53. LAWS FOR IRELAND.

[The best efforts of English speakers which have been preserved, real tamely compared with Grattan's, abounding as the latter do with fulminating bursts of the most brilliant eloquence. His oration on the declaration of Irish Rights conveys the best idea of his genius as an orator. The following is one of the most eloquent perorations that can be found in any nation or age:

AND as any thing less than liberty is inadequate to Ireland,

so is it dangerous to Great Britain. We are too near the British nation, we are too conversant with her history, we are too much fired by her example, to be any thing less than her equal; any thing less, we should be her bitterest enemiesan enemy to that power which smote us with her mace, and to that constitution from whose blessings we were excluded; to be ground as we have been by the British nation, bound by her parliament, plundered by her crown, threatened by her enemies, insulted with her protection, while we returned thanks for her condescension, is a system of meanness and misery which has expired in our determination, as I hope it has in her magnanimity.

2. Do not tolerate that power which blasted you for a cen tury, that power which shattered your loom, banished your manufactures, dishonored your peerage, and stopped the growth of your people; do not, I say, be bribed by an export of woollen, or an import of sugar, and permit that power which has thus withered the land to remain in your country and have existence in your pusillanimity.

3. Do not suffer the arrogance of England to imagine a surviving hope in the fears of Ireland; do not send the people to their own resolves for liberty, passing by the tribunals of jus tice and the high court of parliament; neither imagine that, by any formation of apology, you can palliate such a commission to your hearts, still less to your children, who will sting you with their curses in your grave for having interposed between them and their Maker, robbing them of an immense oc casion, and losing an opportunity which you did not create, and can never restore.

4. Hereafter, when these things shall be history-your age of thraldom and poverty, your sudden resurrection, commercial redress, and miraculous armament-shall the historian stop at liberty, and observe, that here the principal men among us fell into mimic trances of gratitude they were awed by a weak ministry, and bribed by an empty treasury; and when liberty was within their grasp, and the temple opened her folding-doors, and the arms of the people clanged, and the zeal of the nation urged and encouraged them on, that they fell down, and were prostituted at the threshold.

5. I might, as a constituent, come to your bar and demand my liberty. I do call upon you, by the laws of the land and their violation, by the instruction of eighteen counties, by the arms, inspiration, and providence of the present moment, tell us the rule by which we shall go-assert the law of Ireland— declare the liberty of the land.

6. I will not be answered by a public lie in the shape of an amendment; neither, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe, in this our island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, unless it be the ambition to break your chain, and contemplate your glory.

7. I never will be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking to his rags; he may be naked, he shall not be in iron; and I do see the time is at hand, the spirit has gone forth, the declaration is planted; and though great men should apostatize, yet the cause will live; and though the public speaker should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ which conveyed it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, will not die with the prophet, but survive him.

8. I shall move you, "That the King's most excellent Majesty, and the Lords and Commons of Ireland, are the only power competent to make laws to bind Ireland." GRATTAN.

54. NATIONAL INDEPENDENCE.

JAMES OTIS, born in Massachusetts, 1725; died, 1783. He became famous in the struggle for Independence, as the bold and brilliant advocate of colonial rights.]

ENG

NGLAND may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes, as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land, than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or crouches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland. Arbitrary principles, like those against which we now contend, have cost one king of England his life-another his crown-and they may yet cost a third his most flourishing colonies.

We are

2. We are two millions-one-fifth fighting men. bold and vigorous, and we call no man master. To the nation from whom we are proud to derive our origin, we were ever, and we ever will be, ready to yield unforced assistance; but it must not, and it never can be extorted.

3. Some have sneeringly asked, "Are the Americans too poor to pay a few pounds on stamped paper?" No! Amer ica, thanks to God and herself, is rich. But the right to take ten pounds, implies the right to take a thousand; and what must be the wealth that avarice, aided by power, cannot exhaust.

4. True, the spectre is now small; but the shadow he casts before him is huge enough to darken all this fair land. Others, in sentimental style, talk of the immense debt of gratitude which we owe to England. And what is the amount of this debt? Why, truly, it is the same that the young lion owes to the dam which has brought it forth on the solitude of the mountain, or left it amid the winds and storms of the desert. 5. We plunged into the wave, with the great charter of freedom in our teeth, because the faggot and torch were be hind us. We have waked this new world from its savage lethargy; forests have been prostrated in our path; towns and cities have grown up suddenly as the flowers of the

tropics; and the fires in our autumnal woods are scarcely more rapid than the increase of our wealth and population.

6. And do we owe all this to the kind succor of the mothercountry? No! we owe it to the tyranny that drove us from her-to the pelting storms which invigorated our helpless infancy. But perhaps others will say, "We ask no money from your gratitude-we only demand that you should pay your own expenses."

7. And who, I pray, is to judge of their necessity? Why, the king (and, with all due reverence to his sacred majesty, he understands the real wants of his distant subjects as little as he does the language of the Choctaws). Who is to judge concerning the frequency of these demands? The ministry. Who is to judge whether the money is properly expended? The cabinet behind the throne. In every instance, those who take are to judge for those who pay.

8. If this system is suffered to go into operation, we shall have reason to esteem it a great privilege that rain and dew do not depend upon parliament; otherwise they would soon be taxed and dried. But thanks to God, there is freedom enough left upon earth to resist such monstrous injustice.

9. The flame of liberty is extinguished in Greece and Rome, but the light of its glowing embers is still bright and strong on the shores of America. Actuated by its sacred influence, we will resist unto death. But we will not countenance anarchy and misrule.

10. The wrongs that a desperate community have heaped upon their enemies, shall be amply and speedily repaired. Still, it may be well for some proud men to remember, that a fire is lighted in these colonies, which one breath of their king may kindle into such fury that the blood of all England can not extinguish it.

OTIS.

55. THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

[Among the men whose character and genius had an acknowledged influence on the events immediately preceding the Revolution, was JOSIAH QUINCY. His name is associated with those of Otis, Adams, and other distinguished men whose talents and bravery led to the Declaration of Indepen...nce. The pathos of his eloquence, the boldness of his invectives, and the impressive vehemence with which he arraigned the measures of the British ministry inflamed the zeal and animated the resentment of the colonists.]

HEN we speak of the glory of our fathers, we mean not

WE

that vulgar renown to be attained by physical strength, nor yet that higher fame to be acquired by intellectual power. Both often exist without lofty thought, or pure intent, or generous purpose. The glory which we celebrate was strictly of a moral and religious character; righteous as to its ends; just as to its means.

2. The American Revolution had its origin neither in ambition, nor avarice, nor envy, nor in any gross passion; but in the nature and relation of things, and in the thence resulting necessity of separation from the parent State. Its progress was limited by that necessity.

3. During the struggle our fathers displayed great strength and great moderation of purpose. In difficult times, they conducted with wisdom; in doubtful times, with firmness; in perilous, with courage; under oppressive trials, erect; amid great temptations, unseduced; in the dark hour of danger, fearless; in the bright hour of prosperity, faithful.

4. It was not the instant feeling and pressure of the arm of despotism that roused them to resist, but the principle on which that arm was extended. They could have paid the stamp-tax, and the tea-tax, and other impositions of the British Government, had they been increased a thousand-fold. Bu payment acknowledged the right; and they spurned the consequences of that acknowledgment.

5. In spite of those acts they could have lived, and happily; and bought, and sold, and got gain, and been at ease

But