XXXVII. TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS.

1

CHARLES SUMNER.

CASTING our eyes over the history of nations, with horror we discern the succession of murderous slaughters, by which their progress has been marked. Even as the hunter traces the wild beast, when pursued to his lair, by the drops of blood on the earth, so we follow man, weary, staggering with wounds, through the black forest of the past, which he has reddened with his gore. Oh, let it not be in the future ages as in those which we now contemplate! Let the grandeur of man be discerned, not in bloody victories, or in ravenous conquests, but in the blessings which he has secured; in the good he has accomplished; in the triumphs of benevolence and justice; in the establishment of perpetual peace.

As the ocean washes every shore, and, with all-embracing arms, clasps every land, while, on its heaving bosom it bears the products of various climes; so peace surrounds, protects, and upholds all other blessings. Without it, commerce is vain, the ardor of industry is restrained, justice is arrested, happiness is blasted, virtue sickens and dies.

And peace has its own peculiar victories, in comparison with which Marathon and Bannockburn and Bunker Hill, fields held sacred in the history of human freedom, shall lose their lustre. Our own Washington rises to a truly heavenly stature, not when we follow him over the ice of the Delaware to the capture of Trenton, - not when we behold him victorious over Cornwallis at Yorktown, but when we regard him, in noble deference to justice, refusing the kingly crown which a faithless soldiery proffered, and, at a later day, upholding the peaceful neutrality of the country, while he received unmoved the clamor of the people wickedly crying for war.

XXXVIII. CICERO AGAINST CATILINE.- CICERO.

I. How far, O Catiline, wilt thou abuse our patience? How long shalt thou baffle justice in thy mad career? To what

extreme wilt thou carry thy audacity? Art thou nothing daunted by the nightly watch, posted to secure the Palatium? Nothing, by the city guards? Nothing, by the rally of all good citizens? Nothing, by the assembling of a Senate in this fortified place? Nothing, by the averted looks of all here present?

2. Seest thou not that all thy plots are exposed? - that thy wretched conspiracy is laid bare to the knowledge of every man here in the Senate ? that we are well aware of thy proceedings of last night; of the night before; the place of meeting, the company convoked, the measures concerted? 3. Oh, the times! Oh, the morals of the times! The Senate understand all this. The Consul sees it. And yet the traitor lives! Lives? Ay, truly, and confronts us here in council, presumes to take part in our deliberations, and, with his calculating eye, marks out each man of us for slaughter! And we, the while, think we have amply discharged our duty to the State, if we do but succeed in warding off this madman's sword and fury!

4. Long since, O Catiline, ought the Consul to have ordered thee to execution, and brought upon thy own head the destruction thou hast been plotting against others! There was in Rome that virtue once, that a wicked citizen was held more execrable than the deadliest foe. For thee, Catiline, we have still a law. Think not, because we are forbearing, that we are powerless.

5. We have a statute, chives like a sword in its scabbard, thy life the forfeit of thy crimes. to be instantly seized and put to all good men would say that the punishment, instead of being too cruel, was only too long deferred.

though it rests among our ar- a statute which makes And, should I order thee death, I do not doubt that

6. But, for sufficient reasons, I will awhile postpone the blow. Then will I doom thee, when no man is to be found, so lost to reason, so depraved, so like thyself, that he will not

admit the sentence was deserved. who ventures to defend thee, live!

While there is one man

7. But thou shalt live so beset, so hemmed in, so watched, by the vigilant guards I have placed around thee, that thou shalt not stir a foot against the Republic without my knowledge. There shall be eyes to detect thy slightest movement, and ears to catch thy wariest whisper. Thou shalt be seen and heard when thou dost not dream of a witness near. The darkness of night shall not cover thy treason; the walls of privacy shall not stifle its voice.

8. Baffled on all sides, thy most secret projects clear as noonday, what canst thou now devise? Proceed, plot, conspire, as thou wilt; there is nothing thou canst contrive, propose, attempt, which I shall not promptly be made aware of. Thou shalt soon be convinced that I am even more active in providing for the preservation of the State, than thou in plotting its destruction !

XXXIX. FROM HENRY V.SHAKESPEARE.

ONCE more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead!

In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness, and humility:

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage;

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;

Let it pry through the portage of the head,
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it,
As fearfully as doth a galled rock

O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth, and stretch the nostril wide;
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every spirit
To his full height

XL. NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY.

MIRABEAU.

[From a speech before the National Convention of France, 1789.] I. I HEAR much said of patriotism, appeals to patriotism, transports of patriotism. Gentlemen, why prostitute this noble word? Is it so very magnanimous to give up a part of your income in order to save your whole property? This is very simple arithmetic; and he that hesitates, deserves contempt rather than indignation.

2. Yes, gentlemen, it is to your immediate self-interest, to your most familiar notions of prudence and policy, that I now appeal. I say not to you now as heretofore, beware how you give the world the first example of an assembled nation untrue to the public faith. I ask you not, as heretofore, what right you have to freedom, or what means of maintaining it, if, at your first step in administration, you outdo in baseness all the old and corrupt governments. I tell you, that unless you prevent this catastrophe, you will all be involved in the general ruin; and that you are yourselves the persons most deeply interested in making the sacrifices which the government demands of you.

3. I exhort you, then, most earnestly, to vote these extraordinary supplies; and God grant that they may prove sufficient! Vote them, I beseech you; for, even if you doubt the expediency of the means, you know perfectly well that the supplies are necessary, and that you are incapable of raising them in any other way. Vote them at once, for the crisis does not admit of delay; and, if it occurs, we must be responsible for the consequences.

4.

Beware of asking for time. Misfortune accords it never. While you are lingering, the evil day will come upon you. Why, gentlemen, it is but a few days since that upon occasion of some foolish bustle in the Palais Royal, some ridiculous insurrection that existed nowhere but in the heads of a few weak or designing individuals, we

were told with emphasis, "Catiline is at the gates of Rome, and yet we deliberate." You know, gentlemen, that this was all imagination. We are far from being at Rome; nor is there any Catiline at the gates of Paris. But now are we threatened with a real danger; bankruptcy, national bank'ruptcy, is before you; it threatens to swallow up your persons, your property, your honor, — and yet you deliberate.

XLI. DISUNION AND WAR INSEPARABLE.

HENRY CLAY.

MR. PRESIDENT, I have said what I solemnly believe,that the dissolution of the Union and war are identical and inseparable; that they are convertible terms. Such a war, too, as that would be, following the dissolution of the Union! Sir, we may search the pages of history, and none so furious, so bloody, so implacable, so exterminating, from the wars of Greece down, including those of the Commonwealth of England and the Revolution of France,

none, none of them raged with such violence, or was ever conducted with such bloodshed and enormities, as will that war which shall follow that disastrous event-if that event ever happen - of dissolution.

And what would be its termination? Standing armies and navies, to an extent draining the revenues of each portion of the dissevered empire, would be created; exterminating wars would follow - not a war of two or three years, but of interminable duration an exterminating war would follow, until some Philip or Alexander, some Cæsar or Napoleon, would rise to cut the Gordian knot, and solve the capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties of both the dissevered portions of this Union. Can you doubt it? Look at history- consult the pages of all history, ancient or modern; look at human nature - look at the character of the contest in which you would be engaged in the supposition of a war following the dissolution of the Union,