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such a country, as his parent? The sense of having one would die within him; he would blush for his patriotism, if he retained any, and justly, for it would be a vice. He would be a banished man in his native land.

5 I see no exception to the respect, that is paid among nations, to the law of good faith. If there are cases in this enlightened period, when it is violated, there are none when it is decried. It is the philosophy of politics, the religion of governments. It is observed by barbarians,— 10 a whiff of tobacco smoke, or a string of beads, gives not merely binding force, but sanctity to treaties. Even in Algiers, a truce may be bought for money, but when ratified, even Algiers is too wise, or too just, to disown and annul its obligation. Thus we see, neither the ignorance 15 of savages, nor the principles of an association for piracy and rapine, permit a nation to despise its engagements. If, sir, there could be a resurrection from the foot of the gallows, if the victims of justice could live again, collect together and form a society, they would, however loath, 20 soon find themselves obliged to make justice, that justice under which they fell, the fundamental law of their state. They would perceive it was their interest to make others respect, and they would therefore soon pay some respect themselves to the obligations of good faith."

25 It is painful, I hope it is superfluous, to make even the supposition, that America should furnish the occasion of this opprobrium. No, let me not even imagine that a republican government sprung, as our own is, from a people enlightened and uncorrupted, a government whose origin 30 is right, and whose daily discipline is duty, can, upon solemn debate, make its option to be faithless,-can dare to act what despots dare not avow, what our own example evinces, the states of Barbary are unsuspected of. No, let me rather make the supposition, that Great Britain refuses 35 to execute the treaty, after we have done every thing to carry it into effect. Is there any language of reproach, pungent enough to express your commentary on the fact? What would you say, or rather what would you not say? Would you not tell them, wherever an Englishman might 40 travel, shame would stick to him, he would disown his country. You would exclaim, England, proud of your wealth, and arrogant in the possession of power,-blush for these distinctions, which become the vehicles of your

dishonor. Such a nation might truly say to corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, thou art my mother and my sister. We should say of such a race of men their name is a heavier burden than their debt.

LESSON CCXIII.-FREE INSTITUTIONS FAVORABLE TO LITERA-
TURE. EDWARD EVERETT.

The greatest efforts of human genius have been made where the nearest approach to free institutions has taken place. There shone not forth one ray of intellectual light to cheer the long and gloomy ages of the Memphian and 5 Babylonian despots. Not a historian, not an orator, not a poet, is heard of in their annals. When you ask, what was achieved by the generations of thinking beings, the millions of men, whose natural genius was as bright as that of the Greeks, nay, who forestalled the Greeks in the 10 first invention of many of the arts, you are told, that they built the pyramids of Memphis, the temples of Thebes, and the tower of Babylon, and carried Sesostris and Ninus upon their shoulders, from the west of Africa to the Indus.

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Mark the contrast in Greece. With the first emerging of that country into the light of political liberty, the poems of Homer appear. Some centuries of political misrule and literary darkness follow; and then the great constellation of their geniuses seems to arise at once. The stormy elo20 quence and the deep philosophy, the impassioned drama and the grave history, were all produced for the entertainment of that "fierce democracie" of Athens. Here, then, the genial influence of liberty on letters, is strongly put to the test. Athens was certainly a free state; free to licen25 tiousness,-free to madness. The rich were arbitrarily pillaged to defray the expenses of the state; the great were banished to appease the envy of their rivals; the wise sacrificed to the fury of the populace. It was a state, in short, where liberty existed with most of the imperfec30 tions which have led men to love and praise despotism. Still, however, it was for this lawless, merciless people, that the most chastised and accomplished literature, which the world has known, was produced.

The philosophy of Plato was the attraction which drew

to a morning's walk in the olive gardens of the academy, the young men of this factious city. Those tumultuous assemblies of Athens,-the very same, which rose in their wrath, and to a man clamored for the blood of 5 Phocion, required to be addressed, not in the cheap, extemporaneous rant of modern demagogues, but in the elaborate and thrice-repeated orations of Demosthenes. No! the noble and elegant arts of Greece grew up in no Augustan age,-enjoyed neither royal nor imperial patron10 age. Unknown before in the world, strangers on the Nile, and strangers on the Euphrates, they sprang at once into life in a region not unlike our own New England,— iron-bound, sterile, and free.

The imperial astronomers of Chaldea went up almost 15 to the stars in their observatories; but it was a Greek who first foretold an eclipse, and measured the year. The nations of the East invented the alphabet; but not a line has reached us of profane literature, in any of their languages, and it is owing to the embalming power of 20 Grecian genius, that the invention itself has been transmitted to the world. The Egyptian architects could erect structures, which, after three thousand five hundred years, are still standing in their uncouth, original majesty ; but it was only on the barren soil of Attica, that the beautiful 25 columns of the Parthenon and the Theseum could rest, which are standing also. With the decline of liberty in Greece, began the decline of all her letters, and all her arts, though her tumultuous democracies were succeeded by liberal and accomplished princes.

LESSON CCXIV.-THE STUDY OF ELOCUTION NECESSARY FOR
A PREACHER.-PROF. PARK.

Among all the attractions of divine worship, there is none like that of the preacher's natural eloquence. No instrument of music is so sweet as the human voice, when attuned, as it may be, by care. The most exhilarating 5 band of performers on the dulcimer and the cymbal, will be heard with less pleasure, than he who has learned to play well on that instrument which is as far superior to all others, as a work of God is superior to the works of man. Let it then no longer be said, that while an organ

ist will spend years in learning to manage a collection of leaden pipes, the preacher is unwilling to exert himself for acquiring a control over the stops and keys of what is far more religious in its tones, than the organ. So, like5 wise, the human eye can be made eloquent, when the tongue can say no more; the palm of the hand, too, has an eye which is full of meaning. But the philosophy of these organs is neither understood, nor applied to prac tice, by our preachers.

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If we dwelt in a land, where the preacher is the only man who ventures to address an assembly, then we might lean on this privilege, and rest assured, that a faulty eloquence in the pulpit, is better than none at all among the people. But we dwell in a land, where the laymen are 15 popular orators; where the mechanic is master of a racy, vigorous diction; where the reformed inebriate can electrify an audience who will sleep under a lifeless sermon ; where the enemies of religion and social order, have caught the spirit and the fire which the ministry have 20 lost. Other men can speak without reading; and unless we can use, in a good cause, the weapons which infidels use in a bad one, we shall surrender the truth to dangers which can arise nowhere, but in a republic. Nowhere, but in this republic, is the force of popular eloquence felt 25 universally; and the church will be overborne, if this force be not controlled with unwonted skill.

We have not sought to recover the naturalness of manner which an artificial education has perverted. We still allow our theological seminaries to remain destitute of all 30 adequate instruction on this theme. It is confidently believed, that, if professorships of elocution were properly endowed and supplied in our theological seminaries, a more immediate and a more manifest service would be rendered to the pulpit, than can be performed by almost 35 any other charity; for the department of elocution is now more neglected than any other; and if nature were allowed to resume the place, from which the worst species of art has expelled it, the improvement in our speech would be seen and felt more easily, quickly, and generally, than 40 almost any other kind of improvement.

LESSON CCXV.-RELIEF OF REVOLUTIONARY OFFICERS.-
MARTIN VAN BUREN.

Let us look, for a moment, at the arguments advanced by the opponents of the bill. The meritorious services of the petitioners, the signal advantages that have resulted from these services to us and to posterity; the losses sus5 tained by the petitioners, and the consequent advantages derived by the government from the act of commutation, are unequivocally admitted.

But it is contended, we have made a compromise legally binding on the parties, and exonerating the government 10 from farther liability; that, in an evil and unguarded hour, they have given us a release, and we stand upon our "bond."

Now, the question which I wish to address to the conscience and the judgment of this honorable body, is this, 15 not whether this issue was well taken in point of law; not whether we might not hope for a safe deliverance under it; but whether the issue ought to be taken at all; whether it comports with the honor of the government to plead a legal exemption against the claims of gratitude; 20 whether, in other words, the government be bound at all times to insist upon its strict legal rights.

Has this been the practice of the government on all former occasions? Or, is this the only question on which this principle should operate? Nothing can be easier 25 than to show, that the uniform practice of the government has been at war with the principle which is now opposed to the claim of the petitioners.

Not a session has occurred, since the commencement of this government, in which Congress has not relieved the 30 citizens from hardships resulting from unforeseen contingencies, and forborne an enforcement of law, when its enforcement would work great and undeserved injury. I might, if excusable on an occasion like this, turn over the statute book, page by page, and give repeated proofs of 35 this assertion. But it is unnecessary.

It appears, then, that it has not been the practice of the government to act the part of Shylock with its citizens, and God forbid, that it should make its debut* on the present occasion, not so much in the character of a merci40 less creditor, as a reluctant, though wealthy debtor; withholding the mer'ted pittance from those to whose noble

*Pronounced dabu.

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