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What is to become of the army? What is to become of the navy? What is to become of the public lands? How is each of the thirty States to defend itself? But, Sir, I am ashamed to pursue this line of remark, I dislike it, I have an utter disgust for it. I would rather hear of natural blasts and mildews, war, pestilence, and famine, than to hear gentlemen talk of secession. To break up this great government! to dismember this glorious country! to astonish Europe with an act of folly such as Europe for two centuries has never beheld in any government or any people! No, Sir! no, Sir! There will be no secession! Gentlemen are not serious when they talk of secession.

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XII. THE SEMINOLE'S REPLY.

G. W. PATTEN.

The Seminoles were a tribe of Indians in Florida, with whom the United States maintained a conflict from 1817 to 1842. It arose chiefly from the practice adopted by the Indians of harboring runaway slaves. The Seminoles exhibited great courage and perseverance, as well as vindictiveness. Their most famous warrior was Osceola, who died in 1838. In the following extract, a Seminole Chief is represented as spurning the offer of peace from the United States Government, on condition of submission. The piece requires pure tone, great force, with a prevalence of radical stress. The expressions of scorn should have the vanishing stress :

Blaze, with your serried columns !

I will not bend the knee!
The shackles ne'er again shall bind
The arm which now is free.
I've mailed it with the thunder,
When the tempest muttered low;
And where it falls, ye well may dread
The lightning of its blow!

I've scared ye in the city,

I've scalped ye on the plain;

Go, count your chosen, where they fell
Beneath my leaden rain!

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I scorn your proffered treaty!
The pale-face I defy!

Revenge is stamped upon my spear,
And blood my battle-cry!

Ye've trailed me through the forest,
Ye've tracked me o'er the stream;
And, struggling through the everglade,
Your bristling bayonets gleam;
But I stand as should the warrior,
With his rifle and his spear;
The scalp of vengeance still is red,
And warns ye,-Come not here!

I loathe ye in my bosom,
I scorn ye with my eye,

And I'll taunt ye with my latest breath,
And fight ye till I die!

I ne'er will ask ye quarter,

And I ne'er will be your slave ;
But I'll swim the sea of slaughter,
Till I sink beneath the wave!

XIII.-A POLITICAL PAUSE.

CHARLES J. FOX.

During the wars with Napoleon Bonaparte, from 1799 to 1812, the British government was often urged by the whigs-the party then in opposition-to conclude peace. The government for some time insisted on a pause in the negotiations for peace, in order that they might the better learn Napoleon's intentions. This policy is treated with scathing sarcasm, by Charles James Fox, in the following extract. It requires the tones of irony, and hence marked circumflex:

But if a man were present now at the field of slaughter, and were to inquire for what they were fighting—" Fighting!" would be the answer; "they are not fighting; they are pausing." "Why is that man expiring? Why is that other writhing with agony? What means this implacable fury?" The answer must be, "You are quite wrong, Sir; you deceive

yourself-they are not fighting-do not disturb them—they are merely pausing! This man is not expiring with agonythat man is not dead-he is only pausing! Lord help you, Sir! they are not angry with one another; they have now no cause of quarrel; but their country thinks that there should be a pause. All that you see, Sir, is nothing like fighting -there is no harm nor cruelty nor bloodshed in it, whatever it is nothing more than a political pause! It is merely to try an experiment-to see whether Bonaparte will not behave himself better than heretofore; and in the mean time we have agreed to pause, in pure friendship!"

XIV. ADAMS'S SPEECH ON INDEPENDENCE.

DANIEL WEBSTER.

John Adams, second President of the United States, was a man of great vigor and directness. He was the most prominent advocate of the Declaration of Independence, in the Continental Congress. In the following extract, Daniel Webster utters what he thinks might naturally have been Mr. Adams's language while speaking on this theme. Some of the members of Congress were timid,-afraid of openly resisting the great power of England. They are stimulated here, by the most encouraging considerations, to go on and make the Declaration. The extract requires full volume, medium pitch, and somewhat slow speed:

We When we are

But, whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured, that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and it may cost blood; but it will stand, and it will richly compensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present, I see the brightness of the future as the sun in heaven. shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. in our graves, our children will honor it. They will celebrate it, with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires and illuminations. On its annual return, they will shed tears,—copious, gushing tears, not of subjection and slavery, not of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude, and of joy.

Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and I leave

off as I began, that, live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and, by the blessing of God, it shall be my dying sentiment,-INDEPENDENCE NOW; AND INDEPENDENCE FOREVER!

XV.-CONSERVATISM.

EDWARD D. BAKER.

During the war of the great rebellion, between the years 1861 and 1865, the question of the abolition of slavery was vehemently and earnestly discussed. Many conservatives opposed the measure on account of the changes it would involve. In the following extract Mr. Baker, of Oregon, objects to this view, and urges abolition as the only means of restoring the Union :

The conservative asks-what is? That higher question -what ought to be? is above his capacity; and whenever he hears it put, he speaks of blasphemy and sacrilege. With undying belief in every dishonest conventional right that once gets hold on society, he has but a glimmering conception of right in itself. Timorous, short-sighted, lacking faith, not high in moral sense, the conservative element has performed but an inferior part in history. It has been made up at all times, and in all countries, of men entertaining narrow and low views of truth, right, and duty. Civilization is mainly the product of the progressive element. The Hercynian woods and Maotian bogs that have shaded and befouled the struggling civilization of the past, have been hewn down and drained by the strong arms of progressive men. Conservatism has done no such work, but opposed it with all its might, and on every occasion. When Moloch stood in the great court at Carthage, receiving through his hollow arms human victims into his fiery embrace, he was surrounded by conservatives, swearing by their grim-visaged god, and ready to smite any "destructive" who might question his divinity. And from that day to this, human society has nowhere taken an improving step forward, but in opposition to the protesting voice of conservatism. When our Saviour proclaimed the new gospel of truth, he was crucified by conservatism. When that gospel became corrupted by pagan admixtures,

conservatism opposed its purification. Luther horrified all the conservatives in the Christian world. When it was proposed in England to abolish the slave-trade, conservatism lifted its voice against the measure, and the island rang with denunciations of Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Sharpe. When afterwards it was proposed to abolish slavery itself in the British West Indies, the burst of conservative indignation knew no bounds; and American conservatives have not yet ceased their snarling at that noble act of our English cousins. When the Reform Bill and the Catholic Emancipation Bill came before the British Parliament, these great and just measures for rooting out rotten boroughs, and giving equal liberty to Catholic subjects, were fought to the bitter end by conservatism. Sir Samuel Romilly, in his humane work of weeding out the old atrocities that disgraced the English criminal law, was opposed at every step by conservatism. Not a corruption has been overturned, not an iniquity has been cloven down in history, that has not fallen by the hands of progressive men, and died amid the general howl and lamentation of conservatives! And this same class is here to-day, true to its ancient instincts, and busy at its old work— here it is, locked hand in hand in defence of slavery; and that at a time when slavery is rioting in social ruin, and drunk with the blood of slain patriots!

XVI.-NEW ENGLAND AS A PART OF THE
UNION.

RICHARD YATES.

During the troubles attendant upon the great rebellion, those who sympathized with the South were in the habit of charging New England with having originated the difficulties, and of urging the separation of the six Eastern States from the Union. Mr. Yates, then Governor of Illinois, protests against this suggestion in the following words:

I regret that appeals are made to the masses, by a few public presses in the country, for separation from New England. Not a drop of New England blood flows in my veins; still, I should deem myself an object of commiseration and shame if I could forget her glorious history, if I could forget

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