oratory from Josiah Quincy, one of the new powers in the House of Representatives, in which his State was already beginning to strive with Virginia for political pre-emin ence : "The decrees of France prohibit us from trading with Great Britain. The orders of Great Britain prohibit us from trading with France. And what do we? Why, in direct subserviency to the edicts of each, we prohibit our citizens from trading with either. We do more; as if unqualified submission was not humiliating enough, we descend to an act of supererogation in servility—we abandon trade altogether. . . . An embargo liberty was never cradled in Massachusetts. Our liberty was not so much a mountain as a sea-nymph. She was free as the air. She could swim or she could run. met her as she came, like the goddess of liberty, They caught her as she was sporting on the beach. as she was spreading her nets upon the rocks. liberty, a hand-cuffed liberty, a liberty in fetters, a liberty traversing between the four sides of a prison and beating her hand against the walls, is none of our offspring. Its parentage is all inland." Our fathers from the waves. They courted her But an embargo These old harangues are more interesting than modern novels, for many reasons. They come back to us as new, because undeservedly forgotten: we are not made weary of them in "Reviews:" they deal with realities: they are typical not only of the individual speakers, but of the larger interests they in the main honestly strove to represent. In the above we have evidence of the zeal for a State conflicting with zeal for the aggregate community which distinguishes the bulk of Transatlantic eloquence, and there is a distinct trace of the classical ornament with which that of New England has been frequently overlaid. It seems natural that the speaker, scion of an illustrious academic race, should have terminated his public career in 1845 as President of Harvard University. Quincy opposed the annexation of Louisiana, sharing with several, especially northern, politicians of the time the belief that the Union could not endure in excess of its primitive bounds. This mistake was counterbalanced by his truer insight into the disasters likely to befall his country from the abuses of patronage. John Quincy Adams said that his speech of January 1811, from which we take the following, "ought to be hung up in every office of every office-holder in the Union": "Let a collector of customs, or postmaster, or factor, be called on to pay the last debt of nature. The poor man shall not be cold long before the corpse is in the coffin; the mail shall be crowded with letters, certificates, recommendations, and every species of sycophantic solicitation by which obtrusive mendicity seeks charity or invites compassion. We hear the clamour of the craving animals at the treasury trough here in this capitol. Such running, such jostling, such wriggling, such clambering over one another's backs, because the tub is so narrow and the company so crowded." Contrary to expectation, if it is allowable to expect anything from a politician, Quincy opposed the steps taken in 1813 to carry on the war. The Peace Society can point to no more vehement advocacy of their views than this strong though turbid passage: "The whole atmosphere rings with the utterance from the other side of the House of the word 'glory' in connection with this invasion. It is the glory of the tiger which lifts his jaws, all foul and bloody, from the bowels of his victim and roars for his companions of the wood to come and witness his prowess and his spoils. . . . Be such— the glory of Gengis Khan and Bonaparte-far, very far from my country. Never may it be accursed with such fame! 'Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,' etc. May such fame as this be my country's meed!" A North American Reviewer (October 1865), whose antirebellious wrath can see nothing tolerable in the South, maintains that the war was due to the fire-eating Carolinians and Virginians of the time. It is remarkable, on the contrary, that the fieriest of their cavaliers, John Randolph, whose quick temper afterwards led him into a duel with his fellowSenator Clay,' appears, in the debate of 1811, as the most 1 Randolph, having referred to Clay's service, as secretary under Quincy Adams, as the "coalition of Blifil and Black George-the combination, unheard of till then, of the puritan with the blackleg," afterwards regretted his vio eloquent advocate for concession; dwelling, with the honest, if not always considerate, passion of his nature, on the aid to the Napoleonic despotism that might be given by antagonism to England : "Will you plunge yourself in war because you have passed a foolish and ruinous law and are ashamed to repeal it? But our good friend the French emperor stands in the way of this repeal. . . . My imagination shrinks from the miseries of such a connection. I call upon the House to reflect whether they are not about to abandon all reclamation for the unparalleled outrages of the French Government, to give up our claim for plundered millions; and I ask what reparation or atonement they can expect to obtain in hours of future dalliance, after they shall have made a tender of their persons to this great deflowerer of the virginity of republics. . . . Go! march to Canada! Leave the broad bosom of the Chesapeake and her hundred tributary rivers, the whole line of sea-coast from Machias to St. Mary's, unprotected. You have taken Quebec—have you conquered England? Will you seek for the deep foundations of her power in the frozen deserts of Labrador? 'Her march is on the mountain wave, ... Grant for a moment that, in Canada, you touched the sinews of her strength, instead of removing a clog on her resources. In what situation would you then place some of the best men of the nation? As Chatham and Burke and the whole band of her patriots prayed for her defeat in 1776, so must some of the truest friends to their country deprecate the success of our arms against the only power that holds in check the arch enemy of mankind. . . . I acknowledge the influence of a Shakespeare and a Milton upon my imagination, of a Locke upon my understanding, of a Sydney upon my political principles. . . This is a British influence which I can never shake off. I allow much to the just and honest prejudices growing out of the Revolution. By whom have they been suppressed, when they ran counter to the interests of my country? By Washington. By whom, would you listen to them, are they most keenly felt? By felons escaped from the jails of Paris, Newgate, and Kilmainham who in this abused and insulted country have set up for political teachers, and whose disciples give no other proof of their progress in republicanism except a blind devotion to the most ruthless military despotism that the world ever saw." The most effective answer to this speech was made by a lence and fired in the air. Clay missed him, and then ran up with the words, "I trust in God, my dear sir, you are untouched; after what has occurred I would not have harmed you for a thousand worlds." V. James Hamilton's Life of Randolph. The annals of this outspoken time are full of romance. young newly-elected representative of South Carolina, of whom we shall have more to say, John C. Calhoun. The following sentences are characteristic of the line of argument in his début to a uniformly-conspicuous, and in some respects illustrious, career : men. "We are next told of the expenses of the war, and that the people will not pay taxes. Why not? . . I enter my solemn protest against this low and calculating avarice entering this hall of legislation. It is only fit for shops and counting-houses, and ought not to disgrace the seat of sovereignty. . . . It is a compromising spirit, too short-sighted to defend itself, always ready to yield a part to save the balance it is never safe but under the shield of honour. . . . I am not versed in this policy: I will not pretend to estimate in dollars and cents the value of national independence, or to measure in shillings and pence the misery, the strifes, and the slavery of our impressed seaThe stale imputation of partiality to France is better calculated for the columns of a newspaper than for the walls of this House. . . . The gentleman from Virginia is at a loss to account for what he calls our hatred to England . . . the country of Locke, of Newton, of Hampden,-having the same language and customs with ourselves, and descended from a common ancestry. Sir, the laws of human affections are uniform. If we have so much to attach us to that country, powerful indeed must be the cause which has overpowered it. . . . The cause is to be found in continued and unprovoked insult and injury. . . . Has he examined the reasons of our high regard for Chatham ? It is his ardent patriotism, the heroic courage of his mind, that thought the interest and honour of his country ought to be vindicated at every hazard and expense. I hope when we are called on to admire, we shall also be asked to imitate." Later in the same session, the speaker, to whom the above maiden effort had drawn admiring attention, again broke out in a strain of bellicose but genuine fervour : "Tie down a hero, and he feels the puncture of a pin throw him into battle, and he becomes almost insensible to vital gashes. So in war. Impelled alternately by hope and fear, stimulated by revenge, depressed by shame or elevated by victory, the people become invincible. No privation can shake their fortitude, no calamity break their spirit. War and restriction may leave the country equally exhausted, but the latter not only leaves you poor, but dispirited, divided, discontented. . . . Not so in war. In that state the common danger unites all, strengthens the bonds of society, and feeds the flame of patriotism. In exchange for the expenses and privations of war ... you obtain military and naval skill, and a more perfect organisation of such parts of your administration as are connected with the science of national defence. Are these advantages to be counted as trifles in the present state of the world? Can they be measured by moneyed valuation? I would prefer a single victory over the enemy, by sea or land, to all the good we shall ever derive from the Non-Importation Act." 1 These extracts claim their space as illustrating the socalled Demosthenic style of one of the two men hailed, in Congress, as the future master-spirits of their age. Calhoun's rival, then his friend, was his senior by only five years; but already, as Speaker of the House, a political power. The peroration of his reply to Quincy's peace speech of 1813 is characteristic of the more direct and popular manner of appeal adopted by Henry Clay of Kentucky : "An honourable peace is attainable only by an efficient war. My plan would be to call out the ample resources of the country, give them a judicious direction, prosecute the war with the utmost vigour, strike wherever we can touch the enemy, at sea or on land, and negotiate the terms of a peace at Quebec or at Halifax. We are told that England is a proud and lofty nation, which, disdaining to wait for danger, meets it half way. Haughty as she is, we once triumphed over her, and if we do not listen to the counsels of timidity and despair, we shall again prevail. In such a cause, with the aid of Providence, we must come out crowned with success; but if we fail, let us fail like men, lash ourselves to our gallant tars, and expire together in one common struggle, fighting for Free Trade and Seamen's Rights." The war, a drawn battle (the British having the advantage on land, the Americans on their lakes), brought to a nominal close (December 24, 1814) by the Treaty of Ghent, really ended with General Andrew Jackson's famous victory at New Orleans, in January 1815. From this date till the outbreak of the great Rebellion of 1861-65, the United States were never again involved in any serious contest. Their conflicts with the Indians, with Algiers, and even with Mexico, were, 1 The term is not very appropriate. Calhoun's eloquence is notable for earnestness and gravity, and in his later speeches for terseness, combined with a tendency to generalisation, and sometimes hair-splitting dialectic. |