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He glides from man to man, coinciding with their views, pretending their feelings, simulating their tastes: with this one, he hates a man; with that one, he loves the same man: he favors a law, and he dislikes it; he approves, and opposes; he is on both sides at once, and seemingly wishes that he could be on one side more than both sides.

As a man, he means to be veracious, honest, moral; as a politician, he is deceitful, cunning, unscrupulous,—any thing 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 transcendent truths raising their glowing fronts on every side of him, and feel no inspiration but that of immorality and meanness!

If the love of country, a sense of character, a manly regard for integrity, the examples of our most illustrious men, the warnings of religion and all its solicitations, and the prospect of the future, cannot inspire a man to any thing higher than a sneaking, truckling, dodging scramble for fraudulent fame and 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.

H. W. BEECHER.

166. ADDRESS TO A MISSIONARY.

BROTHER! listen to what we say. There was a time when our forefathers owned this great island. Their seats extended from the rising to the setting sun; the Great Spirit had made it for the use of the Indians. He had created the buffalo, the

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eer, and other animals for food. He had made the bear and te beaver; their skins served us for clothing. He had scatred them over the country, and taught us how to take them. [e had caused the earth to produce corn for bread. All this e had done for his red children, because he loved them. If we ad disputes about our hunting-ground, they were generally ettled without the shedding of much blood. But an evil day ame upon us; your forefathers crossed the great waters and inded on this island. Their numbers were small; they found ts friends, and not enemies. They told us they had fled from heir own country through fear of wicked men, and had come ere to enjoy their religion. They asked for a small seat; we ook pity on them, and granted their request; and they sat lown among us. We gave them corn and meat; and, in return, hey gave us poison. The white people now having found our country, tidings were sent back, and more came amongst us; yet we did not fear them. We took them to be friends: they called us brothers; we believed them, and gave them a larger seat. At length their number so increased, that they wanted more land: they wanted our country. Our eyes were opened, and we became uneasy. Wars took place; Indians were hired to fight against Indians; and many of our people were destroyed. Brother! Once our seats were large, and yours were small. You have now become a great people, and we have scarcely a place left to spread our blankets. You have got our country, but, not satisfied, you want to force your religion upon us.

Brother! continue to listen. You say you are sent to instruct us how to worship the Great Spirit agreeably to his mind, and that if we do not take hold of the religion which you teach, we shall be unhappy hereafter. How do we know this to be true? We understand that your religion is written in a book. If it was intended for us as well as you, why has not the Great Spirit given it to us; and not only to us, but why did he not give to our forefathers the knowledge of that book, with the means of rightly understanding it? We only know what you tell us about it, and having been so often deceived by the white people, how shall we believe what they say?

RED JACKET.

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You have taken me prisoner, with all my warriors. I am much grieved, for I expected, if I did not defeat you, to hold out much longer, and give you more trouble before I surrendered. I tried hard to bring you into ambush, but your last general understands Indian fighting. I determined to rush on you, and fight you face to face. I fought hard. But your guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like birds in the air, and whizzed by our ears like the wind through the trees in winter. My warriors fell around me; it began to look dismal: I saw my evil day at hand. The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sank in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. His heart is dead, and no longer beats quick in his bosom. He is now a prisoner to the white men. They will do with him as they wish. But he can stand torture, and is not afraid of death. is no coward. Black Hawk is an Indian.

He

He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, the squaws and pappooses, against white men, who came, year after year, to cheat them and take away their lands. You know the cause of our making war. It is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. The white men despise the Indians, and drive them from their homes. They smile in the face of the poor Indians to cheat them. They shake them by the hand to gain their confidence, to make them drunk, and to deceive them. We told them to let us alone, and keep away from us; but they followed on, and beset, our paths, and they coiled themselves among us, like the snake. They poisoned us by their touch. We were not safe. We lived in danger. We looked up to the Great Spirit. We went to our father. We were encouraged. His great council gave us fair words and big promises; but we got no satisfaction: things were growing worse. There were no deer in the forest. The opossum and beaver were fled. The springs were drying up, and our squaws and pappooses without victuals to keep them from starving. We called a great council, and built a large fire. The spirit of our fathers arose and spoke to us to avenge our wrongs or die. We set up the war-whoop, and dug up the tomahawk ; our knives were ready, and the heart of Black Hawk swelled high in his bosom when he led his warriors to battle. He is satisfied. He will go to the world of spirits contented. He

BLACK HAWK.-EDMUND BURKE.

197

has done his duty. His father will meet him there, and commend him.

Farewell, my nation! Black Hawk tried to save you, and avenge your wrongs. He drank the blood of some of the whites. He has been taken prisoner, and his plans are stopped. He can do no more. He is near his end. His sun is setting, and he will rise no more. Farewell to Black Hawk!

BLACK HAWK.

168.

CONCILIATION WITH THE COLONIES.

THE proposition is peace. Not peace, through the medium of war; not peace, to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace, to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace, to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government: it is simple peace; sought in its natural course, and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace, sought in the spirit of peace; and laid in principles purely pacific. I propose, by removing the ground of the difference, and by restoring the former unsuspecting confidence of the colonies in the mother country,-to give permanent satisfaction to your people; and (far from a scheme of ruling by discord) to reconcile them to each other in the same act, and by the bond of the very same interest, which reconciles them to British government.

I mean to give peace. Peace implies reconciliation; and, where there has been a material dispute, reconciliation does, in a manner, imply concession on the one part or the other. In this state of things, I make no difficulty in affirming that the proposal ought to originate from us. Great and acknowledged force is not impaired, either in effect or in opinion, by an unwillingness to exert itself. The superior power may offer peace with honor and safety. Such an offer from such a power will be attributed to magnanimity. But, the concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear. When such a one is disarmed, he is wholly at the mercy of his superior; and he loses forever that time and those chances which, as they happen to all men, are the strength and resources of all inferior power.

All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians

who have no place among us. But, to men truly initiated and rightly taught, these ruling principles are, in truth, every thing. Magnanimity in politics is, not seldom, the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together. We ought to elevate our minds to the greatness of that trust to which the order of providence has called us. By adverting to the dignity of this high calling, our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire, and have made the most extensive, and the only honorable, conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human EDMUND BURKE.

race.

169. REFORM IN PARLIAMENT.

Is it, in the eye of such a reformer as my noble friend, no abuse, that the most populous, the most opulent, the most enterprising, and the most intelligent cities in this empire should be wholly unrepresented, whilst the moldering mounds of Old Sarum, and the barren walls of Midhurst, each send two members to parliament ? “Oh! but, then," says he, "if your plan had been confined to that, Birmingham and Manchester might have been permitted to return members to the house of commons." Be it so. But, then, is it no abuse in the eyes of my noble friend, that the power of giving laws to a great empire, with millions of subjects at home, and tens of millions of subjects abroad-the power of giving laws to this great and intelligent country, and of all but giving laws, through this country, to all the world besides-is it no abuse, I say, that the power of making such laws, should be vested, as property, in private individuals? Is it no abuse in his eyes that the power should' be given, not by the choice of the people, but according to the caprice, inclination, or good-will of a peer or other powerful patron? Is it no abuse, that this power should be let out for a term of years, like a stall or a stable? Is it no abuse that it should be so openly treated as an article of traffic, that, when a question arose respecting prompt payment, the payment or discount for three, six, or nine-tenths was made, not in money, but in returning a member to serve in this present parliament now assembled? I speak, my lords, from my own knowledge. What is this no abuse? Is the buying and selling of seats in the British house of parliament so common and ordinary a

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