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88

PROSE DECLAMATIONS

and opposes; he is on both sides at once, and seemingly wishes that he could be on one side more than both sides.

He has associated his ambition, his interests, and his affections, with a party. He prefers, doubtless, that his side should be victorious by the best means, and under the championship of good men; but rather than lose the victory, he will consent to any means, and follow any man. Thus, with a general desire to be upright, the exigency of his party constantly pushes him to dishonorable deeds. He gradually adopts two characters, a personal and a political character. All the requisitions of his conscience he obeys in his private character; all the requsitions of his party he obeys in his political conduct. In one character he is a man of principle; in the other, a man of mere expedients. As a man, he means to be veracious, honest, moral; as a politician, he is deceitful, cunning, unscrupulous,—anything for party. As a man, he abhors the slimy demagogue; as a politician, he employs him as a scavenger. As a man, he shrinks from the flagitiousness of slander; as a politician, he permits it, smiles upon it in others, rejoices in the success gained by it. As a man, he respects no one who is rotten in heart; as a politician, no man through whom victory may be gained can be too bad.

For his religion he will give up all his secular interests; but for his politics he gives up even his religion. He adores virtue, and rewards vice. Whilst bolstering up unrighteous measures, and more unrighteous men, he prays for the advancement of religion, and justice, and honor! I would to God that his prayer might be answered upon his own political head; for never was there a place where such blessings were more needed! What a heart has that man, who can stand in the very middle of the Bible, with its transcendant truths raising their glowing fronts on every side of him, and feel no inspiration but that of immorality and meanness! Do not tell me of any excuses! It is a shame to attempt an excuse! If there were no religion; if that vast sphere, out of which glow all the supereminent truths of the Bible was a mere emptiness and void; yet, methinks, the very idea of Fatherland, the exceeding preciousness of the laws and liberties of a great people, would enkindle such a high and noble enthusiasm, that all baser feelings would be consumed! But if the love of country, a sense of character, a manly regard for integrity, the example of our most illustrious men, the

dishonest bread, it is because such a creature has never felt one sensation of manly virtue; it is because his heart is a howling wilderness, inhospitable to innocence.

IN REPLY TO MR. WICKHAM.

W. WIRT.

IN proceeding to examine the motion itself, and to answer the argument of the gentleman who opened it, I will treat him with candor. I will not follow the example which he has set me, on a very recent occasion, but I will endeavor to meet the gentleman's propositions in their full force, and to answer them fairly. I will not, as I am advancing towards them, with my mind's eye, measure the height, breadth and power of the proposition;-if I find it beyond my strength, halve it; if still beyond my strength, quarter it; if still necessary, subdivide it into eighths; and when by this process I have reduced it to the proper standard, take one of these sections and toss it with elephantine strength and superiority. If I find myself capable of conducting, by a fair course of reasoning, any one of his propositions to an absurd conclusion, I will not begin by stating that absurd conclusion as the proposition itself which I am going to encounter. I will not, in commenting on the gentleman's authorities, thank the gentleman with sarcastic politeness for introducing them, declare that they concluded. directly against him, read just so much of the authority as serves the purpose of that declaration, omitting that which contains the true point of the case, which makes against me; nor if forced by a direct call to read that part also, will I content myself by running over it as rapidly and inarticulately as I can, throw down the book with a theatrical air, and exclaim, just as I said; when I know it is just as I have not said.

I know that by adopting these arts I might raise a laugh at the gentleman's expense; but I should be very little pleased with myself if I were capable of enjoying a laugh procured by such means. I know, too, that by adopting such arts there will always be those standing around us, who have not comprehended the whole merits of the legal discussion, with whom I might shake the character of the gentleman's science and judgment as a lawyer. I hope I shall never be capable of such a wish; and I had hoped that the gentleman himself felt so strongly that proud, that high, aspiring, and ennobling magnanimity, which I had been told conscious talents rarely fail to inspire, that he would have disdained a poor and fleeting triumph gained by means like these.

90

PROSE DECLAMATIONS

THE CHARACTER OF AVONMORE.

J. P. CURRAN.

I AM not ignorant, my lords, that this extraordinary construction has received the sanction of another court, nor of the surprise and dismay with which it smote upon the general heart of the bar. I am aware that I may have the mortification of being told, in another country, of that unhappy decision; and I foresee in what confusion I shall hang down my head when I am told it. But I cherish, too, the consolatory hope, that I shall be able to tell them that I had an old and learned friend, whom I would put above all the sweepings of their hall, who was of a different opinion; who had derived his ideas of civil liberty from the purest fountains of Athens and of Rome; who had fed the youthful vigor of his studious mind with the theoretic knowledge of their wisest philosophers and statesmen; and who had refined the theory into a quick and exquisite sensibility of moral instinct, by contemplating the practice of their most illustrious examples;-by dwelling on the sweet souled piety of Cimon; on the anticipated Christianity of Socrates; on the gallant and pathetic patriotism of Epaminondas; on that pure austerity of Fabricius, whom to move from his integrity, would have been more difficult than to have pushed the sun from his course.

I would add, that if he had seemed to hesitate, it was but for a moment; that his hesitation was like the passing cloud that floats across the morning sun and hides it from the view, and does so for a moment hide it, by involving the spectator, without ever approaching the face of the luminary; and this soothing hope I draw from the dearest and tenderest recollections of my life, from the remembrance of Attic nights, and those refections of the gods which we have spent with those admired and respected and beloved companions who have gone before us, over whose ashes the most precious tears of Ireland have been shed.—Yes, my lords, I see you do not forget them; I see their sacred forms passing in sad review before your memory; I see your pained and softened fancy recalling those happy meetings, when the innocent enjoyment of social mirth expanded into the nobler warmth of social virtue, and the horizon of the board became enlarged into the horizon of the man; when the swelling heart conceived

my lords, we can remember those nights without any other regret than that they can never more return, for

We spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine,,.
But search of deep philosophy,

Wit, eloquence, and poesy,

Arts which I loved; for they, my friend, were thine.

A COLUMBIAN ORATOR.

J. G. ADAMS.

ONE of the most remarkable characters I have ever known was Mr. Columbus Climax. The name indicated the man. He was wholly Columbian a royal son of self-glorification and patriotism unbounded. He did all for his country. For his country he went forth in the morning to labor, and returned in the evening to rest. For his country he loudly talked, and sometimes swore a little, and now and then, too, readily and bravely applied

"Hot and rebellious liquors to his blood."

There were some family jars said to have been instigated by him, some outbreaks with his less patriotic and more quiet neighbors, and a few unhappy occasions, termed by certain legalized guardians of the public good, disturbances of the peace,-all for his country. No hour in the day or the night could you find him, when he was not ready to enter into the most extensive meditations for his country's good.

The early education of our hero had not been the most thorough. The grammar, rhetoric, and logic of books, he had never learned. Yet his originality, his patriotism, and his oratorical powers, made up in a good measure the deficiency. He never lacked words. He never needed dictionaries. He manufactured the one, and defied the other. Both his exterior and interior seemed decidedly oratorical. He had a most imperturbable countenance. No lion could outlook him, especially when his green glasses were on. He stood erect nearly six feet in his large shoes; and while he essayed to speak on that grandest of all topics,-our country,—his very coat-skirts seemed out-moving with inspiration. On two "glorious Fourths," and on one Washington's birth, did his unique eloquence enrapture listening multitudes. His sublime exordium at the erection of a liberty-pole is unsurpassed: "Friends and fellow-citizens. I congratulate you this morning on the salubrity of the weather!" Equally rich and rare were all his comparisons and illustrations; and

great was the entertainment his orations ever gave to the less speechy, but more mischievous of our citizens.

And now I cannot recall this individual without seeing most distinctly that Columbus Climax was a "representative man;" the bold outline and embodiment of a certain class, at this moment occupying more exalted stations than he, and getting far better pay, too, for their patriotism. In political caucuses, mass meetings, state legislatures, or national congresses, such patriots are seen and heard; all devotion to their country, talking, fuming, voting; seeking and accepting office, by speedy movements or after long delays; taking pay, glorifying party, full of the Revolution, Liberty, and Posterity,

- all for the country! Veritable Columbuses, every man of them; chuckling over their good luck in acquiring a political consequence, and ready, in consideration of it, to congratulate their fellow-citizens " on the salubrity of the weather!"

LYCEUM SPEECH OF MR. ORATOR CLIMAX.

ANONYMOUS.

Mr. President,-happiness is like a crow perched upon the neighboring top of a far distant mountain, which some fisherman vainly strives, to no purpose, to ensnare. He looks at the crow, Mr. President, -and-Mr. President, the crow looks at him; and, sir, they both look at each other. But the moment he attempts to reproach him, he banishes away like the schismatic taints of the rainbow, the cause of which, it was the astonishing and perspiring genius of a Newton, who first deplored and enveloped the cause of it. Cannot the poor man, sir, precipitate into all the beauties of nature, from the loftiest mounting up to the most humblest valley, as well as the man prepossessed of indigence? Yes, sir; while trilling transports crown his view, and rosy hours allure his sanguinary youth, he can raise his mind up to the laws of nature, incompressible as they are, while viewing the lawless storm that kindleth up the tremenjious roaring thunder, and fireth up the dark and rapid lightenings, and causeth it to fly through the intensity of space, that belches forth those awful and sublime meteors, and roll-abolly-aliases, through the unfathomable regions of fiery hemispheres. Sometimes, sir, seated in some lovely retreat, beneath the shadowy shades of an umbrageous tree, at whose venal foot flows some limping stagnant stream, he gathers around him his wife and the rest of

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