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THE

NEW AMERICAN SPEAKER.

EARNEST DECLAMATION.

CHARACTER OF TRUE ELOQUENCE

WHEN public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable, in speech, farther than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness, are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for 10, Dus they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it-they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments, and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward to his object-this, this is eloquence; or rather, it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.

WEBSTER

PHILLIPS ON THE POLICY OF ENGLAND.

BUT what has England done for Europe? what has she achieved for man? Have morals been ameliorated? Has liberty been strengthened? Has any one improvement in politics or philosophy been produced? Let us see how. You have restored to Portugal a prince of whom we know nothing, except that, when his dominions were invaded, his people distracted, his crown in danger, and all that could interest the highest energies of man at issue, he left his cause to be combated by foreign bayonets, and fled with a dastard precipitation to the shameful security of a distant hemisphere! You have restored to Spain a wretch of even worse than proverbial princely ingratitude; who filled his dungeons, and fed his rack with the heroic remnant that braved war, and famine, and massacre beneath his banners; who rewarded patriotism with the prison, fidelity with the torture, heroism with the scaffold, and piety with the inquisition; whose royalty was published by the signature of his death-warrants, and whose religion evaporated in the embroidering of petticoats for the Blessed Virgin! You have forced upon France a family to whom misfortune could teach no mercy, or experience wisdom; vindictive in prosperity, servile in defeat, timid in the field, vacillating in the cabinet; suspicion amongst themselves, discontent amongst their followers; their memories tenacious but of the punishments they had provoked, their piety active but in subserviency to their priesthood, and their power passive but in the subjugation of their people! Such are the dynasties you have conferred on Europe. In the very act, that of enthroning three individuals of the same family, you have committed in politics a capital error; but Providence has countermined the ruin you were preparing, and whilst the impolicy presents the chance, their impotency precludes the danger of a coalition.

As to the rest of Europe, how has it been ameliorated? What solitary benefit have the deliverers conferred? They have partitioned the states of the feeble to feed the rapacity of the powerful; and after having alternately adored and deserted Napoleon, they have wreaked their vengeance on the noble, but unfortunate fidelity that spurned their example. Do you want proofs? look to Saxony, look to Genoa, look to Norway, but, above all, to Poland! that speaking monument of regal murder and legitimate robbery —

"Oh! bloodiest picture in the book of time-
Sarmatia fell

unwept — without a crime""

Here was an opportunity to recompense that brave, heroic, generous, martyred, and devoted people; here was an opportunity to convince Jacobinism that crowns and crimes were not, o course, coëxistent, and that the highway rapacity of one generation might be atoned by the penitential retribution of another! Look to Italy-parceled out to temporizing Austria; the land of the muse, the historian, and the hero; the scene of every classic recollection; the sacred fane of antiquity, where the genius of the world weeps and worships, and the spirits of the past start into life at the inspiring pilgrimage of some kindred Roscoe. Look to Prussia, after fruitless toil and wreathless triumphs, mocked with the promise of a visionary constitution. Look to France, chained and plundered, weeping over the tomb of her hopes and her heroes. Look to England, eaten by the canker of an incurable debt, exhausted by poor-rates, supporting a civil list of near a million and a half, annual amount; guarded by a standing army of 149,000 men; misrepresented by a House of Commons, ninety of whose members in places and pensions derive £200,000 in yearly emoluments from the minister; mocked with a military peace, and girt with the fortifications of a war-establishment! Shades of heroic millions, these are thy achievements! MONSTER OF LEGITIMACY, this is thy consummation!! Can any man of sense say that the present system should continue? What! when war and peace have alternately thrown every family in the empire into mourning and poverty, shall the fattened tax-gatherer extort the starving manufacturer's last shilling, to swell the unmerited and enormous sinecure of some wealthy pauper?

IRELAND.

IRELAND, with her imperial crown, now stands before you You have taken her parliament from her, and she appears in her own person, at your bar. Will you dismiss a kingdom without a hearing? Is this your answer to her zeal, to her faith, to the blood that has so profusely graced your march to victory — to the treasures that have decked your strength in peace? Is her name nothing her fate indifferent? are her contributions insignificant her six millions revenue--- her ten millions tradeher two millions absentee - her four millions loan? Is such a country not worth a hearing? Will you, can you dismiss her

abruptly from your bar? You cannot do it the instinct England is against it. We may be outnumbered now and again; but in calculating the amount of the real sentiments of the people, the ciphers that swell the evanescent majorities of an evanescent minister go for nothing.

Can Ireland forget the memorable era of 1788 ? Can others forget the munificent hospitality with which she then freely gave to her chosen hope all that she had to give? Can Ireland forge the spontaneous and glowing cordiality with which her favors were then received? Never! Never! Irishmen grew justly proud in the consciousness of being subjects of a gracious predilection-a predilection that required no apology, and called for no renunciation a predilection that did equal honor to him who felt it, and to those who were the objects of it. It laid the grounds of a great and fervent hope - all a nation's wishes crowding to a point, and looking forward to one event, as the great coming, at which every wound was to be healed, every tear to be wiped away. The hope of that hour beamed with a cheering warmth and a seductive brilliancy. Ireland followed it with all her heart—a leading light through he wilderness, and brighter in its gloom. She followed it over a wide and barren waste it has charmed her through the desert; and now, that it has led her to the confines of light and darkness—now, that she is on the borders of the promised land, is the prospect to be suddenly obscured, and the fair vision of princely faith to vanish forever!-I will not believe it-I require an act of parliament to vouch its credibility nay more, I demand a miracle

to convince me that it is possible!

GRATTAN

WASHINGTON, A MAN OF GENIUS

How many times have we been told that Washington was not a man of genius, but a person of excellent common sense, of admirable judgment, of rare virtues! He had no genius, it seems. O no! genius, we must suppose, is the peculiar and shining attribute of some orator, whose tongue can spout patriotic speeches; or some versifier, whose muse can Hail Columbia; but not of the man who supported states on his arm, and carried America in his brain. What is genius? Is it worth anything? Is splendid folly the measure of its inspiration? Is wisdom its base and summit - that which it recedes from, or tends toward? And by what definition do you award the name to the creator

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