Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study Part 2

It is impossible to deny the facts, which were so glaring at the time.

It is a painful thing to me, sir, to be obliged to go back to these unfortunate periods of the history of this war and of the conduct of this country; but I am forced to the task by the use which has been made of the atrocities of the French as an argument against negotiation. I think I have said enough to prove that if the French have been guilty we have not been innocent. Nothing but determined incredulity can make us deaf and blind to our own acts, when we are so ready to yield an a.s.sent to all the reproaches which are thrown out on the enemy, and upon which reproaches we are gravely told to continue the war. CHARLES JAMES FOX.

From "On the Rejection of Bonaparte's Overtures."

Now I think the people ought not to be made to wait for the relief they have a right to demand. They ought not to be made to suffer while we argue one another out of the recorded and inveterate opinions of our whole lives. I say, therefore, for myself, that, anxious to afford them all the relief which they require, regretting that the state of opinion around me puts it out of my power to afford that relief in the form I might prefer. I accommodate myself to my position, and make haste to do all that I can by the shortest way that I can. Consider how much better it is to relieve them to some substantial extent by this means, at once, than not to relieve at all, than not to initiate a system or measure of relief at all, and then go home at the end of this session of Congress, weak and weary, and spend the autumn in trying to persuade them that it was the fault of some of our own friends that nothing was done. How poor a compensation for wrongs to the people will be the victories over our friends! RUFUS CHOATE.

From "The Necessity of Compromises in American Politics."

It is of the very essence of true patriotism, therefore, to be earnest and truthful, to scorn the flatterer's tongue, and strive to keep its native land in harmony with the laws of national thrift and power. It will tell a land of its faults as a friend will counsel a companion. It will speak as honestly as the physician advises a patient. And if occasion requires, an indignation will flame out of its love like that which burst from the lips of Moses when he returned from the mountain and found the people to whom he had revealed the austere Jehovah and for whom he would cheerfully have sacrificed his life wors.h.i.+ping a calf.

THOMAS STARR KING.

From "On the Privilege and Duties of Patriotism."

Our President is dead. He has served us faithfully and well. He has kept the faith; he has finished his course. Henceforth there is laid up for him a crown of glory, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give him in that day. And He who gave him to us, and who so abundantly blest his labors, and helped him to accomplish so much for his country and his race, will not permit the country which He saved to perish. I believe in the overruling providence of G.o.d, and that, in permitting the life of our Chief Magistrate to be extinguished, He only closed one volume of the history of His dealings with this nation, to open another whose pages shall be ill.u.s.trated with fresh developments of His love and sweeter signs of His mercy. What Mr. Lincoln achieved he achieved for us; but he left as a choice a legacy in his Christian example, in his incorruptible integrity, and in his unaffected simplicity, if we will appropriate it, as in his public deeds. So we take this excellent life and its results, and, thanking G.o.d for them, cease all complaining and press forward under new leaders to now achievements, and the completion of the great work which he who has gone left as a sacred trust upon our hands. JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND.

From "Eulogy of Abraham Lincoln."

Patriotism says, and says it in the interest of peace and economy and final fraternity, "Fight and conquer even at the risk of holding them for a generation under the yoke." Fight, tho, on such a scale that there will be no need of holding them; that they will gladly submit again to the rule which makes the republic one and blesses all portions with protection and with bounty. Fight till they shall know that they kick against fate and the resistless laws of the world! Patriotism calls on the Cabinet and the head of the nation and the generals who give tone to the campaign to forget the customs and interests of peace till we shall gain it by the submission of the rebels and the shredding of their last banner into threads. THOMAS STARR KING.

From "On the Privilege and Duties of Patriotism."

For myself, I believe that whatever estrangements may have existed in the past, or may linger among us now, are born of ignorance and will be dispelled by knowledge. I believe that of our forty-five States there are no two who, if they could meet in the familiarity of the intercourse, in the fulness of personal knowledge, would not only cease to entertain any bitterness, or alienation, or distrust, but each would utter to the other the words of the Jewish daughter, in that most exquisite of idylls which has come down to us almost from the beginning of time:

"Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou guest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy G.o.d my G.o.d.

"Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part me and thee." GEORGE FRISBIE h.o.a.r.

From "Address at the Banquet of the New England Society."

He knew full well and displayed in his many splendid speeches and addresses that one unerring purpose of freedom and of union ran through her whole history; that there was no accident in it all; that all the generations, from the _Mayflower_ down, marched to one measure and followed one flag; that all the struggles, all the self-sacrifice, all the prayers and the tears, all the fear of G.o.d, all the soul-trials, all the yearnings for national life, of more than two centuries, had contributed to make the country that he served and loved. He, too, preached, in season and out of season, the gospel of Nationality. JOSEPH HODGES CHOATE.

From "Oration on Rufus Choate."

I leave these fellows and turn for a moment to their victims. And I would here, without any reference to my own case, earnestly implore that sympathy with political sufferers should not be merely telescopic in its character, "distance lending enchantment to the view"; and that when your statesmen sentimentalize upon, and your journalists denounce, far-away tyrannies--the horrors of Neapolitan dungeons--the abridgment of personal freedom in continental countries--the exercise of arbitrary power by irresponsible authority in other lands--they would turn their eyes homeward and examine the treatment and the sufferings of their own political prisoners. I would in all sincerity suggest that humane and well-meaning men who exert themselves for the remission of the death-penalty as a mercy would rather implore that the doom of solitary and silent captivity should be remitted to the more merciful doom of an immediate relief from suffering by immediate execution--the opportunity of an immediate appeal from man's cruelty to G.o.d's justice. STEPHEN JOSEPH MEANY.

From "Legality of Arrest."

Do you ask me our duty as scholars? Gentlemen, thought, which the scholar represents, is life and liberty. There is no intellectual or moral life without liberty. Therefore, as a man must breathe and see before he can study, the scholar must have liberty first of all; and as the American scholar is a man and has a voice in his own government, so his interest in political affairs must precede all others. He must build his house before he can live in it. He must be a perpetual inspiration of freedom in politics. He must recognize that the intelligent exercise of political rights, which is a privilege in a monarchy, is a duty in a republic If it clash with his case, his retirement, his taste, his study, let it clash, but let him do his duty. The course of events is incessant, and when the good deed is slighted, the bad deed is done.

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

From "The Duty of the American Scholar."

Let us, then, go straight forward to our duty, taking heed of nothing but the right. In this wise shall we build a work in accord with the will of Him who is daily fas.h.i.+oning the world to a higher destiny; a work resting at no point upon wrong or injustice, but everywhere reposing upon truth and justice; a work which all mankind will be interested in preserving in every age, since it will insure the increasing glory and well-being of mankind through all ages. IGNATIUS DONNELLY.

From "Reconstruction."

We are not only to do some things, but we are to do all things, and we are to continue so to do, so that the least deviation from the moral law, according to the covenant of works, whether in thought, word, or deed, deserves eternal death at the hand of G.o.d. And if one evil thought, if one evil word, if one evil action deserves eternal d.a.m.nation, how many h.e.l.ls, my friends, do every one of us deserve whose lives have been one continued rebellion against G.o.d! Before ever, therefore, you can speak peace to your hearts, you must be brought to see, brought to believe, what a dreadful thing it is to depart from the living G.o.d. GEORGE WHITEFIELD.

From Sermon, "On the Method of Grace."

I say we must necessarily undo these violent, oppressive acts. They must he repealed. You will repeal them. I pledge myself for it that you will in the end repeal them. I stake my reputation on it. I will consent to be taken for an idiot if they are not finally repealed. Avoid, then, this humiliating, disgraceful necessity. With a dignity becoming your exalted situation make the first advances to concord, to peace, and happiness; for that is your true dignity, to act with prudence and justice. That you should first concede is obvious, from sound and rational policy. Concession comes with better grace and more salutary effect from superior power. It reconciles superiority of power with the feelings of men, and establishes solid confidence on the foundations of affection and grat.i.tude. LORD CHATHAM.

From "On Removing Troops from Boston." For aught I know the next flash of electric fire that simmers along the ocean cable may tell us that Paris, with every fiber quivering with the agony of impotent despair, writhes beneath the conquering heel of her loathed invader. Ere another moon shall wax and wane the brightest star in the galaxy of nations may fall from the zenith of her glory never to rise again. Ere the modest violets of early spring shall ope their beauteous eyes the genius of civilization may chant the wailing requiem of the proudest nationality the world has ever seen, as she shatters her withered and tear-moistened lilies o'er the b.l.o.o.d.y tomb of butchered France. JAMES PROCTOR KNOTT.

From Speech on "Duluth."

Among her n.o.blest children his native city will cherish him, and gratefully recall the unbending Puritan soul that dwelt in a form so gracious and urbane. The plain house in which he lived--severely plain, because the welfare of the suffering and the slave were preferred to books and pictures and every fair device of art; the house to which the north star led the trembling fugitive, and which the unfortunate and friendless knew; the radiant figure pa.s.sing swiftly through the streets, plain as the house from which it came, regal with royalty beyond that of kings; the ceaseless charity untold; the strong sustaining heart of private friends.h.i.+p; the eloquence which, like the song of Orpheus, will fade from living memory into a doubtful tale; that great scene of his youth in Faneuil Hall; the surrender of ambition; the mighty agitation and the mighty triumph with which his name is forever blended; the consecration of a life hidden with G.o.d in sympathy with man--these, all these, will live among your immortal traditions, heroic even in your heroic story. But not yours alone! As years go by, and only the large outlines of lofty American characters and careers remain, the wide republic will confess the benediction of a life like this, and gladly own that if with perfect faith and hope a.s.sured America would still stand and "bid the distant generations hail," the inspiration of her national life must be the sublime moral courage, the all-embracing humanity, the spotless integrity, the absolutely unselfish, devotion of great powers to great public ends, which were the glory of Wendell Phillips. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

From "Eulogy of Wendell Phillips."

No, it is something else than circ.u.mstances which makes us do G.o.d's will, just as it is something else than miracle which makes us believe His word. Miracle and circ.u.mstances do their part. They a.s.sist the heart; they make the task of the will easier; they do not compel obedience. He who has made us free respects our freedom even when we use it against Himself--even when we resist His own must gracious and gentle pressure and choose to disbelieve or to disobey Him. If Moses and the prophets are to persuade us--if we are not to be beyond persuasion, tho one rose from the dead--there must be that inward seeking, yearning after G.o.d, that wholeness of heart, that tender and affectionate disposition toward Him who is the end as He is the source of our existence, of which the Bible is so full from first to last--which is the very essence of religion--which He, its object and its author, gives most a.s.suredly to all who ask Him. HENRY PARRY LIDDON.

From Sermon, "The Adequacy of Present Opportunities."

Instantly under such an influence you ascend above the smoke and stir of this small local strife; you tread upon the high places of the earth and of history; you think and feel as an American for America; her power, her eminence, her consideration, her honor, are yours; your compet.i.tors, like hers, are kings; your home, like hers, is the world; your path, like hers, is on the highway of empires; our charge, her charge, is of generations and ages; your record, her record, is of treaties, battles, voyages, beneath all the constellations; her image, one, immortal, golden, rises on your eye as our western star at evening rises on the traveler from his home; no lowering cloud, no angry river, no lingering spring, no broken creva.s.se, no inundated city or plantation, no tracts of sand, arid and burning, on that surface, but all blended and softened into one beam of kindred rays, the image, harbinger, and promise of love, hope, and a brighter day! RUFUS CHOATE.

From "Oration on American Nationality."