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our brethren and countrymen in America, of the same language, laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to us by every tie that should sanctify humanity.

My lords, this awful subject, so important to our honor, our constitution, and our religion, demands the most solemn and effectual inquiry. And I again call upon your lordships, and the united powers of the state, to examine it thoroughly and decisively, and to stamp upon it an indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. And I again implore these holy prelates of our religion, to do away these iniquities from among us. Let them perform a lustration; let them purify this house, and this country, from this sin.

My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles.

46. AMERICA.- -Phillips.

Search creation round, where can you find a country that presents so sublime a view, so interesting an anticipation? What noble institutions! What a comprehensive policy! What a wise equalization of every political advantage! The oppressed of all countries, the martyrs of every creed, the innocent victim of despotic arrogance or superstitious phrenzy, may there find refuge; his industry encouraged, his piety respected, his ambition animated; with no restraint but those laws which are the same to all, and no distinction but that which his merit may originate. Who can deny that the existence of such a country presents a subject for human congratulation! Who can deny that its gigantic advancement offers a field for the most rational conjecture! At the end of the very next century, if she proceeds as she seems to promise, what a wondrous spectacle may she not exhibit! Who shall say for what purpose mysterious Providence may not have designed her! Who shall say that when in its follies or its crimes the old world may have buried all the pride of its power, and all the pomp of its civilization, human nature may not find its destined renovation in the new! when its temples and its trophies shall have moldered into dust-when the glories of its name shall be but the legend of tradition, and the light of its achievements live only in song; philosophy will revive again in the sky of her Franklin, and

glory rekindle at the urn of her Washington. Is this the vision of romantic fancy? Is it even improbable? Is it half so improbable as the events, which, for the last twenty years, have rolled like successive tides over the surface of the European world, each erasing the impressions that preceded it? Many, I know there are, who will consider this supposition as wild and whimsical; but they have dwelt with little reflection upon the records of the past. They have but ill observed the neverceasing progress of national rise and national ruin. They form their judgment on the deceitful stability of the present hour, never considering the innumerable monarchies and republics, in former days, apparently as permanent, their very existence become now the subject of speculation-I had almost said of scepticism. I appeal to history! Tell me, thou reverend chronicler of the grave, can all the illusions of ambition realized, can all the wealth of an universal commerce, can all the achievements of successful heroism, or all the establishments of this world's wisdom, secure to empire the permanency of its possessions? Alas, Troy thought so once; yet the land of Priam lives only in song! Thebes thought so once, yet her hundred gates have crumbled, and her very tombs are but as the dust they were vainly intended to commemorate! So thought Palmyra-where is she! So thought Persepolis, and

now

"Yon waste, where roaming lions howl,

Yon aisle, where moans the grey-eyed owl,
Shows the proud Persian's great abode,
Where sceptred once, an earthly god,

His power-clad arm controlled each happier clime,

Where sports the warbling muse, and fancy soars sublime."

So thought the countries of Demosthenes and the Spartan, yet Leonidas is trampled by the timid slave, and Athens insulted by the servile, mindless, and enervate Ottoman! In his hurried march, Time has but looked at their imagined immortality, and all its vanities, from the palace to the tomb, have, with their ruins, erased the very impression of his footsteps! The days of their glory are as if they had never been; and the island that was then a speck, rude and neglected in the barren ocean, now rivals the ubiquity of their commerce, the glory of their arms, the fame of their philosophy, the eloquence of their senate, and the inspiration of their bards! Who shall say, then, contemplating the past, that England, proud and potent as she appears, may not one day be what Athens is, and the young America yet soar to be what Athens was! Who shall say, when the European column shall have moldered, and the night of bar

barism obscured its very ruins, that that mighty continent may not emerge from the horizon, to rule, for its time, sovereign of the ascendant.

Such, sir, is the natural progress of human operations, and such the unsubstantial mockery of human pride.

47.

CHARACTER OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.-Phillips.

He is fallen! We may now pause before that splendid prodigy, which towered amongst us like some ancient ruin, whose frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted. Grand, gloomy, and peculiar, he sat upon the throne a sceptred hermit, wrapt in the solitude of his own originality. A mind, bold, independent, and decisive-a will, despotic in its dictates-an energy that distanced expedition, and a conscience pliable to every touch of interest, marked the outline of this extraordinary character-the most extraordinary, perhaps, that in the annals of this world, ever rose, or reigned, or fell. Flung into life, in the midst of a revolution that quickened every energy of a people who acknowledge no superior, he commenced his course, a stranger by birth, and a scholar by charity! With no friend but his sword, and no fortune but his talents, he rushed in the list where rank, and wealth, and genius had arrayed themselves, and competition fled from him as from the glance of destiny.He knew no motive but interest-he acknowledged no criterion but successs—he worshiped no God but ambition, and with an eastern devotion he knelt at the shrine of his idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate; in the hope of a dynasty, he upheld the crescent; for the sake of a divorce, he bowed before the cross: the orphan of St. Louis, he became the adopted child of the republic: and with a parricidal ingratitude, on the ruins both of the throne and tribune, he reared the throne of his despotism. A professed catholic, he imprisoned the pope; a pretended patriot, he impoverished the country; and, in the name of Brutus, he grasped without remorse, and wore without shame, the diadem of the Cæsars! Through this pantomime of policy, fortune played the clown to his caprices. At his touch, crowns crumbled, beggars reigned, systems vanished, the wildest theories took the color of his whim, and all that was venerable, and all that was novel, changed places with the rapidity of a drama. Even apparent defeat assumed the appearance of victory-his flight from Egypt confirmed his destiny

ruin itself only elevated him to empire. But if his fortune was great, his genius was transcendent; decision flashed upon his councils; and it was the same to decide and to perform. To inferior intellects his combinations appeared perfectly impossible, his plans perfectly impracticable; but, in his hands, simplicity marked their development, and success vindicated their adoption. His person partook the character of his mind—if the one never yielded in the cabinet, the other never bent in the field. Nature had no obstacle that he did not surmountspace no opposition that he did not spurn; and whether amid Alpine rocks, Arabian sands, or Polar snows, he seemed proof against peril, and empowered with ubiquity! The whole continent trembled at beholding the audacity of his designs, and the miracle of their execution. Scepticism bowed to the prodigies of his performance; romance assumed the air of history; nor was there aught too incredible for belief, or too fanciful for expectation, when the world saw a subaltern of Corsica waving his imperial flag over her most ancient capitals. All the visions of antiquity became commonplaces in his contemplation; kings were his people-nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were titular dignitaries of the chess-board!—Amid all these changes, he stood immutable as adamant.

It mattered little whether in the field or in the drawing-room -with the mob or the levee-wearing the jacobin bonnet or the iron crown-banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburg -dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating defeat at the gallows of Leipsig-he was still the same military despot!

In this wonderful combination, his affectations of literature must not be omitted. The gaoler of the press, he affected the patronage of letters-the proscriber of books, he encouraged philosophy-the persecutor of authors and the murderer of printers, he yet pretended to the protection of learning the assassin of Palm, the silencer of De Staël, and the denouncer of Kotzebue, he was the friend of David, the benefactor of De Lille, and sent his academic prize to the philosopher of England. Such a medley of contradictions, and at the same time such an individual consistency, were never united in the same character. A royalist—a republican and an emperor-a Mohammedan-a catholic and a patron of the synagogue—a subaltern and a sovereign—a traitor and a tyrant-a Christian and an infidel—he was, through all his vicissitudes, the same stern, impatient, inflexible original-the same mysterious, incomprehensible self-the man without a model, and without a shadow.

48.

66

TO THE JURY IN THE CASE OF J. A. WILLIAMS FOR A LIBEL

ON THE CLERGy of Durham.—Brougham.

The Church of England has nothing to dread from external violence. Built upon a rock, and lifting its head towards another world, it aspires to an imperishable existence, and defies any force that may rage from without. But let its friends beware of the corruption engendered within and beneath its massive walls, and in that corruption let all its well-wishers, all who, whether for religious or for political interests, desire its stability, beware how they give encouragement to the vermin bred in that corruption, and who stick and sting against the hand that would brush the rottenness away! My learned friend sympathizes with the priesthood of Durham; and innocently enough laments that they possess not the power of defending themselves through the public press. Let him be consoled; they are not so very defenseless; they are not so entirely destitute of the aids of the press, as through their council they affect to be. They have largely used that press, I wish I could say as not abusing it”—and against some persons very near me, I mean especially against the defendant, whom they have scurrilously and foully libeled, through that very vehicle of public instruction, over which, for the first time, among the other novelties of the day, I now hear they have no command. Not, indeed, that they have wounded deeply, or injured much, but that is no fault of theirs-and, without hurting, they have given annoyance. The insect nestled in filth, and brought into life by corruption-I mean the dirt-fly,--though its flight be lowly, and its sting puny, can buzz and storm, and irritate the skin, and offend the nostril, and altogether give nearly as much annoyance as the wasp, whom it aspires to emulate. So these reverend slanderers-these pious backbiters-devoid of force to wield the sword, snatch the dagger; and destitute of wit to point or to barb it, and make it rankle in the wound, steep it in venom to make it fester in the scratch. Those venerated personages, whose harmless and undefended state is now deplored, have been the wholesale dealers in calumny-the especial promoters of that vile traffick of late the disgrace of the country-and now they come to demand protection against retaliation, and shelter from just exposure; and, to screen themselves, would have you prohibit all investigation of the abuses by which they exist, and the malpractice by which they disgrace their calling. If all existing institutions and all public functionaries must henceforth be sacred from question amon

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