Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

THE ACADEMICAL SPEAKER.

157

with the law and constitution for your guides, you can pronounce the respondent guilty. I declare, that I have seen no case of wilful and corrupt official misconduct, set forth according to the requisition of the constitution, and proved according to the common rules of evidence. I see many things imprudent and ill-judged; many things that I could wish had been otherwise; but corruption and crime I do

not see.

Sir, the prejudices of the day will soon be forgotten; the passions, if any there be, which have excited or favoured this prosecution, will subside; but the consequence of the judgment, you are about to render, will outlive both them and you. The respondent is now brought, a single, unprotected individual, to this formidable bar of judgment, to stand against the power and authority of the State. I know you can crush him, as he stands before you, and clothed, as you are, with the sovereignty of the State. You

have the power, 6 to change his countenance, and send

him away.

Nor do I remind you that your judgment is to be rejudged by the community; and, as you have summoned him for trial to this high tribunal, you are soon to descend yourselves from the seats of justice, and stand before the higher tribunal of the world. I would not fail so much in respect to this honourable Court, as to hint that it could pronounce a sentence which the community will reverse. No, sir, it is not the world's revision, which I would call on you to regard; but that of your own consciences, when years have gone by, and you shall look back on the sentence you are about to render. If you send away the respondent, condemned and sentenced, from your bar, you are yet to meet him in the world, on which you cast him out. You will be called to behold him a disgrace to his family, a sorrow and a shame to his children, a living fountain of grief and agony to himself.

If you shall then be able to behold him only as an unjust judge, whom vengeance has overtaken, and justice has blasted, you will be able to look upon him, not without pity, but yet without remorse. But, if, on the other hand, you shall see, whenever and wherever you meet him, a victim of prejudice or of passion, a sacrifice to a transient excitement; if you shall see in him, a man, for whose con

[graphic]

will he be able to turn the current of compassion backward, and to look with pity on those who have been his judges. If you are about to visit this respondent with a judgment which shall blast this house; if the bosoms of the innocent and the amiable are to be made to bleed under your infliction, I beseech you to be able to state clear and strong grounds for your proceedings.

Prejudice and excitement are transitory, and will pass away. Political expediency, in matters of judicature, is a false and hollow principle, and will never satisfy the conscience of him, who is fearful that he may have given a hasty judgment. I earnestly entreat you, for your own sakes, to possess yourselves of solid reasons, founded in truth and justice, for the judgment you pronounce, which you can carry with you, till you go down into your graves; reasons, which it will require no argument to revive, no sophistry, no excitement, no regard to popular favour, to render satisfactory to your consciences; reasons which you can appeal to, in every crisis of your lives, and which shall be able to assure you, in your own great extremity, that you have not judged a fellow-creature without mercy.

Sir, I have done with the case of this individual, and now leave him in your hands. I hold up before him the broad shield of the constitution; if through that he be pierced and fall, he will be but one sufferer, in a conmon catastrophe.

[blocks in formation]

SHOUT for the mighty men,

Who died along this shore

Who died within this mountain's glen!
For never nobler chieftain's head

Was laid on Valour's crimson bed,

Nor ever prouder gore

Rushed-a storm of sword and spear ;-
Like the roused elements,

Let loose from an immortal hand,
To chasten or to crush a land!

But there are none to hear;

Greece is a hopeless slave.

LEONIDAS! no hand is near
To lift thy fiery falchion now;
No warrior makes the warrior's vow
Upon thy sea-washed grave.

The voice that should be raised by men,
Must now be given by wave and glen.

And it is given!—the surge—

The tree-the rock-the sand-
On Freedom's kneeling spirit urge,
In sounds that speak but to the free,
The memory of thine and thee!
The vision of thy band

Still gleams within the glorious dell,
Where their gore hallowed, as it fell !

And is thy grandeur done?

Mother of men like these!

Has not thy outcry gone,

Where Justice has an ear to hear?-
Be holy! God shall guide thy spear;
Till in thy crimsoned seas

Are plunged the chain and scimitar,
GREECE shall be a new-born Star!

TYROLESE WAR SONG.

THERE's a cloud in the sky,
There's a cloud in the glen;
But the one is of vapour,
The other of men.

We have sworn by the blood
Which Napoleon hath spilt,
With the arm on the altar,
The hand on the hilt-

[graphic]

We have sworn by that God,
Who can keep us, and save us,
To fight for the land

Which our forefathers gave us.

We have sworn by our love,
By that spell which hath bound us,
To fight for the maids

And the mountains around us.

We have ta'en our last look-
We have ta'en our last kiss-
But let that hour of anguish
Be paid for in this.

Down, down with the rocks
On the hell-hounds below,
And clear let the horn
Of the Tyrolese blow.

Cut away-cut away,

With the stones and the trees,

And let France long remember
The brave Tyrolese!

And wo be to him,

'Mid the thousands beneath,

Whom the Tyrolese marks
From his mountainous heath.

There's a spell in his eye,
There's a spell in his breath,
And the sound of his gun
Is the watchword of death.

Now, now is the time,

While our standard still waves,

DUKE OF MILAN PLEADING HIS CAUSE BEFORE CHARLES V.

Massinger.

I COME not, Emperor, t'invade thy mercy,

By fawning on thy fortune; nor bring with me
Excuses, or denials.

I profess I was thine enemy:
Thy deadly and vowed enemy; one that wished
Confusion to thy person and estates;

And with my utmost powers and deepest counsels,
Had they been truly followed, furthered it:
Nor will I now, although my neck were under
The hangman's axe, with one poor syllable
Confess, but that I honoured the French king
More than thyself, and all men.

Now, give me leave

(My hate against thyself, and love to him
Freely acknowledged) to give up the reasons,
That made me so affected. In my wants
I ever found him faithful: had supplies
Of men and monies from him: and my hopes,
Quite sunk, were, by his grace, buoyed up again.
He was, indeed, to me as my good angel,
To guard me from all dangers. I dare speak
(Nay must and will) his praise now, in as high
And loud a key, as when he was thy equal.
The benefits he sowed in me, met not
Unthankful ground, but yielded him his own,
With fair increase; and I still glory in it;

And, though my fortunes (poor compared to his,
And Milan, weighed with France, appear as nothing)
Are in thy fury burnt; let it be mentioned,
They served but as small tapers to attend
The solemn flame at this great funeral ;
And with them I will gladly waste myself,
Rather than undergo the imputation
Of being base or unthankful.

If that, then, to be grateful

For courtesies received, or not to leave
A friend in his necessities, be a crime

Amongst you Spaniards, Sforza brings his head

To pay the forfeit. Nor come I as a slave,
Pinioned and fettered, in a squalid weed,

« НазадПродовжити »