authority with the world. If in our case the representative system ultimately fail, popular governments must be pronounced impossible. No combination of circumstances more favorable to the experiment can ever be expected to occur. The last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with us; and if it should be proclaimed that our example had become an argument against the experiment, the knell of popular liberty would be sounded throughout the earth.

These are incitements to duty; but they are not suggestions of doubt. Our history and our condition, all that is gone before us and all that surrounds us, authorize the belief that popular governments, though subject to occasional variations, perhaps not always for the better in form, may yet in their general character be as durable and permanent as other systems. We know, indeed, that in our country any other is impossible. The principle of free governments adheres to the American soil. It is bedded in it -immovable as its mountains.

And let the sacred obligations which have devolved on this generation and on us sink deep into our hearts. Those are daily dropping from among us who established our liberty and our government. The great trust now descends to new hands. Let us apply ourselves to that which is presented to us as our appropriate object. We can win no laurels in a war for independence. Earlier and worthier hands have gathered them all. Nor are there places for us by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other founders of states. Our fathers have filled them. But there remains to us a great duty of defense and preservation; and there is opened to us also a noble pursuit to which the spirit of the times strongly invites us. Our proper business is improvement. Let our age be the age of improvement. In a day of peace let us advance the arts of peace and the works of peace. Let us develop the resources of our land, call forth its powers, build up its institutions, promote all its great interests, and see whether we also, in our day and generation, may not perform something worthy to be remembered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of union and harmony. In pursuing the great objects which our condition points out to us, let us act under a settled conviction, and a habitual feeling that these twenty-four states are one

country. Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And by the blessing of God may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration, forever.

THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON

ON CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION

[Arthur Wellesley, afterward Duke of Wellington, British soldier and statesman, was born in Ireland in 1769. He was educated at Eton and at the military college of Angers, France. In 1787 he entered the army as ensign, and in 1793 became lieutenant-colonel of the Thirty-third Regiment. He was sent to India with this regiment in 1796, and there, at Seringapatam, in Mysore, and at Assaye, displayed great military ability. In 1807, after is return to Great Britain, he was appointed Irish Secretary; and in 1808 he took command of troops sent to operate against the French in the Spanish Peninsula, where he won high distinction. After a brilliant military career, during which he defeated the army of Napoleon Bonaparte at the memorable battle of Waterloo, in 1815, he was appointed prime minister of England in 1828, and held that office until 1830. Catholic Emancipation, in advocating which he delivered the following speech in the House of Lords, in 1829, was the most notable event of his ministry. In his later years he was called the "Iron Duke." The Duke was foreign secretary in Peel's Cabinet (1834-35) and a member of his administration (1841-46). He died at Walmer Castle, Kent, September 14, 1852, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, next to the tomb of Lord Nelson.]

IT

T is now my duty to move that your lordships read this bill a second time, and to explain to your lordships the grounds on which I recommend this measure to your consideration. I may be under the necessity of requesting a larger portion of your time and attention, upon this occasion, than I have hitherto been in the habit of occupying; but I assure you, my lords, that it is not my intention to take up an instant of your time with respect to myself, or my own conduct in this transaction, any further than to express my regret that I should differ in opinion. on this subject from so many of those for whom I entertain the highest respect and regard. However, my lords, I

must say that I have considered the part which I have taken upon this subject as the performance of a public duty absolutely incumbent upon me; and that no private regard, no respect for the opinion of any noble lord, would have induced me to depart from the course which I have considered it my duty to adopt. I must say, likewise, this, that comparing my own opinion with that of others upon this subject, I have, during the period I have been in office, had opportunities of forming a judgment upon this subject which others have not had; and they will admit that I should not have given the opinion I have given, if I was not intimately and firmly persuaded that that opinion was a just one.

My lords, the point which I shall first bring under your lordships' consideration is the state of Ireland. I know that by some it has been considered that the state of Ireland has nothing to do with this question—that it is a subject which ought to be left entirely out of our consideration. My lords, they tell us that Ireland has been disturbed for the last thirty years, that to such disturbance we have been accustomed, and that it does not at all alter the cir cumstances of the case, as they have hitherto appeared. My lords, it is perfectly true that Ireland has been disturbed during the long period I have stated; but within the last year or two there have been circumstances of particular aggravation. Political circumstances have in a considerable degree occasioned that aggravation; but besides this, my lords, I must say, although I have no positive legal proof of the fact, that I have every reason to believe that there has been a considerable organization of the people for the purposes of mischief. My lords, this organization is, it appears to me, to be proved not only by the declarations of those who formed and who arranged it, but likewise by the effects which it has produced in the election of churchwardens throughout the country; in the circumstances attending the election for the county of Clare; in the circumstances that preceded and followed that election; in the proceedings of a gentleman who went at the head of a body of men to the north of Ireland; in the simultaneous proceedings of various bodies of men in the south of Ireland, in Thurles, Templemore, Killenaule, Cahir, Clonmel,

and other places; in the proceedings of another gentleman in the King's County; and in the recall of the former gentleman from the north of Ireland by the Roman Catholic Association. In all these circumstances it is quite obvious to me that there was an organization and direction of some superior authority. This organization has certainly produced a state of society in Ireland which we have not heretofore witnessed, and an aggravation of all the evils which before afflicted that unfortunate country.

My lords, late in the year a considerable town was attacked in the middle of the night by a body of people who came from the neighboring mountains, the town of Augher. They attacked it with arms, and were driven from it with arms by the inhabitants of the town. This is a state of things which I feel your lordships will admit ought not to exist in a civilized country. Later in the year still, a similar event occurred in Charleville; and in the course of last autumn the Roman Catholic Association deliberated upon the propriety of adopting, and the means of adopting, the measure of ceasing all dealings between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Is it possible to believe that supposing these dealings had ceased, that supposing this measure had been carried into execution, as I firmly believe it was in the power of those who deliberated upon it to carry it into execution; is it possible to believe that those who could cease these dealings would not likewise have ceased. to carry into execution the contracts into which they had entered? Will any man say that people in this situation are not verging toward that state in which it would be impossible to expect from them that they would be able to perform the duties of jurymen, or to administer justice between man and man for the protection of the lives and properties of his Majesty's subjects? My lords, this is the state of society to which I wished to draw your attention, and for which it is necessary that Parliament should provide a remedy. But before I proceed to consider what those remedies ought to be, I wish just to show you what the effect of this state of society has been upon the King's prerogative.

My lords, his Majesty could not create a peer, and the reason he could not create a peer was this. His Majesty's