macy is suspended over the world, save only one bright spot, which breaks out from the political hemisphere of the West, to enlighten, and animate, and gladden the human heart. Observe that, by the downfall of liberty here, all mankind are enshrouded in a pall of universal darkness. To you belongs the high privilege of transmitting, unimpaired, to posterity, the fair character and liberty of our country. Do you expect to execute this high trust by trampling or suffering to be trampled down, law, justice, the Constitution, and the rights of the people? by exhibiting examples of inhumanity, and cruelty, and ambition? Beware how you give a fatal sanction, in this infant period of our Republic, scarcely yet two-score years old, to military insubordination. Remember that Greece had her Alexander, Rome her Cæsar, England her Cromwell, France her Bonaparte, and that, if we would escape the rock on which they split, we must avoid their errors.

212. Controversial, Interrogative Style: Frequent Upward Inflections (Prodominating Terminal Stress (§ 101), becoming, on very emphatic words of one syllable, Compound (§ 103: a; § 45: b, c).

24. THE EXPUNGING RESOLUTION, 1837.-Henry Clay.

What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this expunging resolution? Can you make that not to be which has been? Can you eradicate from mémory and from history the fact that, in March, 1834, a majority of the Senate of the United States pássed the resolution which excites your énmity? Is it your váin and wicked object to arrogate to yourselves that power of annihilating the past which has

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like the stain on the hands of the guilty Macbeth, all | òcean's |

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25. ON THE JUDICIARY ACT, 1802.-Gouverneur Morris.

What will be the situation of these States, organized as they now are, if, by the dissolution of our national compact, they are left to themselves? What is the probable result? We shall either be the victims of foreign intrigue, and, split into factions, fall under the domination of a foreign power, or else, after the misery and torment of a civil war, become the subjects of an usurping military despot. What but this compact, what but this specific part of it, can save us from ruin? The judicial power, that fortress of the Constitution, is now to be overturned. With honest Ajax, I would not only throw a shield before it, I would build around it a wall of brass. But I am too weak to defend the rampart against the host of assailants. I must call to my assistance their good sense, their patriotism and their virtue. Do not, gentlemen, suffer the rage of passion to drive Reason from her seat! If this law be indeed bad, let us join to remedy the defects. Has it been passed in a manner which wounded your pride, or roused your resentment? Have, I conjure you, the magnanimity to pardon that offense! I entreat, I implore you, to sacrifice these angry passions to the interests of the country. Pour out this pride of opinion on the altar of patriotism. Let it be an expiating libation for the weal of America. Do not, for God's sake, do not suffer that pride to plunge us all into the abyss of ruin!

Indeed, indeed, it will be but of little, very little, avail, whether one opinion or the other be right or wrong; it will

heal no wounds, it will pay no debts, it will rebuild no ravaged towns. Do not rely on that popular will which has brought us frail beings into political existence. That opinion is but a changeable thing. It will soon change. This very measure will change it. You will be deceived. Do not, I beseech you, in a reliance on a foundation so frail, commit the dignity, the harmony, the existence of our nation, to the wild wind! Trust not your treasure to the waves. Throw not your compass and your charts into the ocean. Do not believe that its billows will waft you into port. Indeed, indeed, you will be deceived! Cast not away this only anchor of our safety. I have seen its progress. I know the difficulties through which it was obtained: I stand in the presence of Almighty God, and of the world, and I declare to you that, if you lose this charter, never, - no, never will you get another! We are now, perhaps, arrived at the parting point. Here, even here, we stand on the brink of fate. Pause pause! for heaven's sake, pause!

26. AGAINST THE EMBARGO, 1808.-Josiah Quincy.

I ask, in what page of the Constitution you find the power of laying an embargo. Directly given, it is nowhere. Never before did society witness a total prohibition of all intercourse like this, in a commercial nation. But it has been asked in debate, "Will not Massachusetts, the cradle of liberty, submit to such privations?" An embargo liberty was never cradled in Massachusetts. Our liberty was not so much a mountain nymph as a sea nymph. She was free as air. She could swim, or she could run. The ocean was her cradle. Our fathers met her as she came, like the goddess of beauty, from the waves. They caught her as she was sporting on the beach. They courted her while she was spreading her nets upon the rocks. But an embargo liberty, a handcuffed liberty, liberty in fetters, a liberty traversing between

the four sides of a prison and beating her head against the walls, is none of our offspring. We abjure the monster! Its parentage is all inland.

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Is embargo independence? Deceive not yourselves! It is palpable submission! Gentlemen exclaim, “Great Britain smites us on one cheek!" And what does Administration? "It turns the other, also." Gentlemen say, "Great Britain is a robber; she takes our cloak." And what says Administration? "Let her take our coat, also." France and Great Britain require you to relinquish a part of your commerce, and you yield it entirely! At every corner of this great city we meet some gentlemen of the majority wringing their hands and exclaiming, "What shall we do? Nothing but an embargo will save us. Remove it and what shall we do?" Sir, it is not for me, an humble and uninfluential individual, at an awful distance from the predominant influences, to suggest plans of government. But, to my eye, the path of our duty is as distinct as the Milky Way,-all studded with living sapphires, glowing with cumulating light. It is the path of active preparation, of dignified energy. It is the path of 1776! It consists not in abandoning our rights, but in supporting them, as they exist, and where they exist,on the ocean as well as on the land. But I shall be told, "This may lead to war." I ask, "Are we now at peace?" Certainly not, unless retiring from insult be peace; unless shrinking under the lash be peace! The surest way to prevent war is not to fear it. The idea that nothing on earth is so dreadful as war is inculcated too studiously among us. Disgrace is worse! Abandonment of essential rights is worse!

27. CICERO AGAINST VERRES.-Marcus Tullius Cicero.

I ask now, Verres, what you have to advance against this charge. Will you pretend to deny it? Will you pretend that anything false, that even anything aggravated,