I sold them. I will always defend myself against the assassin; but with large bodies it is different. To the people I will bow: they may be my enemy. -I never shall be theirs. At the emancipation of Ireland, in 1782, I took a leading part in the foundation of that Constitution which is now endeavored to be destroyed. Of that Constitution I was the author; in that Constitution I glory; and for it the honorable gentleman should bestow praise, not invent calumny. Notwithstanding my weak state of body, I come to give my last testimony against this Union, so fatal to the liberties and interests of my country. I come to make common cause with these honorable and virtuous gentlemen around me; to try and save the Constitution; or if not to save the Constitution, at least to save our characters, and remove from our graves the foul disgrace of standing apart while a deadly blow is aimed at the independence of our country. The right honorable gentleman says I fled from the country after exciting rebellion, and that I have returned to raise another. No such thing. The charge is false. The civil war had not commenced when I left the kingdom; and I could not have returned without taking a part. On the one side there was the camp of the rebel; on the other, the camp of the minister, a greater traitor than that rebel. The stronghold of the Constitution was nowhere to be found. I agree that the rebel who rose against the Government should have suffered; but I missed on the scaffold the right honorable gentleman. Two desperate parties were in arms against the Constitution. The right honorable gentleman belonged to one of those parties, and deserved death. I could not join the rebel-I could not join the Government - I could not join torture-I could not join half-hanging-I could not join free quarter-I could take part with neither. I was therefore absent from a scene where I could not be active without self-reproach, nor indifferent with safety. Many honorable gentlemen thought differently from me; I respect their opinions, but I keep my own; and I think now, as I thought then, that the treason of the minister against the liberties of the people was infinitely worse than the rebellion of the people against the minister. I have returned, not as the right honorable Member has said, to raise another storm; I have returned to discharge an honorable debt of gratitude to my country, that conferred a great reward for past services, which, I am proud to say, was not greater than my desert. I have returned to protect that Constitution, of which I was the parent and the founder, from the assassination of such men as the honorable gentleman and his unworthy associates. They are corrupt; they are seditious; and they, at this very moment, are in a conspiracy against their country. I have returned to refute a libel as false as it is malicious, given to the public under the appellation of a report of a committee of the lords. Here I stand ready for impeachment or trial; I dare accusation. I defy the honorable gentleman; I defy the Government; I defy their whole phalanx; let them come forth. I tell the ministers I will neither give them quarter nor take it. I am here to lay the shattered remains of my constitution on the floor of this House in defense of the liberties of my country. UNSURRENDERING FIDELITY TO COUNTRY (Peroration of the Speech of May 26th, 1800, against Union with England) WHE THEN the liberty and security of one country depend on the honor of another, the latter may have much honor, but the former can have no liberty. To depend on the honor of another country is to depend on the will; and to depend on the will of another country is the definition of slavery. "Depend on my honor," said Charles I., when he trifled about the Petition of Right. I will trust the people with the custody of their own liberty, but I will trust no people with the custody of any liberty other than their own, whether that people be Rome, Athens, or Britain. Observe how the minister speaks of that country which is to depend hereafter on British honor, which, in his present power, is, in fact, his honor. "We had to contend with the leaders of the Protestants, 'enemies to government'; the violent and in flamed spirit of the Catholics; the disappointed ambition of those who would ruin the country because they could not be the rulers of it." Behold the character he gives of the enemies of the Union, namely, of twenty-one counties convened at public meetings by due notice; of several other counties that have petitioned; of most of the great cities and towns, or, indeed, of almost all the Irish, save a very few mistaken men, and that body whom Government could influence. Thus the minister utters a national proscription at the moment of his projected 2334 Union; he excludes by personal abuse from the possibility of identification, all the enemies of the Union, all the friends of the parliamentary Constitution of 1782, that great body of the Irish; he abuses them with a petulance more befitting one of his Irish ministers than an exalted character, and infinitely more disgraceful to himself than to them; one would think one of his Irish railers had lent him his vulgar clarion to bray at the people. This union of parliaments, this proscription of people, he follows by a declaration wherein he misrepresents their sentiments as he had before traduced their reputation. After a calm and mature consideration, the people have pronounced their judgment in favor of a Union; of which assertion not one single syllable has any existence in fact, or in the appearance of fact, and I appeal to the petitions of twenty-one counties publicly convened, and to the other petitions of other counties numerously signed, and to those of the great towns and cities. To affirm that the judgment of a nation is erroneous may mortify, but to affirm that her judgment against is for; to assert that she has said aye when she has pronounced no; to affect to refer a great question to the people; finding the sense of the people, like that of the Parliament, against the question, to force the question; to affirm the sense of the people to be for the question; to affirm that the question is persisted in because the sense of the people is for it; to make the falsification of her sentiments the foundation of her ruin and the ground of the Union; to affirm that her Parliament, Constitution, liberty, honor, property, are taken away by her own authority; there is, in such artifice, an effrontery, a hardihood, an insensibility, that can best be answered by sensations of astonishment and disgust, excited on this occasion by the British minister, whether he speaks in gross and total ignorance of the truth, or in shameless and supreme contempt for it. The Constitution may be for a time so lost; the character of the country cannot be lost. The ministers of the Crown will, or may, perhaps at length, find that it is not so easy to put down. forever an ancient and respectable nation, by abilities, however great, and by power and by corruption, however irresistible; liberty may repair her golden beams, and with redoubled heat animate the country; the cry of loyalty will not long continue against the principles of liberty; loyalty is a noble, a judicious, and a capacious principle; but in these countries loyalty, distinct from liberty, is corruption, not loyalty. The cry of the connection will not, in the end, avail against the principles of liberty. Connection is a wise and a profound policy; but connection without an Irish Parliament is connection. without its own principle, without analogy of condition, without the pride of honor that should attend it; is innovation, is peril, is subjugation-not connection. The cry of disaffection will not, in the end, avail against the principles of liberty. Identification is a solid and imperial maxim, necessary for the preservation of freedom, necessary for that of empire; but, without union of hearts-with a separate government, and without a separate parliament, identification is extinction, is dishonor, is conquest not identification. Yet I do not give up the country: I see her in a swoon, but she is not dead; though in her tomb she lies helpless and motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her cheek a glow of beauty "Thou art not conquered; beauty's ensign yet While a plank of the vessel sticks together, I will not leave her. Let the courtier present his flimsy sail, and carry the light bark of his faith with every new breath of wind: I will remain anchored here with fidelity to the fortunes of my country, faithful to her freedom, faithful to her fall. GREGORY OF NAZIANZUS (c. 325-390) REGORY "NAZIANZEN," though a native of Cappadocia, was so celebrated as an orator and preacher that he was called to lecture on rhetoric in the University at Athens. He was born about the year 325 at Nazianzus, the town from which he took his surname, and educated at Cæsarea, at Alexandria, and at Athens. In the latter city he became greatly attached to Basil the Great, on whom he delivered a celebrated funeral oration, generally instanced as the best example of his style. As a preacher and theologian, St. Gregory was held in the highest esteem. He is classed as one of the great Fathers of the Eastern Church, and is praised for his "sublime wit, subtle apprehension, and great stock of human learning." He held the office of Bishop of Constantinople from 380 to his death in 390. EULOGY ON BASIL OF CESAREA (From the Funeral Oration Preached on the Text, "Their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the end of the world") WHO more than Basil honored virtue or punished vice? Who evinced more favor toward the right-doing, or more severity toward offenders -he whose very smile was often praise; whose silence, reproof, in the depths of conscience reaching and arousing the sense of guilt? Grant that he was no light prattler, no jester, no lounger in the markets. Grant that he did not ingratiate himself with the multitude by becoming all things to all, and courting their favor: what then? Should he not, with all the right judging, receive praise for this rather than condemnation? Is it deemed a fault in the lion that he has not the look of the ape; that his aspect is stern and regal; that his movements, even in sport, are majestic, and command at once wonder and delight? Or do we admire it as proof of |