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1798 there were some brave men, some valiant men, at head of the people at large; but there were many traitors, who left the people in the power of their enemies. The Curragh of Kildare afforded an instance of the fate which Irishmen were to expect, who confided in their Saxon enemies. Oh, it was an ill-organized, a premature, a foolish, and an absurd insurrection; but you have a leader now who never will allow you to commit any act so foolish or so destructive.

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How delighted do I feel with the thorough conviction which has .come over the minds of the people, that they could not gratify your enemies more than by committing a crime. No; our ancestors suffered for confiding in the English, but we never will confide in them. They suf fered for being divided among themselves. There is no division among They suffered for their own dissensions-for not standing man to man by each other's side. We shall stand peaceably side by side in the face of every enemy. Oh, how delighted was I in the scenes which I witnessed as I came along here to-day! How my heart throbbed, how my spirit. was elevated, how my bosom swelled with delight at the multitude which I beheld, and which I shall behold, of the stalwart and strong men of Kildare! I was delighted at the activity and force that I saw around me; and my old heart grew warm again in admiring the beauty of the dark-eyed maids and matrons of Kildare. Oh, there is a starlight sparkling from the eye of a Kildare beauty, that is scarcely equaled, and could not be excelled, all over the world. And remember that you are the sons, the fathers, the brothers, and the husbands of such women, and a traitor or a coward could never be connected with any of them.

Yes, I am in a county remarkable in the history of Ireland for its bravery and its misfortune, for its credulity in the faith of others, for its people judged of the Saxon by the honesty and honor of its own natures. I am in a country celebrated for the sacredness of its shrines and fanes. I am in a country where the lamp of Kildare's holy shrine burned with its sacred fire, through ages of darkness and storm; that fire which for six centuries burned before the high altar without being extinguished, being fed continuously, without the slightest interruption; and it seemed to me to have been not an inapt representation of the continuous fidelity and religious love of country of the men of Kildare. Yes, you have those high qualities-religious fidelity, continuous love of country. Even your enemies admit that the world has never produced any people that exceeded the Irish in activity and strength. The Scottish philosopher has declared, and the French philosopher has confirmed it, that number one in the human race is, blessed be Heaven! the Irishman. In moral virtue, in religion, in perseverance, and in glorious temperance, you excel. Have

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I any teetotalers here? Yes, it is teetotalism that is repealing the Union. I could not afford to bring you together, I would not dare to bring you together, but that I had the teetotalers for my police.

Yes, among the nations of the earth, Ireland stands number one in the physical strength of her sons and in the beauty and purity of her daughters. Ireland, land of my forefathers, how my mind expands, and my spirit walks abroad in something of majesty, when I contemplate the high qualities, inestimable virtues, and true purity and piety and religious fidelity of the inhabitants of our green fields and productive mountains. Oh, what a scene surrounds us! It is not only the countless thousands of brave and active and peaceable and religious men that are here assembled, but Nature herself has written her character with the finest beauty in the verdant plains that surround us. Let any man run round the horizon with his eye, and tell me if created Nature ever produced anything so green and so lovely, so undulating, so teeming with production. The richest harvests that any land can produce are those reaped in Ireland; and then here are the sweetest meadows, the greenest fields, the loftiest mountains, the purest streams, the noblest rivers, the most capacious harbors, and her water-power is equal to turn the machinery of the whole. world.

Oh, my friends, it is a country worth fighting for; it is a country worth dying for; but above all, it is a country worth being tranquil, determined, submissive, and docile for; disciplined as you are in obedience to those who are breaking the way, and trampling down the barriers between you and your constitutional liberty, I will see every man of you having a vote, and every man protected by the ballot from the agent or landlord. I will see labor protected, and every title to possession recognized, when you are industrious and honest. I will see prosperity again throughout your land; the busy hum of the shuttle and the tinkling of the smithy shall be heard again. We shall see the nailer employed even until the middle of the night, and the carpenter covering himself with his chips. I will see prosperity in all its gradations spreading through a happy, contented religious land. I will hear the hymn of a happy people go forth at sunrise to God in praise of His mercies, and I will see the evening sun set amongst the uplifted hands of a religious and free population. Every blessing that man can bestow and religion can confer upon the faithful heart shall spread throughout the land. Stand by me— join with me-I will say be obedient to me, and Ireland shall be free.

LORD HENRY BROUGHAM (1779-1868)

THE CHAMPION OF POPULAR LIBERTIES

T

HE active career of Brougham covered the period between the age of the oratory of the French Revolutionary excitement and that of Gladstone and Disraeli, beginning with opposition to the policy of Pitt and extending to the French Revolution of 1848, of which he so highly approved that he wished he were naturalized as a French citizen. In his day he was the greatest of Liberal orators, a man eminent in passionate invective and vehemence of declamation. It was as a commoner he was great, a man of the people, and the acceptance of a title in 1830 robbed him of much of his strength. A native of Edinburgh, and early distinguished for his learning and versatility, he was one of the founders of the Edinburgh Review and of its leading early contributors. Choosing the law as his profession, he had won fame as a forensic orator before he entered Parliament in 1810. Here he soon reached the front rank as a debater.

THE INDUSTRIAL PERIL OF WAR WITH AMERICA

[In the election canvass of 1812 Brougham was a candidate for Parliament, and did not hesitate to denounce in vigorous language the governmental policy of war with America, and also to hold Pitt very severely to account for the miseries arising from the war with France. The selection given from his speech at Liverpool during this campaign is an excellent example of his vigor and vehemence.]

I trust myself once more in your faithful hands; I fling myself again on you for protection; I call aloud to you to bear your own cause in your hearts; I implore of you to come forth in your own defense, for the sake of this vast town and its people, for the salvation of the middle and lower orders, for the whole industrial part of the whole country; I entreat you by your love of peace, by your hatred of oppression, by your weariness of

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burthensome and useless taxation, by yet another appeal to which those must lend an ear who have been deaf to all the rest; I ask it for your families, for your infants, if you would avoid such a winter of horrors as the last. It is coming fast upon us; already it is near at hand; yet a few more weeks and we may be in the midst of those unspeakable miseries, the recollection of which now rends your very souls. If there is one freeman amongst this immense multitude who has not tendered his voice, and if he can be deaf to this appeal, if he can suffer the threats of our antagonists to frighten him away from the recollection of the last dismal winter, that man will not vote for me. But if I have the happiness of addressing one honest man amongst you, who has a care left for his wife and children, or for other endearing ties of domestic tenderness (and which of us is altogether without them?), that man will lay his hand on his heart when I now bid him do so, and with those little threats of present spite ringing in his ear, he will rather consult his fears of greater evil by listening to the dictates of his heart, when he casts a look towards the dreadful season through which he lately passed, and will come bravely foward to place those men in Parliament whose whole efforts have been directed towards the restoration of peace and the revival of trade.

Do not, gentlemen, listen to those who tell you the cause of freedom is desperate; they are the enemies of that cause and of you; but listen to me, -and I am one who has never yet deceived you,—I say, then, that it will be desperate if you make no exertions to retrieve it. I tell you that your language alone can betray it, that it can only be made desperate through your despair. I am not a man to be cast down by temporary reverses, let them come upon us as thick and as swift and as sudden as they may. I am not he who is daunted by majorities in the outset of a struggle for worthy objects, else I should not now stand here before you to boast of triumphs won in your cause. If your champions had yielded to the force of numbers, of gold, of power, if defeat could have dismayed them, then would the African slave-trade never have been abolished; then would the cause of reform, which now bids fair to prevail over its enemies, have been long ago sunk amidst the desertions of its friends; then would those prospects of peace have been utterly benighted, which I still devoutly cherish, and which even now brighten in our eyes; then would the Orders in Council, which I overthrew by your support, have remained a disgrace to the British name, and an eternal obstacle to our best interests. I no more despond now than I have done in the course of those sacred and glorious contentions, but it is for you to say whether to-morrow shall not make it my duty to despair. To-morrow is your last day; your last efforts must then be made; if you put forth your strength the day is your own; if you

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desert it, it is lost. To win it, I shall be the first to lead you on and the last to forsake you.

Gentlemen, when I told you a little while ago that there were new and powerful reasons to-day for ardently desiring that our cause might succeed, I did not sport with you; yourselves shall now judge of them. I ask you,-Is the trade with America of any importance to this great and thickly-peopled town? [Cries of "Yes, yes!”] Is a continuance of the rupture with America likely to destroy that trade? [Loud cries of "It is, it is!"] Is there any man who would deeply feel it, if he heard that the rupture was at length converted into open war? Is there a man present who would not be somewhat alarmed if he supposed that we should have another year without the American trade? Is there any one of nerves so hardy, as calmly to hear that our government has given up all negotiation, abandoned all hopes of speedy peace with America? Then I tell that man to brace up his nerves; I bid you all be prepared to hear what touches you all equally. We are by this day's intelligence at war with America in earnest; our government has at length issued letters of marque and reprisal against the United States. [Universal cries of "God help us, God help us!"] Aye, God help us! God of His infinite compassion take pity on us! God help and protect this poor town, and this whole trading country!..

Gentlemen, I stand up in this contest against the friends and followers of Mr. Pitt, or, as they partially designate him, the "immortal statesman," now no more. Immortal in the miseries of his devoted country! Immortal in the wounds of her bleeding liberties! Immortal in the cruel wars which sprang from his cold miscalculating ambition! Immortal in the intolerable taxes, the countless loads of debt which these wars have flung upon us, which the youngest man among us will not live to see the end of! Immortal in the triumph of our enemies, and the ruin of our allies, the costly purchase of so much blood and treasure! Immortal in the afflictions of England, and the humiliations of her friends, through the whole results of his twenty years' reign, from the first rays of favor with which a delighted court gilded his early apostasy, to the deadly glare which is at this instant cast upon his name by the burning metropolis of our last ally. But may no such immortality fall to my lot; let me rather live innocent and inglorious; and when at last I cease to serve you, and to feel for your wrongs, may I have an humble monument in some nameless stone, to tell that beneath it there rests from his labors in your service "an enemy of the 'immortal statesman'-a friend of peace and of the people."

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