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dear: and thus will you supply (if my happiness is now aught to you) the only vacancy in the round of pure bliss high Heaven bestows." From "Eulogy on Washington," 1799.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS TO ENGLAND.

JOHN RANDOLPH.

I ACKNOWLEDGE the influence of a Shakspeare and a Milton upon my imagination, of a Locke upon my understanding, of a Sidney upon my political principles, of a Chatham upon qualities which, would to God, I possessed in common with that illustrious man! of a Tillotson, a Sherlock, and a Porteus upon my religion. This is a British influence which I can never shake off. I allow much to the just and honest prejudices growing out of the Revolution. But by whom have they been suppressed, when they ran counter to the interests of my country? By Washington. By whom, would you listen to them, are they most keenly felt? By felons escaped from the jails of Paris, Newgate, and Kilmainham, since the breaking out of the French revolution; who, in this abused and insulted country, have set up for political teachers, and whose disciples give no other proof of their progress in republicanism, except a blind devotion to the most ruthless military despotism that the world ever saw. These are the patriots who scruple not to brand with the epithet of tory, the men (looking towards the seat of Col. Stewart) by whose blood your liberties have been cemented. These are they, who hold in such keen remembrance the outrages of the British armies, from which many of them are deserters. Ask these self-styled patriots where they were during the American war (for they are, for the most part, old enough to have borne arms), and you strike them dumb; their lips are closed in eternal silence. If it were allowable to entertain partialities, every consideration of blood, language, religion, and interest, would incline us towards England; and yet, shall they be alone extended to France and her ruler, whom we are bound to believe a chastening God suffers as the scourge of a guilty world! On all other nations he tramples; he holds them in contempt; England alone he hates; he would, but he cannot despise her; fear cannot despise; and shall we disparage our ancestors?

From "Speech on the Increase of the Army," 1811.

THE INJURIES OF ENGLAND.

JOHN RANDOLPH.

BUT the outrages and injuries of England-bred up in the principles of the revolution, I can never palliate, much less defend them. I well remember flying with my mother, and her new-born child, from Arnold

and Phillips-and we were driven by Tarleton and other British Pandours from pillar to post, while her husband was fighting the battles of his country. The impression is indelible on my memory; and yet (like my worthy old neighbor, who added seven buckshot to every cartridge at the battle of Guilford, and drew a fine sight at his man), I must be content to be called a tory by a patriot of the last importation. Let us not get rid of one evil (supposing it possible), at the expense of a greater: "mutatis mutandis," suppose France in possession of the British naval power-and to her the trident must pass, should England be unable to wield it-what would be your condition? What would be the situation of your seaports, and their seafaring inhabitants! Ask Hamburg, Lubec! Ask Savannah! What! sir, when their privateers are pent up in our harbors by the British bull-dogs, when they receive at our hands every rite of hospitality, from which their enemy is excluded; when they capture in our own waters, interdicted to British armed ships, American vessels; when such is their deportment towards you, under such circumstances; what could you expect if they were the uncontrolled lords of the ocean? Had those privateers at Savannah borne British commissions; or had your shipments of cotton, tobacco, ashes and what not, to London and Liverpool, been confiscated, and the proceeds poured into the English Exchequer my life upon it, you would never have listened to any miserable wire-drawn distinctions between "orders and decrees affecting our neutral rights," and "municipal decrees," confiscating in mass your whole property: you would have had instant war! The whole land would have blazed out in war. From "Speech on the Increase of the Army," 1811.

THE CHARACTER OF LAFAYETTE.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS.

LAFAYETTE discovered no new principle of politics or of morals. He invented nothing in science. He disclosed no new phenomenon in the laws of nature. Born and educated in the highest order of feudal nobility, under the most absolute monarchy of Europe, in possession of an affluent fortune, and master of himself and of all his capabilities at the moment of attaining manhood, the principle of republican justice and of social equality took possession of his heart and mind, as if by inspiration from above. He devoted himself, his life, his fortune, his hereditary honors, his towering ambition, his splendid hopes, all to the cause of liberty. He came to another hemisphere to defend her. He became one of the most effective champions of our Independence; but, that once achieved, he returned to his own country, and thenceforward took no part in the controversies which have divided us. In the events

of our Revolution, and in the forms of policy which we have adopted for the establishment and perpetuation of our freedom, Lafayette found the most perfect form of government. He wished to add nothing to it. He would gladly have abstracted nothing from it. Instead of the imaginary Republic of Plato, or the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, he took a practical existing model, in actual operation here, and never attempted or wished more than to apply it faithfully to his own country.

It was not given to Moses to enter the promised land; but he saw it from the summit of Pisgah. It was not given to Lafayette to witness the consummation of his wishes in the establishment of a Republic, and the extinction of all hereditary rule in France. His principles were in advance of the age and hemisphere in which he lived. A Bourbon still reigns on the throne of France, and it is not for us to scrutinize the title by which he reigns. The principles of elective and hereditary power, blended in reluctant union in his person, like the red and white roses of York and Lancaster, may postpone to aftertime the last conflict to which they must ultimately come. The life of the Patriarch was not long enough for the development of his whole political system. Its final accomplishment is in the womb of time.

From "Address before Congress," 1834.

THE FUTURE GLORY OF AMERICA.

DAVID RAMSAY.

WHEN I anticipate in imagination the future glory of my country, and the illustrious figure it will soon make on the theatre of the world, my heart distends with generous pride for being an American. What a substratum for empire! compared with which, the foundation of the Macedonian, the Roman, and the British sink into insignificance. Some of our large states have territory superior to the island of Great Britain, whilst the whole together are little inferior to Europe itself. Our independence will people this extent of country with freemen, and will stimulate the innumerable inhabitants thereof, by every motive, to perfect the acts of government, and to extend human happiness.

I congratulate you on our glorious prospects. Having for three long years weathered the storms of adversity, we are at length arrived in view of the calm haven of peace and security. We have laid the foundations of a new empire, which promises to enlarge itself to vast dimensions, and to give happiness to a great continent. It is now our turn to figure on the face of the earth, and in the annals of the world. The arts and sciences are planted among us, and, fostered by the auspi cious influence of equal governments, are growing up to maturity, while truth and freedom flourish by their sides. Liberty, both civil

and religious, in her noontide blaze, shines forth with unclouded lustre on all ranks and denominations of men.

Ever since the flood, true religion, literature, arts, empire, and riches have taken a slow and gradual course from east to west, and are now about fixing their long and favorite abode in this new western world. Our sun of political happiness is already risen, and hath lifted its head over the mountains, illuminating our hemisphere with liberty, light, and polished life. Our independence will redeem one quarter of the globe from tyranny and oppression, and consecrate it to the chosen seat of truth, justice, freedom, learning, and religion. We are laying the foundation of happiness for countless millions. Generations yet unborn will bless us for the blood-bought inheritance we are about to bequeath them. Oh happy times! Oh glorious days! Oh kind, indulgent, bountiful Providence, that we live in this highly-favored period, and have the honor of helping forward these great events, and of suffering in a cause of such infinite importance!

From "Fourth of July Address," 1778.

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.

EDWARD LIVINGSTON.

HISTORY presents to us the magic glass on which, by looking at past, we may discern future events. It is folly not to read; it is perversity not to follow its lessons. If the hemlock had not been brewed for felons in Athens, would the fatal cup have been drained by Socrates? If the people had not been familiarized to scenes of judicial homicide, would France or England have been disgraced by the useless murder of Louis or of Charles? If the punishment of death had not been sanctioned by the ordinary laws of those kingdoms, would the one have been deluged with the blood of innocence, of worth, of patriotism, and of science, in her revolution? Would the best and noblest lives of the other have been lost on the scaffold in her civil broils? Would her lovely and calumniated queen, the virtuous Malesherbes, the learned Condorcet-would religion, personified in the pious ministers of the altar, courage and honor, in the host of high-minded nobles, and science, in its worthy representative, Lavoisier-would the daily hecatomb of loyalty and worth,-would all have been immolated by the stroke of the guillotine; or Russell and Sidney, and the long succession of victims of party and tyranny, by the axe? The fires of Smithfield would not have blazed, nor, after the lapse of ages, should we yet shudder at the name of St. Bartholomew, if the ordinary ecclesiastical law had not usurped the attributes of divine vengeance, and, by the sacrilegious and absurd doctrine, that offences against the Deity were to be punished with death, given a pretext to these atrocities. Nor, in

the awful and mysterious scene on Mount Calvary, would that agony have been inflicted, if by the daily sight of the cross, as an instrument of justice, the Jews had not been prepared to make it one of their sacrilegious rage. But there is no end of the examples which crowd upon the memory, to show the length to which the exercise of this power, by the law, has carried the dreadful abuse of it, under the semblance of justice. Every nation has wept over the graves of patriots, heroes, and martyrs, sacrificed by its own fury. Every age has had its annals of blood.

JUDGES AMONG MEN.

TRISTAM BURGES.

JUDGES, we are told, sir, are to learn by travel. Whither, how, and addressing themselves to whom? Not to visit law schools, or colleges of civilians; not as the Solons or Platos of antiquity travelled, to consult the Initiati of Sais, the Sanhedrim of Palestine, or the disciples of the Persian Zoroaster. They must, however, have the benefit of travel; and, if so, in the common method in coaches, wagons, solos, gigs, carryalls; in steamboats, packet-boats, and ferry-boats; receiving the full benefit in eating-houses, taverns, boarding-houses, and bar-rooms, of the conversation of learned tapsters, stewards, and stage-coach drivers. No man, I must own, who travels in the ordinary methodand judges can hardly afford to travel in different style-will lose any portion of these several sorts of accommodation and instruction. Judges will, in serious truth it is said, by travel, mingle with the people, and often come in contact with them. Will they mingle with the poor, the ordinary? With mechanical men; with middling interest men; with the great community of toil, and sinew, and production? No, sir, they can do no such thing. Let them have the humility of Lazarus, and the versatile affability of Alcibiades, and they can do no such thing. There is to such men, as it was once said of a learned judge-than whom no man ever bore his honors more meekly-there is, I say, to the feelings of such men, around a judge, a kind of repulsive atmosphere. They stand aloof, and give him large room. They bow, not, indeed, with servility, but with profound respect; and look towards him with a kind of hallowed reverence, as one set apart, and consecrated to the service, and surrounded by the ritual of justice. With all these men, the judge can hold no tangible communion. The assurance of wealth, the confidence of rank, office, power, will press through this medium, and come hand to hand with him. Do the gentlemen, sir, mean to say that, for such purposes, judges should mingle with the people?

From "Speech in the Senate on the Judiciary," 1825.

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