of the Constitution, and that their very first duty is to dismiss the Democratic party from the administration of the Government. Why shall it not be done? All agree that it ought to be done. What, then, shall prevent its being done? Nothing but timidity or division of the opponents of the Democratic party. Some of these opponents start one objection, and some another. Let us notice these objections briefly. One class say that they cannot trust the Republican party; that it has not avowed its hostility to slavery boldly enough, or its affection for freedom earnestly enough. I ask in reply: Is there any other party which can be more safely trusted? Every one knows that it is the Republican party or none, that shall displace the Democratic party. But I answer further, that the character and fidelity of any party are determined, necessarily, not by its pledges, programs, and platforms, but by the public exigencies, and the temper of the people when they call it into activity. Subserviency to slavery is a law written, not only on the forehead of the Democratic party, but also in its very soul-so resistance to slavery, and devotion to freedom, the popular elements now actively working for the Republican party among the people, must and will be the resources for its ever-renewing strength and constant invigoration. Others cannot support the Republican party, because it has not sufficiently exposed its platform, and determined what it will do, and what it will not do, when triumphant. It may prove too progressive for some, and too conservative for others. As if any party ever foresaw so clearly the course of future events as to plan a universal scheme for future action, adapted to all possible emergencies. Who would ever have joined even the Whig party of the Revolution, if it had been obliged to answer, in 1775, whether it would declare for Independence in 1776, and for this noble Federal Constitution of ours in 1787, and not a year earlier or later? The people of the United States will be as wise next year, and the year afterward, and even ten years hence, as we are now. They will oblige the Republican party to act as the public welfare and the interests of justice and human ity shall require, through all the stages of its career, whether of trial or triumph. Others will not venture an effort, because they feel that the Union would not endure the change. Will such objectors tell me how long a constitution can bear a strain directly along the fibres of which it is composed? This is a Constitution of freedom. It is being converted into a Constitution of slavery. It is a republican Constitution. It is being made an aristocratic one. Others wish to wait until some collateral questions concerning temperance, or the exercise of the elective franchise, are properly settled. Let me ask all such persons whether time enough has not been wasted on these points already, without gaining any other than this single advantage, namely, the discovery that only one thing can be effectually done at one time, and that the one thing which must and will be done at any one time is just that thing which is most urgent, and will no longer admit of postponement or delay. Finally, we are told by faint-hearted men that they despond; the Democratic party, they say, is unconquerable, and the dominion of slavery is consequently inevitable. I reply to them, that the complete and universal dominion of slavery would be intolerable enough when it should have come after the last possible effort to escape should have been made. There would, in that case, be left to us the consoling reflection of fidelity to duty. But I reply, further, that I know-few, I think, know better than I-the resources and energies of the Democratic party, which is identical with the slave-power. I do ample justice to its traditional popularity. I know further-few, I think, know better than I-the difficulties and disadvantages of organizing a new political force like the Republican party, and the obstacles it must encounter in laboring without prestige and without patronage. But, notwithstanding all this, I know that the Democratic party must go down, and that the Republican party must rise into its place. The Democratic party derived its strength, originally, from its adoption of the principles of equal and exact justice to all So long as it practised this principle faithfully, it was invulnerable. It became vulnerable when it renounced the principle, and since that time it has maintained itself, men. not by virtue of its own strength, or even of its traditional merits, but because there as yet had appeared in the political field no other party that had the conscience and the courage to take up, and avow, and practise the life-inspiring principles which the Democratic party had surrendered. At last, the Republican party has appeared. It avows now, as the Republican party of 1800 did, in one word, its faith and its works: "Equal and exact justice to all men.' Even when it first entered the field, only half-organized, it struck a blow which only just failed to secure complete and triumphant victory. In this, its second campaign, it has already won advantages which render that triumph now both easy and certain. The secret of its assured success lies in that very characteristic which, in the mouth of scoffers, constitutes its great and lasting imbecility and reproach. It lies in the fact that it is a party of one idea; but that idea is a noble one-an idea that fills and expands all generous souls; the idea of equality-the equality of all men before human tribunals and human laws, as they are all equal before the Divine tribunal and Divine laws. I know, and you know, that a revolution has begun. I know, and all the world knows, that revolutions never go backward. Twenty senators and a hundred representatives proclaim boldly in Congress to-day sentiments and opinions and principles of freedom which hardly so many men, even in this free state, dared to utter in their own homes twenty years ago. While the Government of the United States, under the conduct of the Democratic party, has been all that time surrendering one plain and castle after another to slavery, the people of the United States have been no less steadily and perseveringly gathering together the forces with which to recover back again all the fields and all the castles which have been lost, and to confound and overthrow, by one decisive blow, the betrayers of the Constitution and freedom forever. RICHARD LALOR SHEIL IRELAND'S PART IN ENGLISH ACHIEVEMENT [Richard Lalor Sheil, an Irish patriotic orator, was born in Tipperary, Ireland, in 1791. He received his education at a Jesuit college in England and at Trinity College, Dublin. He settled in the Irish capital as a barrister, devoting himself also to literature with success. But it was as an orator that he was destined to achieve an enduring renown. The agitation for Roman Catholic Emancipation, headed by Daniel O'Connell, had assumed formidable proportions. Sheil came vigorously to the support of O'Connell and was himself elected to Parliament. His speeches lifted him far above any Irish patriot of his time, with the single exception of the great liberator himself. He subsequently filled important posts under the government. His death occurred in Italy in 1851, while acting as British Minister at Florence. The following speech, characteristically Irish in its fervid eloquence and stanch patriotism, was delivered in the House of Commons in 1837.] HER WHER EREVER we turn our eyes, we see the national power dilating, expanding, and ascending; never did a liberated nation spring on in the career that freedom throws open towards improvement with such a bound as we have; in wealth, in intelligence, in high feeling, in all the great constituents of a state, we have made in a few years an astonishing progress. The character of our country is completely changed: we are free, and we feel as if we never had been slaves. Ireland stands as erect as if she had never stooped; although she once bowed her forehead to the earth, every mark and trace of her prostration have been effaced. But these are generalities; these are vague and abstract vauntings, without detail. Well, if you stand in need of specification, it shall be rapidly, but not inconclusively, given. But hold: I was going to point to the first law offices in the country, filled by Roman Catholics; I was going to point to the second judicial office in Ireland, filled by a Roman Catholic; I was going to point to the crowds of Roman Catholics, who, in every profession and walk of life, are winning their way to eminence in the walks that lead to affluence or to honor. But one single fact suffices for my purpose: emancipation was followed by reform, and reform has thrown sixty men, devoted to the interests of Ireland, into the House of Commons. If the Clare election was a great incident; if the Clare election afforded evidence that emancipation could not be resisted, look at sixty of us (what are Longford and Carlow but a realization of the splendid intimations that Clare held out?), look, I say, at sixty of us-the majority, the great majority, of the representatives of Ireland-leagued and confederated by an obligation and a pledge as sacred as any with which men, associated for the interests of their country, were ever bound together. Thank God, we are here! I remember the time when the body to which I belong was excluded from all participation in the great legislative rights of which we are now in the possession. I remember to have felt humiliated at the tone in which I heard the cause of Ireland pleaded, when I was occasionally admitted under the gallery of the House of Commons. I felt pain at hearing us represented as humble suppliants for liberty, and as asking freedom as if it were alms that we were soliciting. Perhaps that tone was unavoidable: thank God, it is no longer necessary or appropriate. Here we are, in all regards your equals, and demanding our rights as the representatives of Britons would demand their own. We have less eloquence, less skill, less astuteness than the great men to whom, of old, the interests of Ireland were confided; but we make up for these imperfections by the moral port and national bearing that become us. In mastery of diction we may be defective; in resources of argument we may be wanting; we may not be gifted with the accomplishments by which persuasion is produced; but in energy, in strenuousness, in union, in fidelity to our country and to each other, and, above all, in the undaunted and dauntless determination to enforce equality for Ireland, we stand unsurpassed. This, then, is the power with which the noble lord courts an encounter, foretells his own victories, and triumphs in their anticipation in the House of Commons. Where are his |