Mr. President, we must distinguish a little. That there exists in this country an intense sentiment of nationality; a cherished energetic feeling and consciousness of our independent and separate national existence; a feeling that we have a transcendent destiny to fulfill, which we mean to fulfill; a great work to do, which we know how to do, and are able to do; a career to run, up which we hope to ascend, till we stand on the steadfast and glittering summits of the world; a feeling that we are surrounded and attended by a noble historical group of competitors and rivals, the other nations of the earth, all of whom we hope to overtake, and even to distance;-such a sentiment as this exists, perhaps, in the character of this people. And this I do not discourage, I do not condemn. But, sir, that among these useful and beautiful sentiments, predominant among them, there exists a temper of hostility toward this one particular nation, to such a degree as to amount to a habit, a trait, a national passion—to amount to a state of feeling which "is to be regretted," and which really threatens another war— this I earnestly and confidently deny.

No, sir! no, sir! We are above all this. Let the Highland clansman, half naked, half civilized, half blinded by the peat-smoke of his cavern, have his hereditary enemy and his hereditary enmity, and keep the keen, deep and precious hatred, set on fire of hell, alive if he can; let the North American Indian have his, and hand it down from father to son, by Heaven knows what symbols of alligators, and rattlesnakes, and war-clubs, smeared with vermilion and entwined with scarlet; let such a country as Poland,cloven to the earth, the armed heel on the radiant forehead, her body dead, her soul not able to die,-let her remember the "wrongs of days long past"; let the lost and wandering tribes of Israel remember theirs-the manliness and the