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your attention; but I cannot repress my indignation. I feel myself impelled by every duty. My lords, we are called upon as members of this house, as men, as Christian men, to protest against such notions standing near the throne, polluting the ear of majesty. "That God and nature put into our hands!" I know not what ideas that lord may entertain of God and nature; but I know that such abominable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What! to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacre of the Indian scalping knife to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, roasting, and eating, literally, my lords, eating the mangled victims of his barbarous battles! Such horrible notions shock every precept of religion, divine or natural, every generous feeling of humanity, and every sentiment of honor.

These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend bench, those holy ministers of the gospel, and pious pastors of our church; I conjure them to join in the holy work, and vindicate the religion of their God. I appeal to the wisdom and the law of this learned bench, to defend and support the justice of their country. I call upon the bishops, to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; upon the learned judges, to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honor of your lordships, to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestors of this noble lord frown with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain he led your victorious fleets against the boasted armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honor, the liberties, the religion, the protestant religion, of this country, against the arbitrary cruelties of popery and the inquisition, if these more than popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are let loose among us.-To turn forth into our settlements, among our ancient connexions, friends, and relations, the merciless cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child! to send forth the infidel savage—against whom? against your protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war!-hell-hounds, I say, of savage war! Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate the wretched natives of America; and we improve on the inhuman example even of Spanish cruelty; we turn loose these savage hell-hounds against

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.

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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 success- —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. Το 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 surmount— space 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.

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