soon settled in a different way from what the allied sovereigns then intended. Holland was settled by the separation of Belgium from it, Ireland was so settled that the very champions of intolerance themselves had to concede Catholic emancipation. England was settled in a way which required the massacre in the north, and which led to the incendiarism of the southwhich necessitated the Reform Bill, and which will demand greater changes yet. The struggle, which was maintained with massacre and cannon abroad, not only failed there, but fails here. From day to day we see the indubitable proofs that that strife is not terminated, that the fancied victory is not gained. Although its hero may have most judiciously disposed his troops in Ireland, the spirit of agitation thereHeaven prosper it! is working its way peacefully, legally, but determinately, towards what I think is due to Ireland- not separation, but justice; freedom, and any degree of legislative independence which it is the will of that nation to require, and which I believe it will obtainexhibiting the spectacle of the victor of Napoleon becoming the vanquished of Daniel O'Connell.

After a review of the facts and bearings of that memorable time, the parent, I think, will do well to lead his child to moralize upon war and the military profession. I answer for no one but myself; and, in fact, what I say here I wish ever to be understood as being not only my own personal opinion, but as thrown out not for reception, but for investigation. But in my opinion-and therefore, I should like that point seriously considered by the parent in training his child-the military profession is not an honest one. Christianity, or any other system of morality, ill deserves such a name, if it allows the hiring out of physical strength for the shedding of human blood, at the bidding of others, without having one's own conscience in the matter. Let the parent, if he sees the question in this light, instil into his child's mind these principles, that he may never be likely to become a red-coated slave to others— that he may consider it as the privilege of humanity that we are moral beings-that conscience is inalienable, and that the general, the government, and the monarch, cannot hold that for us, nor dispense with our obedience to its sacred decrees. There is the first obligation of our being the very soul of duty; and he who puts it out of his power to judge of the justice of the cause in which he is performing "the duties," as they are called, of a soldier, parts with all that divides man from the brute, driven by the agency and the will of another-he places himself in a position so degraded, that we may well blush to see humanity brought down to that level.

The cost of wars and their results in impeding the advancement of civilization, will

form another branch of moral disquisition, which the parent should study for himself, and throw light upon for his child. This same French war cost us an addition to our debt of £600,000,000 sterling, and has burdened us with £30,000,000 annually of permanent taxes. The very first year after the establishment of peace all over the world, by this great victory of Waterloo, the estimates were for 170,000 soldiers, to be kept on foot by this country as a standing army. A standing army! What have free states to do with such a thing as that? When I denounce the military profession as unchristian, I may, perhaps, be asked, "Are you, then, for unarming the nation?" No; I would arm the nation. It should indeed be the nation. Under such circumstances, if the country was in danger of invasion, every man would turn out at once with his musket upon his shoulder. Give the people institutions which attract their veneration and love; give them laws which administer justice to the millions, and bring it to the door of the poor man's cottage; give them establishments and improvements which secure to all the remuneration of their toil and services to the community making them as happy as a rightful distribution of the produce and the wealth of a nation can render humanity-and you will have an invincible people, before whom all hireling bands will be scattered as chaff before the wind.

Teach your children lessons such as these, growing out of the events, which may be laid before them in all varieties and forms. It is time to turn them to such account. Truth, goodness, and wisdom-even these may grow as if manured with the blood shed at Waterloo. The evils of the past are fruitful of blessings for the future. Let the page of history be turned with a careful hand- let it be read with an observant eye-pondered with a reflective mind; and rich will the fruit become in stores with which he may endow his son a noble and worthy heritage, teaching him to judge better than his fathers did of the merit which nations should recompense, and the crimes which they should denounce. Oh, there are those, by their inventions, mitigating toil, who have multiplied the means of enjoyment upon the face of the earth—who, by their discoveries, have aided the advance of science, and let in the light of heaven where all had been as dark as the dungeon. Then there are those whose writings form our intellectual heritage and enrichment. There are the philanthropists who have led society onward, healing the wounded, and strengthening the right-minded. THEY are the world's benefactors and heroes - those who, by their disinterested exertions, their long and painful study, and their noble sacrifices, have conquered good for humanity. These are the men to whom statues and pillars should be raised theirs the times

around whose record the pen of the historian should glow with unwonted eloquence- these should the voice of public gratulation hail, awarding to them a higher meed of public and lasting gratitude than the best services of the warrior in the field of battle ever won, or ever could possibly deserve. Battles cannot win good of this description: it is by peaceful arts that society advances; it is by the powers of mind, in their benign influence upon the arrangements of life, public institutions, and private character; it is by these that the world gets its good; it is in reference to these that the youthful mind should be trained. As generation after generation sees this matter more clearly, and appreciates more justly the achievements of the distinguished the peacefully distinguished in that proportion will honour be awarded to the worthiest; the nation will look back on its train of benefactors with unfeigned veneration, and the anniversaries it will celebrate will be those in which some great discovery or invention has been made for the good of society, or some important advance effected in political liberty, giving to those benefits their permanence and security.

BENJAMIN DISRAELI.

Born 1805. Living.

[THE speech which follows, containing, as it does, a fine estimate of the life and character of the late Prince Consort, was delivered by Mr. Disraeli in the House of Commons on its re-assembling in January, 1862, for the first time after the great national loss to which the speaker so eloquently referred. As a specimen of careful and elaborate English it is well worthy of the attention of the oratorical student, but it is not to be looked upon as in any way representative of Mr. Disraeli's accustomed style. Some illustrations of his more vehement moods, and of that brilliant sarcastic force which have, in no small measure, contributed to raise Mr. Disraeli to his present leading position as an orator in the House of Commons, will be given later on in this volume.]

N°

CHARACTER OF THE PRINCE CONSORT.

O person can be insensible of the fact that the House meets to-night under circumstances very much changed from those which have attended our assembling for many years. Of late, indeed for more than twenty years past, whatever may have been our personal rivalries and our party strifes, there was at least one sentiment in which we all acquiesced, and in which we all shared, and that was a sentiment of admiring gratitude to that throne whose wisdom and goodness so frequently softened the acerbities of our free public life, and so majestically represented the matured intelligence of an enlightened people. All that has changed. He is gone who was the comfort and support of that throne. It has been said that there is nothing which England so much appreciates as the fulfilment of duty. The prince whom we

have lost not only was eminent for the fulfilment of his duty, but it was the fulfilment of the highest duty; and it was the fulfilment of the highest duty under the most difficult circumstances. Prince Albert was the consort of his Sovereign. He was the father of one who might be his Sovereign. He was the prime councillor of a realm, the political constitution of which did not even recognise his political existence. Yet, under these circumstances, so difficult and so delicate, he elevated even the throne by the dignity and purity of his domestic life. He framed, and partly accomplished, a scheme of education for the heir of England which proves how completely its august projector had contemplated the office of an English king. In the affairs of state, while his serene spirit and elevated position bore him above all the possible bias of our party life, he showed, upon every great occasion, all the resources, all the prudence, and all the sagacity of an experienced and responsible statesman. I have presumed, sir, to touch upon three instances in which there was on the part of Prince Albert, the fulfilment of duty of the highest character, under circumstances of the greatest difficulty. I will venture to touch upon another point of his character, equally distinguished by the fulfilment of duty; but in this instance the duty was not only fulfilled, but it was created. Although Prince Albert was adopted by this country, he was, after all, but a youth of tender years; yet such was the character of his mind that he at once observed that, notwithstanding all those great achievements which long centuries of internal concord and of public liberty had permitted the energy and enterprise of Englishmen to accomplish, there was still a great deficiency in our national character, and which, if neglected, might lead to the impairing not only of our social happiness, but even the sources of our public wealth,-and that was a deficiency of culture. But he was not satisfied in detecting the deficiency, he resolved to supply it. His plans were deeply laid; they were maturely considered, and notwithstanding the obstacles which they encountered, I am prepared to say they were eminently successful. What might have been his lot had his term completed that which is ordained as the average life of man, it may be presumption to predict. Perhaps he would have impressed upon his age not only his character but his name; but this I think posterity will acknowledge, that he heightened the intellectual and moral standard of this country, that he extended and expanded the sympathies of all classes, and that he most beneficially adapted the productive powers of England to the inexhaustible resources of science and art. It is sometimes deplored by those who loved and admired him, that he was thwarted occasionally in his enterprises, and

that he was not duly appreciated in his works. These, however, are not circumstances for regret but for congratulation. They prove the leading and original mind which so long and so advantageously laboured for this country. Had he not encountered these obstacles, had he not been subject to occasional distrust and misrepresentation, it would only have proved that he was a man of ordinary mould and temper. Those who move must change, and those who change must necessarily disturb and alarm prejudices; and what he encountered was only a demonstration that he was a man superior to his age, and admirably adapted to carry out the work he had undertaken. Sir, there is one point, and one point only, on which I would presume for a moment to dwell; and it is not for the sake of you, sir, whom I am now addressing, or for the generation to which we belong, but it is that those who come after us may not misapprehend the nature of this illustrious man. Prince Albert was not a patron. He was not one of those who, by their smiles and by their gold, reward excellence or stimulate exertion. His contributions to the cause of progress and improvement were far more powerful and far more precious. He gave to it his thought, his time, his toil: he gave to it his life. I see in this House many gentlemen-on both sides, and in different parts of it-who occasionally entered with the Prince at those council boards where they conferred and decided upon the great undertakings with which he was connected; and I ask them, without the fear of a denial, whether he was not the leading spirit-whether his was not the mind that foresaw the difficulty, and his the resources that supplied the remedy-whether his was not the courage to overcome apparently insurmountable obstacles, and whether every one who worked with him did not feel that he was the real originator of those great plans of improvement which they contributed to carry out. Sir, we have been asked to-night to condole with the Crown in this great calamity. That is no easy office. To condole in general is the office of those who, without the pale of sorrow, feel for the sorrowing; but in this instance the country is as heart-stricken as its Queen. Yet, in the mutual sensibilities of a Sovereign and a people there is something ennobling, something that elevates the spirit beyond the ordinary claim of earthly sorrow. The counties, and cities, and corporations of the realm, and those illustrious institutions of learning, of science, of art, and of skill, of which he was the highest ornament and the inspiring spirit, have bowed before the throne under this great calamity. It

tion the expression of the public sorrow, and ratify, as it were, the record of a nation's woe. It is with these feelings that I shall support the address in answer to the speech from the throne.

THE EARL OF DERBY.
Born 1799. Living.

[IT may perhaps be interesting to compare the subjoined speech by the great leader of the Conservative party in the House of Lords, delivered, as it was, on the same evening and under the same circumstances as that of Mr. Disraeli, which here precedes it. For this reason, and because in some respects it views the cha racter of the Prince Consort from a different standpoint from that of the noble lord's representative in the Commons, it has been added in this place.]

ANOTHER ESTIMATE OF THE PRINCE CONSORT'S CHARACTER.

MY

Y LORDS, the present is an occasion, if ever there was one, on which it is desirable that nothing should occur to mar the harmony, or interfere with the unanimity with which we should carry our address to the throne. One of the main topics of that address is to express our sympathy with her Majesty on that deep affliction with which it has pleased Providence to visit her, and at the same time our sense of the irreparable loss which the country has sustained from that calamity. The lamented Prince Consort was called suddenly, in early manhood, to a station the most exalted and the most perilous, surrounded by every temptation, having at his command every luxury that human heart could wish for. For a period of two-and-twenty years he blamelessly discharged all the duties of a husband and a father. He made his household the model of domestic order and family affection. Placed in a position of the extremest delicacy, he so conducted himself that even the breath of calumny never ventured to insinuate against him the slightest abuse of the influence attaching to his high position. That illustrious Prince, whose loss we all lament, and to whose merits so much justice has been done in such eloquent and feeling terms by the noble lord who moved and my noble friend who seconded the address, was illustrious in the truest and highest sense of the word. Such a term indeed is inadequate to express his worth. He has passed from amongst us in the very prime of life, in the full vigour of bodily activity and intellectual power. But he has not passed away without leaving his mark behind upon the age in which he lived. He never condescended to flatter: on

to be silent. The expression of our feelings may be late, but even in that lateness some propriety may be observed if to-night we sanc

to the very verge of indiscretion in pointing out defects; and yet he pursued steadily, silently, and most unostentatiously, that line of life which he had chalked out for himself. He suc

ceeded in establishing an impress of himself, which will long endure, upon the habits, the feelings, and the tastes of this country. Few men have had the opportunity of knowing how wide his Royal Highness's range of study-how few the intervals he allowed to the most harmless and innocent recreations-how assiduously he exercised a mind of more than ordinary natural powers, and more than ordinary cultivation; how he, as it were instinctively, seized upon the main and leading principles of every question submitted to his consideration, and how unfalteringly he worked every question out in its minutest details. My lords, this is not the place to say that ample justice will be done to him, but the country will, day by day, have more ample means of estimating the services which he rendered to the cause of art and science; nor is this the place to speak of the stimulus which he gave by his personal attention and by his unremitting efforts in the promotion of everything which would tend to improve the domestic comfort of the humbler classes of the community, to expand the mind and increase the sphere of intellectual enioyment, and raise the social and moral condition of every class of her Majesty's subjects. The debt which is due to him from the country on these grounds can hardly be estimated at present, and I fear it will only be estimated in its intensity in the loss of the advantages to which I have referred. But, my lords, this is the place in which one word at least should be said upon a different portion of his life; I mean upon the part which he took with regard to public affairs. Some years ago, I recollect, it was a matter of not unnatural constitutional jealousy that any interference with public affairs should take place from one who was altogether irresponsible to the authorities of the country. My lords, those persons who so argued argued upon a not unnatural constitutional jealousy, but they argued in forgetfulness of the very dictates of human nature, and required that which was rendered impossible by the very constitution of the human mind. For they required what amounted, in fact, to this: that two persons should be living in the closest and most intimate relations, in the most absolute confidence which can subsist between husband and wife, and yet that the opinions of the one should be altogether concealed, and that the thoughts of the one should altogether abstain from a consideration of those topics which, day by day, and hour by hour, must be a subject of engrossing care and anxiety to the other. My lords, the very statement of facts shows the impossibility of meeting the views of those persons who so argued. I should say there was occasion for that jealousy, if in his high position the Prince Consort had ever made himself the tool, or sought to subserve the

machinations of political parties in England. I am sure every one who had an opportunity of judging will agree that no one could be more absolutely and entirely free from such imputations, and that the whole of his efforts were directed, irrespective of party altogether, to give his Sovereign and his wife that counsel and advice which he thought most befitting his position. But if it was desirable that there should be this influence between the Sovereign and the Prince Consort on the subject of public affairs, how much more desirable was it that it should be exercised by him with a full knowledge of every political circumstance, of the views brought forward by the Minister, and of all the discussions which took place, than that it should be exercised in private, and with an imperfect knowledge of the grounds upon which certain questions were submitted to her Majesty. And, my lords, I appeal confidently to all who have had the honour to be admitted to that personal intercourse with the Sovereignwhich is the highest privilege of a Ministerwhether from the presence of his Royal Highness, whether from his calm, and cool, and impartial judgment, whether from his great ability, and the manner in which he applied himself to every topic, they have not been frequently indebted to him for valuable and useful suggestions and for great assistance. In the Prince Consort the Queen has lost not only the husband of her youth, the father of her children, him to whom her youthful affections were freely given and have in maturer years only increased and intensified with conjugal love, but she has also lost the familiar friend, the trusted counsellor, the never-failing adviser, to whom she could look up in every difficulty and in every emergency, and to whom she did look up with that proud humility which none but a woman's heart can know, glorying in the intellectual superiority of him to whom her own will and her own judgment were freely put into subjection. My lords, I do not doubt but that in the affection of the surviving members of her family she has a source of consolation; but in the discharge of public duties she must henceforth tread alone the high and thorny paths of sovereignty-the sustaining hand, the guiding judgment, the never-failing counsellor, are hers no more. And who, my lords, can hear without the deepest emotion how, in the full consciousness of her utter desolation and of her aggravated responsibility, in the very presence of death, in the first moment of that agony of grief, rising as it were beneath the overwhelming weight of that crushing sorrow, she uttered the noble words, that, with God's blessing, she would discharge the duties which were devolving upon her. My lords, I cannot pursue the subject; but of this I am confident, that of those who hear me there is not one who will not join in

the fervent prayer to God that she may be strengthened in this noble resolve, and that He who has seen fit to inflict this heavy blow, and to deprive her of him who was on earth her comfort and support, may be Himself her comfort and support in this deep, deep grief. My lords, the words of our address may be inadequate; they are inadequate. But if they convey inadequately, they convey unfailingly, not only the expression of your lordships' unanimous feelings, but the unanimous expression of a nation's devoted loyalty, deep and grateful and loving as it is. My lords, in the presence of this sorrow, I am satisfied it will be the desire of all on both sides of this and the other House of Parliament to contribute all in their power to spare her Majesty one additional care, one additional sorrow, added to those which press so heavily upon her. For my own part, and those with whom I have the honour to act, such, I am sure, will be the spirit in which we shall enter upon the business of this session of Parliament. I earnestly trust, and from the tenour of the speech I am hopeful that her Majesty's Ministers are disposed to meet us in the same spirit; that they are disposed to apply themselves to those useful and practical matters in which all can alike join harmoniously and cordially for the improvement and advancement of our common country; and not only to abstain from bringing forward themselves, but to discourage in others the agitation of topics of more violent controversy and discussion, which, in their possible results, add to the anxieties and to the cares of the Sovereign.

DANIEL O'CONNELL.

Born 1775. Died 1847.

[ANY standard collection of speeches would be incomplete without some specimens of the style of the great Irish " Agitator," as he himself delighted to be called. Though not of the highest or noblest type, the eloquence of O'Connell had at the time of its delivery an almost resistless power, and it was said that Lord Derby, in the days of O'Connell Mr. Stanley, was the only man that the great demagogue ever feared in debate. It has, however, been well observed that "his chief characteristic as a daring leader of the people against the existing order of things was the wonderful sagacity with which he could march along the boundaryline of strict legal action without crossing it, or com mitting either himself or his followers." At the Irish bar he was beyond question the first advocate of his day, whether for oratory or ready adaptation of the law. The speech selected below was delivered at a meeting of the citizens, freemen, and freeholders of the city of Dublin, held at the Royal Exchange, on Tuesday, 18th Sept., 1810, to consider of a petition to the King and Parliament, praying them to take into consideration the repeal of the Act of Union; Sir James Riddell, High Sheriff of the city of Dublin, in the chair. Some other speeches from the same source will be found later in this volume.]

REPEAL OF THE UNION.

[A resolution in favour of an address to the King and the Imperial Parliament, praying a

repeal of the Act of Union having been proposed and carried, Mr. O'Connell, on commencing his speech, declared that]

H3

E offered himself to the meeting with unfeigned diffidence. He was unable to do justice to his feelings on the great national subject on which they had met. He felt too much of personal anxiety to allow him to arrange in anything like order, the many topics which rushed upon his mind, now that, after ten years of silence and torpor, Irishmen began again to recollect their enslaved country. It was a melancholy period, those ten years-a period in which Ireland saw her artificers starved-her tradesmen begging-her merchants become bankrupts-her gentry banished-her nobility degraded. Within that period domestic turbulence broke from day to day into open violence and murder-religious dissensions were aggravated and embittered-credit and

and, to crown all, we were at length insulted by being told of our growing prosperity. This was not the painting of imagination-it borrowed nothing from fancy-it was, alas! the plain representation of the facts that had occurred the picture, in sober colours, of the real state of his ill-fated country. There was not a man present but must be convinced that he did not exaggerate a single fact there was not a man present but must know that more misery existed than he had described. Such being the history of the first ten years of the Union, it would not be difficult to convince any unprejudiced man, that all those calamities had sprung from that measure. Ireland was favoured by Providence with a fertile soil, an excellent situation for commerce, intersected by navigable rivers, indented at every side with safe and commodious harbours, blessed with a fruitful soil, and with a vigorous, hardy, generous, and brave population; how did it happen, then, that the noble qualities of the Irish people were perverted? that the order of Providence was disturbed, and its blessings worse than neglected? The fatal cause was obvious -it was the Union. That these deplorable effects would follow from that accursed measure was prophesied. Before the Act of Union passed, it had been already proved that the trade of the country and its credit must fail as capital was drawn from it; that turbulence and violence would increase, when the gentry were removed to residence in another country; that the taxes should increase in the same proportion as the people became unable to pay