ON THE CATHOLIC QUESTION.

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his own freedom becomes, from that moment, an instrument in the hands of an ambitious prince, to destroy the freedom of others.

These reflections, my lords, are but too applicable to our present situation. The liberty of the subject is invaded, not only in provinces, but here at home. The English people are loud in their complaints; they proclaim, with one voice, the injuries they have received; they demand redress; and, depend upon it, my lords, that one way or other they will have redress. They will never return to a state of tranquillity until they are redressed. Nor ought they; for, in my judgment, my lords, and I speak it boldly, it were better for them to perish in a glorious contention for their rights, than to purchase a slavish tranquillity at the expense of a single iota of the constitution. Let me entreat your lordships, then, in the name of all the duties you owe to your sovereign, to your country, and to yourselves, to perform that office to which you are called by the constitution, by informing his majesty truly of the condition of his subjects, and of the real cause of their dissatisfaction.

LORD CHATHAM.

SIR, whenever one sect degrades another on account of religion, such degradation is the tyranny of a sect. When you enact that, on account of his religion, no Catholic shall sit in Parliament, you do what amounts to the tyranny of a sect. When you enact that no Catholic shall be a sheriff, you do what amounts to the tyranny of a sect. When you enact that no Catholic shall be a general, you do what amounts to the tyranny of a sect.

For the benefit of eleven hundred, to disqualify four or five millions, is the insolent effort of bigotry, not the benignant precept of Christianity; and all this, not for the preservation of their property, for that was secured; but for intolerance, for avarice, for a vile, abominable, illegitimate and atrocious usurpation. The laws of God cry out against it; the spirit of Christianity cries out against it; the laws of England, and the spirit and principles of its constitution, cry out against such a system. Whenever you attempt to establish your government, or your property, or your church, on religious restrictions, you establish them on a false foundation, and you oppose the Almighty; and, though you had a host of miters on your side, you banish God from your ecclesiastical constitution, and freedom from your political.

I know the strength of the cause I support; it will walk the

earth and flourish when dull declamation shall be silent, and the pert sophistry that opposed it shall be forgotten in the grave.

Sir, I appeal to the hospitals which are thronged with the Irish who have been disabled in your cause; and to the fields of Spain and Portugal, yet drenched with their blood; and I turn from that policy which disgraces your empire, to the spirit of civil freedom that formed it. That is the charm by which your kings have been appointed, and in whose thunder you ride the waters of the deep. I invoke these principles, and I call upon you to guard your empire in this perilous moment, to guard it from religious strife, and from that death-doing policy which would teach one part to cut the throats of the other, in a metaphysical, ecclesiastical, unintelligible warfare. I call upon you to guard your empire from such a calamity, and to rescue four millions of your fellow-subjects from a senseless, shameless, diabolic oppression.

HENRY RATTAN.

XIII. THE VOCATION OF THE SCHOOLMASTER.

SIR, there is nothing which the adversaries of improvement are more wont to make themselves merry with, than what is termed the "march of intellect ;" and here I will confess that I think, as far as the phrase goes, they are in the right. It is a very absurd, because a very incorrect expression. It is little calculated to describe the operation in question. It does not picture an image at all resembling the proceeding of the true friends of mankind. It much more resembles the progress of the enemy to all improvement. The conqueror moves in a march. He stalks onward with the " pride, pomp, and circumstance of war; banners flying, shouts rending the air, guns thundering, and martial music pealing, to drown the shrieks of the wounded, and the lamentations for the slain.

Not thus the schoolmaster in his peaceful vocation. He meditates and purposes in secret the plans which are to bless mankind; he slowly gathers round him those who are to further their execution; he quietly, though firmly, advances in his humble path, laboring steadily, but calmly, till he has opened to the light all the recesses of ignorance, and torn up by the roots all the weeds of vice. His is a progress not to be compared with any thing like a march; but it leads to a far more brilliant triumph, and to laurels more imperishable than the destroyer of his spe cies, the scourge of the world, ever won.

Such men

-men deserving the glorious title of Teachers of Mankind I have found, laboring conscientiously, though, per

ON WAR WITH FRANCE OR AMERICA.

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haps, obscurely, in their blessed vocation, wherever I have gone. I have found them, and shared their fellowship, among the daring, the ambitious, the ardent, the indomitably active French; I have found them among the persevering, resolute, industrious Swiss; I have found them among the laborious, the warm-hearted, the enthusiastic Germans; I have found them among the highminded but enslaved Italians; and in our own country, God be thanked, their numbers every where abound, and are every day increasing.

Their calling is high and holy; their fame is the prosperity of nations; their renown will fill the earth in after ages, in proportion as it sounds not far off in their own times. Each one of these great teachers of the world, possessing his soul in peace, performs his appointed course, awaits in patience the fulfillment of the promises, and, resting from his labors, bequeaths his memory to the generation whom his works have blessed, and sleeps under the humble but not inglorious epitaph, commemorating one in whom mankind lost a friend, and no man got rid of an enemy."

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LORD BROUGHAM.

The

XIV.-ON WAR WITH FRANCE OR AMERICA.

You have now two wars before you, of which you must choose one, for both you can not support. The war against America is against your own countrymen-you have stopped me from saying against your fellow-subjects; that against France is against your inveterate enemy and rival. Every blow you strike in America is against yourselves; it is against all idea of reconciliation, and against your own interest, though you should be able, as you never will be, to force them to submit. Every stroke against France is of advantage to you: America must be conquered in France; France never can be conquered in America.

The war of France is a war of interest; it was her interest which first induced her to engage in it, and it is by that interest that she will measure its continuance. Turn your face at once against her; attack her wherever she is exposed; crush her commerce wherever you can; make her feel heavy and immediate distress throughout the nation: the people will soon cry out to their government.

The war of the Americans is a war of passion. It is of such a nature as to be supported by the most powerful virtues, love of liberty and of their country; and, at the same time, by those passions in the human heart which give courage, strength, and

1

perseverance, to man, the spirit of revenge for the injuries you have done them, of retaliation for the hardships you have inflicted on them, and of opposition to the unjust powers you have exercised over them. Every thing combines to animate them to this war, and such a war is without end; for whatever obstinacy enthusiasm ever inspired man with you will now find in America. No matter what gives birth to that enthusiasm, whether the name of religion or of liberty, the effects are the same; it inspires a spirit which is unconquerable, and solicitous to undergo difficulty, danger, and hardship and as long as there is a man in America, a being formed such as we are, you will have him present himself against you in the field. CHARLES JAMES FOX (1778).

:

XV. - THE IMPOLICY OF INJUSTICE.

THE march of the human mind is slow. Sir, it was not until after two hundred years discovered, that, by an eternal law, Providence had decreed vexation to violence, and poverty to rapine. Your ancestors did, however, at length open their eyes to the ill-husbandry of injustice. They found that the tyranny of a free people could of all tyrannies the least be endured; and that laws made against a whole nation were not the most effectual methods for securing its obedience. Accordingly, in the twenty-seventh year of Henry the Eighth, the course was entirely altered. With a preamble stating the entire and perfect rights of the crown of England, it gave to the Welsh all the rights and privileges of English subjects. A political order was established; the military power gave way to the civil; the marches were turned into counties. But that a nation should have a right to English liberties, and yet no share at all in the fundamental security of these liberties, the grant of their own property, seemed a thing so incongruous, that eight years after, that is, in the thirty-fifth of that reign, a complete and not ill-proportioned representation by counties and boroughs was bestowed upon Wales by act of Parliament. From that moment, as by a charm, the tumults subsided. Obedience was restored. Peace, order, and civilization, followed in the train of liberty. When the day-star of the English constitution had arisen in their hearts, all was harmony within and without:

Simul alba nautis,

Stella refulsit,

De'fluit saxis agitatus humor;

Con'cidunt venti, fugiunt'que nu'bes,
Et mi'nax (quod sic volu-e're) ponto
Unda recumbit.

THE BANK OF ENGLAND.

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Are not the people of America as much Englishmen as the Welsh? The preamble of the act of Henry the Eighth says, the Welsh speak a language no way resembling that of his majesty's English subjects. Are the Americans not as numerous? The people of Wales can not amount to above two hundred thousand—not a tenth part of the number in the colonies. Is America in rebellion? Wales was hardly ever free from it.

My resolutions go to establish the equity and justice of a taxation of America by grant, and not by imposition; to admit the legal competency of the colony assemblies for the support of their government in peace, and for public aids in time of war; to acknowledge that this legal competency has had a dutiful and beneficial exercise; and that experience has shown the benefit of their grants, and the futility of parliamentary taxation as a method of supply. These solid truths compose six fundamental propositions; six massive pillars of strength, sufficient, I think, to support the temple of British concord.

BURKE (March, 1775).

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XVI. THE BANK OF ENGLAND.

WHILE the Bank of England continues in its present state of dependence on the minister, it is impossible to hope, Mr. Speaker, that public credit can be restored, and the funds raised. Last year, much was said in the newspapers about the connection between the right honorable gentleman and the bank. It was said that the banns had been forbidden. The conduct of the chancellor of the exchequer showed that he cultivated the connection on account of the lady's dowry, not for the comfort of her society.

The advances made by the bank to government occasioned the first stoppage, and now three millions are again to be advanced without any security whatever. If the directors do not insist on some security for their repayment, they will be guilty of a gross breach of duty, and the most culpable neglect of the interest of their constituents.

It seems that the bank is to be the new temple of Janus ever shut in time of war. While war continues we must be contented to view the meager paper profile; nor will we be permitted to contemplate the golden bust till the return of peace. The French directory are thus to have the keys of the bank, which can not be opened till they grant permission.

Sir, it is mere cant and delusion to talk any longer of giving