sources, divided by parties, or surrounded by difficultiesthe call of the country has been to her as the voice of God. Domestic discord ceased at the sound; every man became at once reconciled to his brethren, and the sons of Carolina were all seen crowding to the temple, bringing their gifts to the altar of their common country.

What, sir, was the conduct of the South during the Revolution? Sir, I honor New England for her conduct in that glorious struggle. But, great as is the praise which belongs to her, I think at least equal honor is due to the South. They espoused the quarrel of their brethren with a generous zeal which did not suffer them to stop to calculate their interest in the dispute. Favorites of the mother country, possessed of neither ships nor seamen to create a commercial rivalship, they might have found in their situation a guarantee that their trade would be forever fostered and protected by Great Britain. But, trampling on all considerations, either of interest or of safety, they rushed into the conflict, and, fighting for principle, periled all in the sacred cause of freedom. Never were there exhibited, in the history of the world, higher examples of noble daring, dreadful suffering, and heroic endurance, than by the Whigs of Carolina during the Revolution. The whole State, from the mountains to the sea, was overrun by an overwhelming force of the enemy. The fruits of industry perished on the spot where they were produced, or were consumed by the foe. The "plains of Carolina" drank up the most precious blood of her citizens. Black, smoking ruins marked the places which had been the habitation of her children! Driven from their homes, into the gloomy and almost impenetrable swamps, even there the spirit of liberty survived; and South Carolina, sustained by the example of her Sumpters and her Marions, proved, by her conduct, that though her soil might be overrun, the spirit of her people was invincible.

-Hayne.

AN opinion has long prevailed, Fathers, that, in public prosecutions, men of wealth, however clearly convicted, are always safe. This opinion, so injurious to your order, so detrimental to the state, it is now in your power to refute. A man is on trial before you who is rich, and who hopes his riches will compass his acquittal, but whose life and actions are his sufficient condemnation in the eyes of all candid men. I speak of Caius Verres, and, if he now receive not the sentence his crimes deserve, it shall not be through the lack of a criminal or a prosecutor, but through the failure of the ministers of justice to do their duty.

Passing over the shameful irregularities of his youth, what does the prætorship of Verres exhibit but one continued scene of villainies? The public treasure squandered, a Consul stripped and betrayed, an army deserted and reduced to want, a province robbed, the civil and religious rights of a people trampled upon! But his prætorship in Sicily has crowned his career of wickedness and completed the lasting monument of his infamy. His decisions have violated all law, all precedent, all right. His extortions from the industrious poor have been beyond computation. Our most faithful allies have been treated as enemies. Roman citizens have, like slaves, been put to death with tortures. Men the most worthy have been condemned and banished without a hearing, while the most atrocious criminals have, with money, purchased exemption from the punishment due to their guilt.

I ask now, Verres, what have you to advance against these charges? Art thou not the tyrant prætor, who, at no greater distance than Sicily, within sight of the Italian coast, dared to put to an infamous death, on the cross, that ill-fated and innocent citizen, Publius Gavius Casanus? And what was his offense? He had declared his intention of appealing to the justice of his country against your

brutal persecutions! For this, when about to embark for home, he was seized, brought before you, charged with being a spy, scourged, and tortured. In vain did he exclaim: "I am a Roman citizen! I have served under Lucius Pretius, who is now at Panormus, and who will attest my innocence!" Deaf to all remonstrance, remorseless, thirsting for innocent blood, you ordered the savage punishment to be inflicted! While the sacred words, "I am a Roman citizen!" were on his lips,-words which, in the remotest regions, are a passport to protection, you ordered him to death, to a death upon the cross.

O liberty! O sound once delightful to every Roman ear! O sacred privilege of Roman citizenship! once sacred, now trampled on! Is it come to this? Shall an inferior magistrate, a governor, who holds his whole power of the Roman people, in a Roman province, within sight of Italy, bind, scourge, torture, and put to an infamous death a Roman citizen? Shall neither the cries of innocence expiring in agony, the tears of pitying spectators, the majesty of the Roman Commonwealth, nor the fear of the justice of his country, restrain the merciless monster, who, in the confidence of his riches, strikes at the very root of liberty, and sets mankind at defiance? And shall this man escape? Fathers, it must not be! It must not be, unless you would undermine the very foundations of social safety, strangle justice, and call down anarchy, massacre, and ruin on the commonwealth! -Cicero.

XCVII. IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.

My Lords, I do not mean now to go further than just to remind your Lordships of this,—that Mr. Hastings' government was one whole system of oppression, of robbery of individuals, of spoliation of the public, and of supersession of the whole system of the English government, in order to

K. N. E.-24.

vest in the worst of the natives all the power that could possibly exist in any government; in order to defeat the ends which all governments ought, in common, to have in view. In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villainy upon Warren Hastings, in this last moment of my application to you.

My Lords, what is it that we want here to a great act of national justice? Do we want a cause, my Lords? You have the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms.

Do you want a criminal, my Lords? When was there so much iniquity ever laid to the charge of any one? No, my Lords, you must not look to punish any other such delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent.

My Lords, is it a prosecutor you want? You have before you the Commons of Great Britain as prosecutors; and I believe, my Lords, that the sun, in his beneficent progress round the world, does not behold a more glorious sight than that of men, separated from a remote people by the material bounds and barriers of nature, united by the bond of a social and moral community;-all the Commons of England resenting, as their own, the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the people of India.

Do we want a tribunal? My Lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this. We commit safely the interests of India and humanity into your hands. Therefore, it is with confidence that, ordered by the Commons,

I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

I impeach him in the name of all the Commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored.

I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted; whose properties he has destroyed; whose country he has laid waste and desolate.

I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated.

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured, and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life. -Burke.

XCVIII.-PUBLIC VIRTUE.

I HOPE that in all that relates to personal firmness, all that concerns a just appreciation of the insignificance of human life, whatever may be attempted to threaten or alarm a soul not easily swayed by opposition, or awed or intimidated by menace; a stout heart and a steady eye that can survey, unmoved and undaunted, any mere personal perils that assail this poor, transient, perishing frame, I may without disparagement compare with other men.

There is, however, a sort of courage which, I frankly confess it, I do not possess, a boldness to which I dare not aspire, a valor which I can not covet. I can not lay myself down in the way of the welfare and the happiness of my country. That I can not, I have not the courage to do. I can not interpose the power with which I may be invested, a power conferred, not for my personal benefit nor for my aggrandizement, but for my country's good, to check her onward march to greatness and glory. I have not courage enough. I am too cowardly for that.

I would not, I dare not, in the exercise of such a trust, lie down and place my body across the path that leads my country to prosperity and happiness. This is a sort of