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DIALOGUE.

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THE

UNITED STATES SPEAKER.

PART FIRST.

SPECIMENS OF AMERICAN ELOQUENCE.

1. CHARACTER OF TRUE ELOQUENCE.-Webster.

When public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when great interests are at stake, and strong passions excited, nothing is valuable, in speech, farther than it is connected with high intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness, are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed, does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire after it-they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces taught in the schools, the costly ornaments, and studied contrivances of speech, shock and disgust men, when their own lives, and the fate of their wives, their children, and their country, hang on the decision of the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism is eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception, outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve, the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye, informing every feature, and urging the

whole man onward, right onward to his object-this, this is eloquence or rather it is something greater and higher than all eloquence, it is action, noble, sublime, godlike action.

2. CAUSES OF WAR.—Binney.

What are sufficient causes of war let no man say, let no legislator say, until the question of war is directly and inevitably before him. Jurists may be permitted with comparative safety o pile tome upon tome of interminable disquisition upon the motives, reasons, and causes of just and unjust war. Metaphysicians may be suffered with impunity to spin the thread of heir speculations until it is attenuated to a cobweb; but for a body created for the government of a great nation, and for the adjustment and protection of its infinitely diversified interests, it is worse than folly to speculate upon the causes of war, until the great question shall be presented for immediate actionuntil they shall hold the united question of cause, motive, and present expediency, in the very palm of their hands. War is a tremendous evil. Come when it will, unless it shall come in the necessary defence of our national security, or of that honor under whose protection national security reposes, it will come too soon-too soon for our national prosperity-too soon for our individual happiness-too soon for the frugal, industrious, and virtuous habits of our citizens-too soon, perhaps, for our most precious institutions. The man who for any cause, save the sacred cause of public security, which makes all wars defensive-the man who for any cause but this shall promote or compel this final and terrible resort, assumes a responsibility second to none, nay, transcendently deeper and higher than any, which man can assume before his fellow-men, or in the presence of God, his Creator.

3. TRIBUTE TO WASHINGTON.-Harrison.

Hard, hard indeed, was the contest for freedom, and the struggle for independence. The golden sun of liberty had nearly set in the gloom of an eternal night, ere its radiant beams illumined our western horizon. Had not the tutelar saint of Columbia hovered around the American camp, and presided over her destinies, freedom must have met with an untimely

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