UNSURRENDERING FIDELITY TO COUNTRY SPEECH AGAINST UNION WITH ENGLAND, MAY 26, 1800 HEN 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 inflamed 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 Union; he excludes by personal 2812 UNSURRENDERING FIDELITY TO COUNTRY 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 2814 UNSURRENDERING FIDELITY TO COUNTRY "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. LIVINGSTON R OBERT R. LIVINGSTON, a noted American jurist, the son of a New York judge of the supreme court, was born at New York city, November 27, 1746. His education was obtained at King's College, now Columbia University, and he was admitted to the bar in 1773. He met with success in the practice of his profession and was appointed recorder of his native city by the royal governor, but was removed from office in 1775 on account of his affiliations with the patriotic party. Livingston was a member of the Continental Congress and was one of the committee appointed to draw up a constitution for the State of New York, becoming under its provisions the first chancellor of the State and holding office until 1801. Throughout the Revolutionary epoch he was constantly active in the patriotic cause and as chancellor administered the oath of office to Washington at his inauguration in 1789. He filled the post of minister to France, 1801-04, and was instrumental during that period in securing Louisiana to the Union. Bonaparte was on the most friendly terms with him, and on Livingston's return to America the Consul presented him with a gorgeous snuff-box on which was a miniature portrait of the great Corsican painted by Isabey. While in Paris Livingston met Fulton, the inventor, and was his assistant in several experiments for the promotion of steam navigation. The chancellor, upon his return home, did much to further agricultural interests, and was one of the first to introduce merino sheep into the United States. In 1809 he published Essays on Agriculture and a valuable "Essay on Sheep." His death occurred at Chantilly, New York, February 26, 1813. I ORATION BEFORE THE CINCINNATI DELIVERED AT THE CITY HALL, NEW YORK, JULY 4, 1787 COULD have wished, gentlemen, that the task I am now about to perform had been assigned to some abler speaker; and in that view I long since tendered my apology for declining it and hoped till lately that it had been accepted. Disappointed in this hope, and unwilling to treat any mark of your favor with neglect, I determined to obey your commands, although I was satisfied that in the execution of them I should not answer your expectations. There is a style of eloquence adapted to occasions of this kind, to |