all intents and purposes, how can a man here stand up and say that he is on the side of that foreign country and not be an enemy to his country?
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER.

From "Character and Results of War."

My lords, this awful subject, so important to our honor, constitution, and our religion, demands the most solemn and effectual inquiry. And again I 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 again I implore those holy prelates of our religion to do away these iniquities from among us. Let them perform an illustration; let them purify this House and this country from this sin.
LORD CHATHAM.

From "The Attempt to Subjugate America."

Now, there are three questions before the people of the country to-day, and they are all public, all unselfish, all patriotic, all elevated, and all ennobling as subjects of contemplation and of action. They are the public peace in this large and general sense that I have indicated. They are the public faith, without which there is no such thing as honorable national life; and the public service, which unless pure and strong and noble makes all the pagans of free government but doggerel in our ears.
WILLIAM MAXWELL EVARTS.

From "The Day We Celebrate."

Indeed, gentlemen, Washington's farewell address is full of truths important at all times, and particularly deserving consideration at the present. With a sagacity which brought the future before him, and made it like the present, he saw and pointed out the dangers that even at this moment most imminently threaten us. I hardly know how a greater service of that kind could now be done to the community than by a renewed and wide diffusion of that admirable paper, and an earnest invitation to every man in the country to reperuse and consider it. Its political maxims are invaluable; its exhortations to love of country and to brotherly affection among citizens, touching; and the solemnity with which it urges the observance of moral duties, and impresses the power of religious obligation, gives to it the highest character of truly disinterested, sincere, parental advice.
DANIEL WEBSTER.

From "The Character of Washington."

Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor; let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence; or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression or the miseries of my countrymen. The proclamation of the provisional government speaks for our views; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarily or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation, or treachery from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor for the same reason that I would resist the foreign and domestic oppressor; in the dignity of freedom I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and its enemy should enter only by passing over my lifeless corpse. Am I, who lived but for my country, and who have subjected myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor and the bondage of the grave only to give my countrymen their rights and my country her independence—am I to be loaded with calumny and not suffered to resent or repel it? No, God forbid!
ROBERT EMMET.

From "Speech when under Sentence of Death."

When the law is the will of the people, it will be uniform and coherent; but fluctuation, contradiction, and inconsistency of councils must be expected under those governments where every evolution in the ministry of a court produces one in the State—such being the folly and pride of all ministers, that they ever pursue measures directly opposite to those of their predecessors.
SAMUEL ADAMS.

From "American Independence."

I refer to the past not in malice, for this is no day for malice, but simply to place more distinctly in front the gratifying and glorious change which has come both to our white fellow citizens and ourselves and to congratulate all upon the contrast between now and then, the new dispensation of freedom with its thousand blessings to both races, and the old dispensation of slavery with its ten thousand evils to both races—white and black. In view, then, of the past, the present, and the future, with the long and dark history of our bondage behind us, and with liberty, progress and enlightenment before us, I again congratulate you upon this auspicious day and hour.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

From "Inauguration of the Freedmen's Memorial Monument to Abraham Lincoln."

In all popular tumults the worst men bear the sway at first. Moderate and good men are often silent for fear of modesty, who in good time may declare themselves. Those who have any property to lose are sufficiently alarmed already at the progress of these public violences and violations to which every man's dwelling, person, and property are hourly exposed. Numbers of such valuable men and good subjects are ready and willing to declare themselves for the support of government in due time, if government does not fling away its own authority.
LORD MANSFIELD.

From "The Right of England to Tax America."

In jurisprudence, which reluctantly admits any new adjunct, and counts in its train a thousand champions ready to rise in defense of its formularies and technical rules, the victory has been brilliant and decisive. The civil and the common law have yielded to the pressure of the times, and have adopted much which philosophy and experience have recommended, altho it stood upon no test of the pandects and claimed no support from the feudal polity. Commercial law, at least so far as England and America are concerned, is the creation of the eighteenth century. It started into life with the genius of Lord Mansfield, and, gathering in its course whatever was valuable in the earlier institutes of foreign countries, had reflected back upon them its own superior lights, so as to become the guide and oracle of the commercial world.
JOSEPH STORY.

From "Characteristics of the Age."

When that history comes to be written you know whose will be the central and prominent figure. You know that Mr. Gladstone will stand out before posterity as the greatest man of his time—remarkable not only for his extraordinary eloquence, for his great ability, for his stedfastness of purpose, for his constructive skill, but more, perhaps, than all these, for his personal character, and for the high tone that he has introduced into our polities and public fife. I sometimes think that great men are like great mountains, and that we do not appreciate their magnitude while we are close to them. You have to go to a distance to see which peak it is that towers above its fellows; and it may be that we shall have to put between us and Mr. Gladstone a space of time before we shall see how much greater he has been than any of his competitors for fame and power.
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN.

From "On Liberal Aims."

Let us never despair of our country. Actual evils can be mitigated; bad tendencies can be turned aside; the burdens of government can be diminished; productive industry will be renewed; and frugality will repair the waste of our resources. Then shall the golden days of the republic once more return, and the people become prosperous and happy,
SAMUEL JONES TILDEN.

From "Address on Administrative Reform."