cloven down;-no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery: the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around him; and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible genius of Universal Emancipation.

Curran.

Ex. 186.

Crime its own Detector.

Against the prisoner at the bar, as an individual, I cannot have the slightest prejudice. I would not do him the smallest injury or injustice. But I do not affect to be indifferent to the discovery and the punishment of this deep guilt. I cheerfully share in the opprobrium, how much soever it may be, which is cast on those who feel and manifest an anxious concern that all who had a part in planning, or a hand in executing, this deed of midnight assassination, may be brought to answer for their enormous crime at the bar of public justice. Gentlemen, this is a most extraordinary case. In some respects, it has hardly a precedent anywhere certainly none in our New England history. An aged man, without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of a butcherly murder, for mere pay. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man to whom sleep was sweet, the first sound slumbers of the night hold him in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters through the window, already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment; with noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half-lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him. The room was uncommonly light. The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from the murderer; and the beams of the moon, resting on the grey locks of his aged temple, showed him where to strike. The fatal blow is given, and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death!

It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work; and he yet plies the dagger, though it was obvious that life had been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his aim at the heart, and

replaces it again over the wounds of the poniard ! To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! He feels it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished! The deed is done! He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes through as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder; no eye has seen him; no ear has heard him; the secret is his own, and he is safe!

Ah, Gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner, where the guilty can bestow it and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds everything as in the splendour of noon -such secrets of guilt are never safe; 'murder will out.'

True it is that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of heaven by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Especially in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, everything, every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper: a thousand excited minds intently dwell on the scene; shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery.

Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself,—or, rather, it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself,-it labours under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant; it finds itself preyed on by a torment which it dares not acknowledge to God or man. A vulture is devouring it, and it asks no sympathy or assistance either from heaven or earth.

The secret which the murderer possesses soon comes to possess him, and like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eye, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master; it betrays his discretion; it breaks down his courage; it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed; it will be confessed; there is no refuge from confession but in suicide, and suicide is confession. Daniel Webster.

Ex. 187. Speech against Warren Hastings.

Had a stranger, at this time, gone into the province of Oude, ignorant of what had happened since the death of Sujah Dowla-that man who, with a savage heart, had still great lines of character; and who, with all his ferocity in war, had still, with a cultivating hand, preserved to his country the riches which it derived from benignant skies and a prolific soil-if this stranger, ignorant of all that had happened in the short interval, and observing the wide and general devastation, and all the horrors of the scene-of plains unclothed and brown--of vegetables burned up and extinguished-of villages depopulated and in ruins-of temples unroofed and perishing-of reservoirs broken down and dry, he would naturally enquire, what war has thus laid waste the fertile fields of this once beautiful and opulent country? What civil dissensions have happened thus to tear asunder and separate the happy societies that once possessed those villages? What disputed succession—what religious rage has, with unholy violence, demolished those temples, and disturbed fervent but unobtruding piety in the exercise of its duties? What merciless enemy has thus spread the horrors of fire and sword? What severe visitation of Providence has dried up the fountain, and taken from the face of the earth every vestige of verdure? Or, rather what monsters have stalked over the country, tainting and poisoning, with pestiferous breath, what the voracious appetite could not devour? To such questions, what must be the answer? No wars have ravaged these lands, and depopulated these villages-no civil discords have been feltno disputed succession-no religious rage-no merciless enemy-no affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged for the moment, cut off the sources of resuscitation-no voracious and poisoning monsters-no,-all this has been accomplished by the friendship, generosity, and kindness of the English nation. They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and, lo! these are the fruits of their alliance. What, then, shall we be told that, under such circumstances, the exasperated feelings of a whole people, thus goaded and spurred on to clamour and resistance, were excited by the poor and feeble influence of the Begums? When we hear the description of the paroxysm, fever, delirium, into which despair had thrown the natives, when on the banks of the polluted Ganges, panting for death, they tore more widely open the lips of their gaping wounds, to accelerate their dissolution; and, while their blood was

issuing, presented their ghastly eyes to heaven; breathing their last and fervent prayer, that the dry earth might not be suffered to drink their blood, but that it might rise up to the throne of God, and rouse the eternal Providence to avenge the wrongs of their country. Will it be said that this was brought about by the incantations of these Begums in their secluded Zenana? or that they could inspire this enthusiasm and this despair into the breasts of a people who felt no grievance, and had suffered no torture? What motive, then, could have such influence in their bosom ? What motive? That which nature, the common parent, plants in the bosom of man; and which, though it may be less active in the Indian than in the Englishman, is still congenial with, and makes part of his being-that feeling which tells him that man was never made to be the property of man; but that when, through pride and insolence of power, one human creature dares to tyrannise over another, it is a power usurped, and resistance is a duty-that feeling which tells him that all power is delegated for the good, not for the injury of the people; and that, when it is converted from the original purpose, the compact is broken, and the right is to be resumed that principle which tells him that resistance to power usurped is not merely a duty which he owes to himself and to his neighbour, but a duty which he owes to his God, in asserting and maintaining the rank which He gave him in the creation! To that common God, who, where He gives the form of man, whatever may be the complexion, gives also the feelings and the rights of man-that principle which neither the rudeness of ignorance can stifle, nor the enervation of refinement extinguish that principle which makes it base for a man to suffer when he ought to act -which, tending to preserve to the species the original designations of Providence, spurns at the arrogant distinctions of man, and vindicates the independent quality of his

race.

Ex. 188.

The Latent Power of England.

Sheridan.

Let it not be said that we cultivate peace, either because we fear, or because we are unprepared for war; on the contrary, if eight months ago the Government did not hesitate to proclaim that the country was prepared for war, if war should be unfortunately necessary, every month of peace that has since passed has but made us so much the more capable of exertion. The resources created by peace are means of war. In cherishing those resources, we but accumulate those

means.

Our present repose is no more a proof of inability to act, than the state of inertness and inactivity in which I have seen those mighty masses that flcat in the waters above your town, is a proof that they are devoid of strength, and incapable of being fitted out for action. You well know, Gentlemen, how soon one of those stupendous masses, now reposing on their shadows in perfect stillness-how soon, upon any call of patriotism or of necessity, it would assume the likeness of an animated thing, instinct with life and motion; how soon it would ruffle, as it were, its swelling plumage, how quickly it would put forth all its beauty and its bravery, collect its scattered elements of strength, and awaken its dormant thunder. Such as is one of these magnificent machines when springing from inaction into a display of its might, such is England herself, while apparently passive and motionless, she silently concentrates the power to be put forth on an adequate occasion. But God forbid that that occasion should arise. After a war sustained for nearly a quarter of a century, sometimes single-handed, and with all Europe arrayed at times against her, or at her side, England needs a period of tranquillity, and may enjoy it without fear of misconstruction. Long may we be enabled, Gentlemen, to improve the blessings of our present situation, to cultivate the arts of peace, to give to commerce, now reviving, greater extension, and new spheres of employment, and to confirm the prosperity now generally diffused throughout this island. Of the blessings of peace, Gentlemen, I trust that this borough, with which I have now the honour and happiness of being associated, will receive an ample share. I trust the time is not far distant, when that noble structure, of which, as I learn from your Recorder, the box with which you have honoured me, through his hands, formed a part, that gigantic barrier against the fury of the waves that roll into your harbour, will protect a commercial marine not less considerable in its kind, than the warlike marine of which your port has been long so distinguished an asylum; when the town of Plymouth will participate in the commercial prosperity as largely as it has hitherto done in the naval glories of England.

*

Canning.

*The Plymouth breakwater, which had recently been completed.