Strong in some hundred spearmen; only great (AO) In that strange spell — a name. (0) Each hour, dark fraud Or open rapine, or protected murder, Cries out against them. But this very day An honest man, my neighbor- there he stands (G) Was struck-struck like a dog, by one who wore (0) (G) The badge of Ursini, because, forsooth! He tossed not high his ready cap in air, Nor lifted up his voice in servile shouts, At sight of that great ruffian! Be we men, (GO) And suffer such dishonor?— men, and wash not The stain away in blood? Such shames are common. I have known deeper wrongs; I, that speak to ye, I had a brother once- a gracious boy, Full of all gentleness, of calmest hope, (0) (AP) Of sweet and quiet joy; (P) Of heaven upon his face, there was the look which limners give How I loved That gracious boy! Younger by fifteen years, Brother at once, and son! He left my side, A summer bloom on his fair cheek; a smile (AG) Parting his innocent lips. In one short hour The pretty, harmless boy was slain! I saw The corse, the mangled corse, and then I cried (GO) For vengeance! ROUSE ye, ROMANS! ROUSE ye, SLAVES! Have ye brave sons? Look in the next fierce brawl To see them die. Have ye fair daughters? Look To see them live, torn from your arms, distained, DISHONORED: and if ye dare call for JUSTICE, Be answered by the LASH. (0) Yet, this is Rome, That sat upon her seven hills, and from her throne (40) Why, in that elder day, to be a Roman Was greater than a king! And, once again— 16. THE SEMINOLE'S DEFIANCE.-G. W. Patten. Blaze, with your serried columns! I will not bend the knee; Some strike for hope of booty; some to defend their all; - I love, among the wounded, to hear his dying moan, And catch, while chanting at his side, the music of his groan. come not here! Think ye to find my homestead?—I gave it to the fire. My tawny household do ye seek?-I am a childless sire. But, should ye crave life's nourishment, enough I have, and good; I live on hate, - 'tis all my bread; yet light is not my food. I loathe you with my bosom! I scorn you with mine eye! And I'll taunt you with my latest breath, and fight you till I die! I ne'er will ask for quarter, and I ne'er will be your slave; The following, in this style, are less vehement, and, for this reason, not so well suited as the foregoing for those students whose delivery is naturally lacking in force or spirit: 17. CIVIL WAR THE GREATEST NATIONAL EVIL, 1829. Lord Palmerston. Some Then come we to the last remedy, civil war. gentlemen say that, sooner or later, we must fight for it, and the sword must decide. They tell us that, if blood were but shed in Ireland, Catholic emancipation might be avoided. Sir, when honorable members shall be a little deeper read in the history of Ireland, they will find that in Ireland blood has been shed, that in Ireland leaders have been seized, 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: "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 |