member of Parliament, is, let me tell you, no easy task; especially at this time, when there

CONCILIATION WITH THE AMERICAN COLONIES. sir, that, notwithstanding the aus

extremes of servile compliance or wild popularity. To unite circumspection with vigour, is absolutely necessary; but it is extremely difficult. We are now members for a rich commercial city; this city, however, is but a part of a rich commercial nation, the interests of which are various, multiform, and intricate. We are members for that great nation, which however is itself but part of a great empire, extended by our virtue and our fortune to the farthest limits of the east and of the west. All these wide-spread interests must be considered; must be compared; must be reconciled if possible. We are members for a free country; and surely we all know, that the machine of a free constitution is no simple thing; but as intricate and as delicate as it is valuable. We are members in a great and ancient monarchy; and we must preserve religiously the true legal rights of the sovereign, which form the keystone that binds together the noble and wellconstructed arch of our empire and our constitution. A constitution made up of balanced powers must ever be a critical thing. As such, I mean to touch that part of it which comes within my reach. I know my inability, and I wish for support from every quarter. In particular I shall aim at the friendship, and shall cultivate the best correspondence, of the worthy colleague you have given me.

I trouble you no farther than once more to thank you all; you, gentlemen, for your favours; the candidates, for their temperate and polite behaviour; and the sheriffs, for a conduct which may give a model for all who are in public stations.

EDMUND BURKE.

[THE passages here chosen form part of the opening portion of one of Burke's greatest speeches, in which he laid before the House of Commons his thirteen resolutions for reconcilement with America. In the language of Mr. Peter Burke, whose short but admirable Life of his great namesake is well worthy of perusal, it may be observed that in this speech, the great orator, waiving the discussion of right, confined himself to the question of expediency. He proceeded upon a principle admitted by the wisest legislators, that Government must be adapted to the nature and situation of the people for whose benefit it is exercised. Instead of recurring to abstract ideas, he considered the circumstances, modes of marking dispositions, and principles of action of the people in particular, whose treatment was the subject of deliberation. It would, however, be impossible, within the limits of this publication, to give even an outline of the general scope and bearing of this great speech. An extract has therefore been made from the exordium, concluding with the magnificent picture of the greatness of the British colonies in America, which will, it is hoped, induce many of our readers to refer to the speech itself, which may be found in its entirety in the third volume of Burke's complete Works, published in 1826. It is needless to add that these eloquent warnings had no effect on the Ministry.]

omen.

incline you to some degree of indulgence towards human frailty. You will not think it unnatural, that those who have an object depending, which strongly engages their hopes and fears, should be somewhat inclined to superstition. As I came into the House full of anxiety about the event of my motion, I found, to my infinite surprise, that the grand penal Bill, by which we had passed sentence on the trade and sustenance of America, is to be returned to us from the other House.* I do confess, I could not help looking on this event as a fortunate I look upon it as a sort of providential favour; by which we are put once more in possession of our deliberative capacity, upon a business so very questionable in its nature, so very uncertain in its issue. By the return of this Bill, which seemed to have taken its flight for ever, we are at this very instant nearly as free to choose a plan for our American government as we were on the first day of the session. If, sir, we incline to the side of conciliation, we are not at all embarrassed (unless we please to make ourselves so) by any incongruous mixture of coercion and restraint. We are therefore called upon, as it were by a superior warning voice, again to attend to America; to attend to the whole of it together; and to review the subject with an unusual degree of care and calmness.

Surely it is an awful subject; or there is none so on this side of the grave. When I first had the honour of a seat in this House, the affairs of that continent pressed themselves upon us, as the most important and most delicate object of parliamentary attention. My little share in this great deliberation oppressed me. I found myself a partaker in a very high trust; and having no sort of reason to rely on the strength of my natural abilities for the proper execution of that trust, I was obliged to take more than common pains to instruct myself in everything which relates to our colonies. I was not less under the necessity of forming some fixed ideas concerning the general policy of the British empire. Something of this sort seemed to be indispensable; in order, amidst so vast a fluctuation of passions and opinions, to concentre my thoughts; to ballast my conduct; to preserve me from being blown

The Act to restrain the trade and commerce of the provinces of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire, and colonies of Connecticut and Rhode Island, and Providence Plantation, in North America, to Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Islands in the West Indies; and to prohibit such provinces and colonies from carrying on any fishery on the banks of Newioundland, and other places therein mentioned, under certain conditions and limitations.

about by every wind of fashionable doctrine. I really did not think it safe, or manly, to have fresh principles to seek upon every fresh mail which should arrive from America.

At that period I had the fortune to find myself in perfect concurrence with a large majority in this House. Bowing under that high authority, and penetrated with the sharpness and strength of that early impression, I have continued ever since, without the least deviation, in my original sentiments. Whether this be owing to an obstinate perseverance in error, or to a religious adherence to what appears to me truth and reason, it is in your equity to judge.

Sir, Parliament having an enlarged view of objects, made, during this interval, more frequent changes in their sentiments and their conduct, than could be justified in a particular person upon the contracted scale of private information. But though I do not hazard anything approaching to a censure on the motives of former Parliaments to all those alterations, one fact is undoubted, that under them the state of America has been kept in continual agitation. Everything administered as remedy to the public complaint, if it did not produce, was at least followed by, a heightening of the distemper; until, by a variety of experiments, that important country has been brought into her present situation;—a situation which I will not miscall; which I dare not name; which I scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms of any description.

The capital leading questions on which you must this day decide are these two: First, whether you ought to concede; and secondly, what your concession ought to be. On the first of these questions we have gained some ground. But I am sensible that a good deal more is still to be done. Indeed, sir, to enable us to determine both on the one and the other of these great questions with a firm and precise judgment, I think it may be necessary to consider distinctly the true nature and the peculiar circumstances of the object which we have before us. Because, after all our struggle, whether we will or not, we must govern America according to that nature, and to those circumstances, and not according to our own imagination; not according to abstract ideas of right; by no means according to mere general theories of government, the resort to which appears to me, in our present situation, no better than arrant trifling. I shall therefore endeavour, with your leave, to lay before you some of the most material of these circumstances in as full and as clear a manner as I am able to state them.

The first thing that we have to consider with regard to the nature of the object is-the

number of people in the colonies. I have taken for some years a good deal of pains on that point. I can by no calculation justify myself in placing the number below two millions of inhabitants of our own European blood and colour; besides at least 500,000 others, who form no inconsiderable part of the strength and opulence of the whole. This, sir, is, I believe, about the true number. There is no occasion to exaggerate, where plain truth is of so much weight and importance. But whether I put the present numbers too high or too low, is a matter of little moment. Such is the strength with which population shoots in that part of the world, that state the numbers as high as we will, whilst the dispute continues, the exaggeration ends. Whilst we are discussing any given magnitude, they are grown to it. Whilst we spend our time in deliberating on the mode of governing two millions, we shall find we have millions more to manage. Your children do not grow faster from infancy to manhood, than they spread from families to communities, and from villages to nations.

I put this consideration of the present and the growing numbers in the front of our deliberation, because, sir, this consideration will make it evident to a blunter discernment than yours, that no partial, narrow, contracted, pinched, occasional system will be at all suitable to such an object. It will show you, that it is not to be considered as one of those minima which are out of the eye and consideration of the law; not a paltry excrescence of the State; not a mean dependent, who may be neglected with little damage, and provoked with little danger. It will prove that some degree of care and caution is required in the handling such an object; it will show that you ought not, in reason, to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human race. You could at no time do so without guilt; and be assured you will not be able to do it long with impunity.

But the population of this country, the great and growing population, though a very important consideration, will lose much of its weight, if not combined with other circumstances. The commerce of your colonies is out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the people. This ground of their commerce, indeed, has been trod some days ago, and with great ability, by a distinguished person, at * your bar. This gentleman, after thirty-five years-it is so long since he first appeared at the same place to plead for the commerce of Great Britain,—has come again before you to plead the same cause, without any other effect of time, than, that to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition, which even then marked him as one of the

* Mr. Glover.

first literary characters of his age, he has added a consummate knowledge in the commercial interest of his country, formed by a long course of enlightened and discriminating experience.

Then, after reviewing our commercial relations with America, Mr. Burke proceeded :

The trade with America alone is now within less than £500,000 of being equal to what this great commercial nation, England, carried on at the beginning of this century with the whole world! If I had taken the largest year of those on your table, it would rather have exceeded. But, it will be said, is not this American trade an unnatural protuberance, that has drawn the juices from the rest of the body? The reverse. It is the very food that has nourished every other part into its present magnitude. Our general trade has been greatly augmented, and augmented more or less in almost every part to which it ever extended; but with this material difference, that of the six millions which in the beginning of the century constituted the whole mass of our export commerce, the colony trade was but one-twelfth part; it is now (as a part of sixteen millions) considerably more than a third of the whole. This is the relative proportion of the importance of the colonies at these two periods; and all reasoning concerning our mode of treating them must have this proportion as its basis, or it is a reasoning, weak, rotten, and sophistical.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great consideration. It is good for us to be here. We stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is past. Clouds, indeed, and darkness, rest upon the future. Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national prosperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within sixty-eight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For instance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progress. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend such things. He was then old enough, acta parentum jam legere, et que sit poterit cognoscere virtus-suppose, sir, that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate men of his age, had opened to him in vision, that, when, in the fourth generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which (by the happy issue of moderate and healing councils) was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one

NO. II.

if amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck, scarce visible in the mass of the national interest, a small seminal principle rather than a formed body, and should tell him-"Young man, there is Americawhich at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men, and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progressive increase of improvement, brought in by varieties of people, by succession of civilizing conquests and civilizing settlements in a series of seventeen hundred years, you shall see as much added to her by America in the course of a single life!" If this state of his country had been foretold to him, would it not require all the sanguine credulity of youth, and all the fervid glow of enthusiasm, to make him believe it? Fortunate man, he has lived to see it! Fortunate indeed, if he lives to see nothing that shall vary the prospect, and cloud the setting of his day!

KOSSUTH.

[KOSSUTH, in his speech to the New York Militia, December 16th, 1851, pays the following graceful tribute to the eloquence of Garibaldi.]

D

ELOQUENCE OF GARIBALDI.

O you know, gentlemen, what is the finest speech I ever heard or read? It is the address of Garibaldi to his Roman soldiers in the last war, when he told them :-" Soldiers, what I have to offer you is fatigue, danger, struggling, and death-the chill of the cold night, the open air, and the burning sun-no lodgings, no munitions, no provisions, but forced marches, dangerous watchposts, and continued struggling with bayonets against batteries. Let those who love freedom and their country, follow me." That is the most glorious speech I ever heard in my life.

EDWARD EVERETT.

Born 1794. Living.

[THE name of Mr. Everett is not unknown or unhonoured in this country. As a statesman and orator, he has been associated with the political history of America for more than thirty years past, and as a Minister of the United States for some time resident in England, is well and familiarly known to the great leaders of opinion amongst us. His "Mount Vernon Papers," a collection of sketches, relating, as their B 2

name would suggest, to Washington and other great American themes, were published in this country a few years since, and met with no small success. Otherwise, his writings and speeches are probably not very generally known to the mass of the reading community, and therefore it has been thought desirable to offer several specimens of his eloquence throughout the course of the present work; and, as examples of a lofty and impassioned type of oratory, they will well bear very careful study and imitation. The following extract is from an oration on one of the brightest and purest names in American history-the memory of the good and brave La Fayette being amongst the richest heritages of the great Republic.]

THE CHARACTER OF LA FAYETTE.
HERE have been those who have denied to

Is

is greatness? Does goodness belong to greatness and make an essential part of it? there yet enough of virtue left in the world, to echo the sentiment, that

""Tis phrase absurd to call a villain great?", If there is, who, I would ask, of all the prominent names in history, has run through such a career, with so little reproach, justly or unjustly, bestowed? Are military courage and conduct the measure of greatness? La Fayette was intrusted by Washington with all kinds of service; the laborious and complicated, which required skill and patience; the perilous, that demanded nerve ;-and we see him keeping up a pursuit, effecting a retreat, out-manoeuvering a wary adversary with a superior force, harmonizing the action of French regular troops and American militia, commanding an assault at the point of the bayonet; and all with entire success and brilliant reputation. Is the readiness to meet vast responsibility a proof of greatness? The memoirs of Mr. Jefferson show us, that there was a moment in 1789, when La Fayette took upon himself, as the head of the military force, the entire responsibility of laying down the basis of the revolution.

Is

the cool and brave administration of gigantic power a mark of greatness? In all the whirlwind of the revolution, and when, as commanderin-chief of the National Guard, an organized force of three millions of men, who, for any popular purpose, needed but a word, a look, to put them in motion,—and he their idol,we behold him ever calm, collected, disinterested; as free from affectation as selfishness, clothed not less with humility than with power. Is the fortitude required to resist the multitude pressing onward their leader to glorious crime, a part of greatness? Behold him the fugitive and the victim, when he might have been the chief of the revolution. Is the solitary and unaided opposition of a good citizen to the pretensions of an absolute ruler, whose power was as boundless as his ambition, an effort of greatness? Read the letter of La Fayette to Napoleon Bonaparte,. refusing to vote for him as consul for life. Is the voluntary return, in

advancing years, to the direction of affairs, at a moment like that, when in 1815 the ponderous machinery of the French empire was flying asunder,-stunning, rending, crushing thousands Conon every side, a mark of greatness? template La Fayette at the tribune, in Paris, when allied Europe was thundering at its gates, and Napoleon yet stood in his desperation and at bay. Are dignity, propriety, cheerfulness, unerring discretion in new and conspicuous stations of extraordinary delicacy, a sign of greatness? Watch his progress in this country, in 1824 and 1825; hear him say the right word at the right time, in a series of interviews, public and private, crowding on each other every day, for a twelvemonth, throughout the Union, with every description of persons, without ever wounding for a moment the self-love of others, or forgetting the dignity of his own position. Lastly, is it any proof of greatness to be able, at the age of seventy-three, to take the lead in a successful and bloodless revolution; to change the dynasty, to organize, exercise, and abdicate a military command of three and a half millions of men ;-to take up, to perform, and lay down the most momentous, delicate, and perilous duties, without passion, without hurry, without selfishness? Is it great to disregard the bribes of title, office, money;to live, to labour, and suffer for great public ends alone; to adhere to principle under all circumstances;-to stand before Europe and America conspicuous for sixty years, in the most responsible stations, the acknowledged admiration of all good men?

I think I understand the proposition, that La Fayette was not a great man. It comes from the same school which also denies greatness to Washington, and which accords it to Alexander and Cæsar, to Napoleon and to his conqueror. When I analyze the greatness of these distinguished men, as contrasted with that of La Fayette and Washington, I find either one idea omitted, which is essential to true greatness, or one included as essential, which belongs only to the lowest conception of greatness. The moral, disinterested, and purely patriotic qualities are wholly wanting in the greatness of Cæsar and Napoleon; and, on the other hand, it is a certain splendour of success, a brilliancy of result, which, with the majority of mankind, marks them out as the great men of our race. But not only are a high morality and a true patriotism essential to greatness ;but they must first be renounced, before a ruthless career of selfish conquest can begin. I profess to be no judge of military combinations; but, with the best reflection I have been able to give the subject, I perceive no reason to doubt, that, had La Fayette, like Napoleon, been by principle capable of hovering on the edges of ultra-revolutionism; never halting enough to be

denounced; never plunging too far to retreat ;but with a cold and well-balanced selfishness, sustaining himself at the head of affairs, under each new phase of the revolution, by the compliances sufficient to satisfy its demands,--had his principles allowed him to play this game, he might have anticipated the career of Napoleon. At three different periods, he had it in his power, without usurpation, to take the government into his own hands. He was invitedurged to do so. Had he done it, and made use of the military means at his command, to maintain and perpetuate his power, he would then, at the sacrifice of all his just claims to the name of great and good, have reached that which vulgar admiration alone worships,-the greatness of high station and brilliant success.

But it was of the greatness of La Fayette, that he looked down on greatness of the false kind. He learned his lesson in the school of Washington, and took his first practice in victories over himself. Let it be questioned by the venal apologists of time-honoured abuses,let it be sneered at by national prejudice and party detraction; let it be denied by the admirers of war and conquest;-by the idolaters of success;—but let it be gratefully acknowledged by good men; by Americans,-by every man, who has sense to distinguish character from events; who has a heart to beat in concert with the pure enthusiasm of virtue.

But it is more than time, fellow-citizens, that I commit this great and good man to your unprompted contemplation. On his arrival among you, ten years ago,-when your civil fathers, your military, your children, your whole population poured itself out, as one throng, to salute him, when your cannons proclaimed his advent with joyous salvos,—and your acclamations were responded from steeple to steeple, by the voice of festal bells, with what delight did you not listen to his cordial and affectionate words;"I beg of you all, beloved citizens of Boston, to accept the respectful and warm thanks of a heart, which has for nearly half a century been devoted to your illustrious city!" That noble heart, to which, if any object on earth was dear, that object was the country of his early choice, of his adoption, and his more than regal triumph,-that noble heart will beat no more for your welfare. Cold and motionless, it is already mingling with the dust. While he lived, you thronged with delight to his presence, -you gazed with admiration on his placid features and venerable form, not wholly unshaken by the rude storms of his career; and now that he is departed, you have assembled in this cradle of the liberties, for which, with your fathers, he risked his life, to pay the last honours to his memory. You have thrown open these consecrated portals to admit the lengthened train which has come to discharge

the last public offices of respect to his name. You have hung these venerable arches, for the second time since their erection, with the sable badges of sorrow. You have thus associated the memory of La Fayette in those distinguished honours, which but a few years since you paid to your Adams and Jefferson; and could your wishes and mine have prevailed, my lips would this day have been mute, and the same illustrious voice, which gave utterance to your filial emotions over their honoured graves, would have spoken also, for you, over him who shared their earthly labours, enjoyed their friendship, and has now gone to share their last repose, and their imperishable remembrance.

There is not, throughout the world, a friend of liberty, who has not dropped his head when he has heard that La Fayette is no more. Poland, Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland, the South American republics,-every country where man is struggling to recover his birthright,--has lost a benefactor-a patron-in La Fayette. But you, young men, at whose command I speak, for you a bright and particular loadstar is henceforward fixed in the front of heaven. What young man that reflects on the history of La Fayette,that sees him in the morning of his days the associate of sages,-the friend of Washington, -but will start with new vigour on the path of duty and renown?

And what was it, fellow-citizens, which gave to our La Fayette his spotless fame? The love of liberty. What has consecrated his memory in hearts of good men? The love of liberty. What nerved his youthful arm with strength, and inspired him in the morning of his days with sagacity and counsel? The living love of liberty. To what did he sacrifice power, and rank, and country, and freedom itself? To the horror of licentiousness;-to the sanctity of plighted faith;-to the love of liberty protected by law. Thus the great principle of your revolutionary fathers, of your pilgrim sires, the great principle of the age, was the rule of his life: The love of liberty protected by law.

You have now assembled within these renowned walls, to perform the last duties of respect and love, on the birth-day of your benefactor, beneath that roof which has resounded of old with the master-voices of American renown. The spirit of the departed is in high communion with the spirit of the place; -the temple worthy of the new name, which we now behold inscribed on its walls. Listen, Americans, to the lesson, which seems borne to us on the very air we breathe, while we perform these dutiful rites. Ye Winds, that wafted the pilgrims to the land of promise, fan, in their children's hearts, the love of freedom; Blood, which our fathers shed, cry from the ground; Echoing Arches of this renowned hall, whisper back the voices of other days; Glorious Wash