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everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. (Democratic National Convention, 1896.)

Bryant, Edgar E. (American, nineteenth century.)

War and the Constitution - Wars have grafted constructions on the constitutions of every nation under the sun, and so our great civil strife forcibly and forever construed and interpreted our Constitution. It was in itself no question of moral right or wrong that was involved in the problem; it was simply a question of the true spirit and intention of the constitutional contract and the meaning of this Union. The question of moral right or wrong can only enter to test the sincerity or insincerity of the advocacy of the respective views. If both were sincere, then both were patriotic, and the one was right and the other was not wrong. If our fathers were sincere, earnest, and honest in their views of government, if they fought for what they believed to be right, for what they believed to be the true intent, spirit, and meaning of the Constitution, they cannot in history be denied the meed of highest honor for patriotic purposes.-(From an address to Arkansas Ex-Confederates in 1893.)

Bryant, William Cullen (American, 1794-1878.) The Essence of Greatness Burns was great because, whatever may have been the errors of his after life, when he came from the hand that formed him, I say it with the profoundest reverence, God breathed into him, in larger measure than into other men, the spirit of that love which constitutes his own essence, and made him more than other men-a living soul. Burns was great by the greatness of his sympathies, sympathies acute and delicate, yet large, comprehensive, boundless. They were warmest and strongest toward those of his own kin, yet they overflowed upon all sentient beings,-upon the animals in his stall; upon the "wee, sleekit cowerin', tim'rous beastie » dislodged from her autumnal covert; upon the hare wounded by the sportsman; upon the very field flower, overturned by his share and crushed among the stubble. And in all this we feel that there is nothing strained or exaggerated, nothing affected or put on, nothing childish or silly, but that all is true genuine, manly, noble; we honor, we venerate the poet while we read; we take the expression of these sympathies to our hearts, and fold it in our memory forever.- (1859.)

Buchanan, James (American, 1791-1868.)

Money's Worth and Virtue's Worth - It is an evil omen of the times that men have undertaken to calculate the mere material value of the Union. . . . Public virtue is the vital spirit of republics, and history proves that when this has decayed and the love of money has usurped its place, although the forms of free

government may remain for a season, the substance has departed forever.- (Inaugural, 1856.)

Bunyan, John (England, 1628-1688.)

The Devil Chasing a Sinner-They that will have heaven, they must run for it; because the devil, the law, sin, death, and hell follow them. There is never a poor soul that is going to heaven, but the devil, the law, sin, death, and hell make after that soul. "The devil, your adversary, as a roaring lion, goeth about, seeking whom he may devour." And I will assure you, the devil is nimble, he can run apace, he is light of foot, he hath overtaken many, he hath turned up their heels, and hath given them an everlasting fall.- (From a sermon on I. Cor. ix. 24.)

Burchard, Rev. Samuel Dickinson (American, 1812-1891.)

Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion-We are Republicans and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion !-(From an address made as one of a deputation of clergy visiting Mr. Blaine at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York City, October 29th, 1884.)

Burges, Tristam (American, 1770-1853.)

Free Speech and Liberty-Free discussion, and liberty itself, eloquence and freedom of speech, are contemporaneous fires, and brighten and blaze, or languish and go out, together. Athenian liberty was, for years, protracted by that free discussion which was sustained and continued in Athens. Freedom was prolonged by eloquence. Liberty paused and lingered, that she might listen to the divine intonations of her voice. Free discussion, the eloquence of one man, rolled back the tide of Macedonian power, and long preserved his country from the overwhelming deluge.

Freedom of speech, Roman eloquence, and Roman liberty, expired together, when, under the proscription of the second triumvirate, the hired bravo of Mark Antony placed in the lap of one of his profligate minions the head and the hands of Tully, the statesman, the orator, the illustrious father of his country. After amusing herself some hours by plunging her bodkin through that tongue which had so long delighted the senate and the rostrum, and made Antony himself tremble in the midst of his legions, she ordered that head and those hands, then the trophies of a savage despotism, to be set up in the forum.

"Her last good man, dejected Rome adored; Wept for her patriot slain, and cursed the tyrant's sword."

- (House of Representatives.) Burke, Edmund (Ireland, 1729-1797.)

Collecting Taxes in India Under Hastings - My lords, they began by winding cords round the fingers of the unhappy freeholders of those provinces, until they clung to and were almost

Burke, Edmund - Continued

incorporated with one another, and then they hammered wedges of iron between them, until, regardless of the cries of the sufferers, they had bruised to pieces and forever crippled those poor, honest, innocent, laborious hands, which had never been raised to their mouths but with a penurious and scanty proportion of the fruits of their own soil; but those fruits, denied to the wants of their own children, have for more than fifteen years past furnished the investment for our trade with China, and been sent annually out, and without recompense, to purchase for us that delicate meal with which your lordships, and all this auditory, and all this country, have begun every day for these fifteen years at their expense. To those beneficent hands that labor for our benefit, the return of the British government has been cords and hammers and wedges. But there is a place where these crippled and disabled hands will act with resistless power. What is it that they will not pull down when they are lifted to heaven against their oppressors? Then what can withstand such hands? Can the power that crushed and destroyed them? Powerful in prayer, let us at least deprecate, and thus endeavor to secure ourselves from the vengeance which those mashed and disabled hands may pull down upon us. My lords, it is an awful consideration. Let us think of it.- (From the speech against Hastings.)

Impeachment of Warren Hastings, 1788My Lords, I do not mean now to go further than just to remind your lordships of this,-that Mr. Hastings's government was one whole system of oppression, of robbery of individuals, of spoliation of the public, and of supersession of the whole system of the English government, in order to vest in the worst of the natives all the power that could possibly exist in any government; in order to defeat the ends which all governments ought, in common, to have in view. In the name of the Commons of England, I charge all this villainy upon Warren Hastings, in this last moment of my application to you.

My lords, what is it that we want here, to a great act of national justice? Do we want a cause, my lords? You have the cause of oppressed princes, of undone women of the first rank, of desolated provinces, and of wasted kingdoms.

Do you want a criminal, my lords? When was there so much iniquity ever laid to the charge of anyone? No, my lords, you must not look to punish any other such delinquent from India. Warren Hastings has not left substance enough in India to nourish such another delinquent.

My lords, is it a prosecutor you want? You have before you the Commons of Great Britain as prosecutors; and I believe, my lords, that the sun, in his beneficent progress round the world, does not behold a more glorious sight than that of men, separated from a remote people by the material bonds and barriers of nature, united by the bond of a social and moral community; -all the Commons of England resenting, as their

own, the indignities and cruelties that are offered to all the people of India.

Do you want a tribunal? My lords, no example of antiquity, nothing in the modern world, nothing in the range of human imagination, can supply us with a tribunal like this. We commit safely the interests of India and humanity into your hands. Therefore, it is with confidence that, ordered by the Commons,

I impeach Warren Hastings, Esquire, of high crimes and misdemeanors.

I impeach him in the name of the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, whose parliamentary trust he has betrayed.

I impeach him in the name of all the commons of Great Britain, whose national character he has dishonored.

I impeach him in the name of the people of India, whose laws, rights, and liberties he has subverted; whose properties he has destroyed; whose country he has laid waste and desolate.

I impeach him in the name and by virtue of those eternal laws of justice which he has violated.

I impeach him in the name of human nature itself, which he has cruelly outraged, injured and oppressed, in both sexes, in every age, rank, situation, and condition of life.- (1788. Closing the bribery charges.)

Peroration Against Warren Hastings-My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, and surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing generations, between which, as a link in the great chain of eternal order, we stand. We call this nation, we call the world to witness, that the Commons have shrunk from no labor; that we have been guilty of no prevarication, that we have made no compromise with crime; that we have not feared any odium whatsoever, in the long warfare which we have carried on with the crimes, with the vices, with the exorbitant wealth, with the enormous and overpowering influence of Eastern corruption.

My lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in such a state that we appear every moment to be upon the verge of some great mutations. There is one thing, and one thing only, which defies all mutation: that which existed before the world, and will survive the fabric of the world itself, I mean justice; that justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to ourselves and with regard to others, and which will stand, after this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser, before the great Judge, when he comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.

My lords, the Commons will share in every fate with your lordships; there is nothing sinister which can happen to you, in which we shall not all be involved; and, if it should so happen that we shall be subjected to some of those frightful changes which we have seen,-if it should happen that your lordships, stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human society, should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led

Burke, Edmund- Continued

to those scaffolds and machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious queens have shed their blood, amidst the prelates, amidst the nobles, amidst the magistrates, who supported their thrones,- may you in those moments feel that consolation which I am persuaded they felt in the critical moments of their dreadful agony!

My lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! but, if you stand,- and stand I trust you will,— together with the fortune of this ancient monarchy, together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and illustrious kingdom, may you stand as unimpeached in honor as in power; may you stand, not as a substitute for virtue, but as an ornament of virtue, as a security for virtue; may you stand long, and long stand the terror of tyrants; may you stand the refuge of afflicted nations; may you stand a sacred temple, for the perpetual residence of an inviolable justice.- (1788.)

Carnatic-When

at

Hyder Ali in the length Hyder Ali found that he had to do with men who either would sign no convention, or whom no treaty and no signature could bind, and who were the determined enemies of human intercourse itself, he decreed to make the country possessed by these incorrigible and predestinated criminals a memorable example to mankind. He resolved, in the gloomy recesses of a mind capacious of such things, to leave the whole Carnatic an everlasting monument of vengeance, and to put perpetual desolation as a barrier between him and those against whom the faith which holds the moral elements of the world together was no protection. He became at length so confident of his force, and so collected in his might, that he made no secret whatever of his dreadful resolution. Having terminated his disputes with every enemy, and every rival, who buried their mutual animosities in their common interest against the creditors of the Nabob of Arcot, he drew from every quarter whatever a savage ferocity could add to his new rudiments in the art of destruction; and compounding all the materials of fury, and havoc, and desolation, into one black cloud, he hung for awhile on the declivities of the mountains.

Whilst the authors of all these evils were idly and stupidly gazing on this menacing meteor, which blackened all the horizon, it suddenly burst, and poured down the whole of its contents upon the plains of the Carnatic. Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no eye had seen, nor heart conceived, and which no All the horrors tongue could adequately tell. of war, before known or heard of, were mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, and destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants, flying from their flaming villages, in part, were slaughtered; others, without regard to sex, to age, or rank, or sacredness of function, fathers torn from children, husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst

the goading spears of drivers and the trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in an unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to evade this tempest fled to the walled cities. But, escaping from fire, sword, and exile, they fell into the jaws of famine.

For eighteen months, without intermission, this destruction raged from the gates of Madras to the gates of Tanjore; and so completely did these masters in their art, Hyder Ali, and his more ferocious son, absolve themselves of their impious vow, that when the British armies traversed, as they did, the Carnatic for hundreds of miles in all directions, through the whole line of their march they did not see one man, not one woman, not one child, not one four-footed beast, of any description whatever. One dead, uniform silence reigned over the whole region.

"Afraid of Being Too Much in the Right» -In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies whenever we oppress and persecute.

Arbitrary Power Anarchical- Law and arName me bitrary power are in eternal enmity.

a magistrate, and I will name property; name me power and I will name protection. It is a contradiction in terms, it is blasphemy in religion, it is wickedness in politics, to say that any man can have arbitrary power.

Arbitrary Power and Conquest-Arbitrary power is not to be had by conquest. Nor can any sovereign have it by succession; for no man can succeed to fraud, rapine, and violence. Those who give and those who receive arbitrary power are alike criminal; and there is no man but is bound to resist it to the best of his power, wherever it shall show its face to the world.

Association of the Good-When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Charters, When Kept-Charters are kept when their purposes are maintained; they are violated when the privilege is supported against its end and its object.

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our arms, wisdom from our councils, and every shadow of authority and credit from the most venerable parts of our constitution.

"Difficulty Will Not Suffer Us to Be Superacial Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental guardian and legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. He that wrestles with us, strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object, and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.

"Epidemical Fanaticism » - Of all things wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because, of all enemies, it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any kind of resource.

Esteem of the Wise and Good-The esteem of wise and good men is the greatest of all temporal encouragements to virtue; and it is a mark of an abandoned spirit to have no regard to it.

Fire Bells as Disturbers of the Peace Where there is abuse, there ought to be clamor ; because it is better to have our slumber broken by the fire bell than to perish, amidst the flames, in our bed.

Fitness for Freedom-Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be of it without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate habits cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Flattery, Its Influence-Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to kings.

Government-No government ought to own that it exists for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people, or that there is such a principle involved in its policy.

Hampden's Twenty Shillings Would twenty shillings have ruined Mr. Hampden's fortune? No! but the payment of half twenty shillings, on the principle it was demanded, would have made him a slave! It is the weight of that preamble, of which you are so fond, and not the weight of the duty, that the Americans are unable and unwilling to bear.

"Humiliation Cannot Degrade Humanity» - Humanity cannot be degraded by humiliation. It is its very character to submit to such things. There is a consanguinity between benevolence and humility. They are virtues of the same stock.

Hypocrisy - Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculation; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.

Innovation and Confined Views- A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

Judges and the Law-Judges are guided and governed by the eternal laws of justice, to which we are all subject. We may bite our chains, if we will; but we shall be made to know ourselves, and be taught that man is born to be governed by law; and he that will substitute will in the place of it is an enemy to God.

"Levelers Never Equalize»- Those who attempt to level never equalize. In all societies, consisting of various descriptions of citizens, some description must be uppermost. The levelers, therefore, only change and pervert the natural order of things; they load the edifice of society by setting up in the air what the solidity of the structure requires to be on the ground.

Liberty of Individuals - The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations which may be soon turned into complaints.

"Liberty Nibbled Away for Expedients » The true danger is, when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts.

Marie Antoinette as the Morning StarIt is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in,-glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor and joy.

Political Arithmetic - Political reason is a computing principle; adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, morally, and not metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations.

Pretenders Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them, are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave, and of the character they assume.

Property for the Fittest-A great object is always answered, whenever any property is transferred from hands that are not fit for that property, to those that are.

Burke, Edmund- Continued

Religion Makes Co-operation Possible We know, and what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort. In England we are so convinced of this, that there is no rust of superstition with which the accumulated absurdity of the human mind might have crusted it over in the course of ages, that ninetynine in a hundred of the people of England would not prefer to impiety.

Revolutions at Their Flood-If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw that way. Every fear and hope will forward it; and then they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs, will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate.

Shame-Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished from the heart, nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

Suspicion More Hurtful Than Perfidy— There are cases in which a man would be ashamed not to have been imposed upon. There is a confidence necessary to human intercourse, and without which men are often more injured by their own suspicions than they could be by the perfidy of others.

"The Road to Eminence Ought Not to Be Made Too Easy" - The road to eminence and power from obscure condition ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation. The temple of honor ought to be seated on an eminence. If it be open through virtue, let it be remembered, too, that virtue is never tried but by some difficulty and some struggle.

"Things That Are Not Practicable Are Not Desirable»-Those things that are not practicable are not desirable. There is nothing in the world really beneficial that does not lie within the reach of an informed understanding and a well-directed pursuit. There is nothing that God has judged good for us that he has not given us the means to accomplish, both in the natural and the moral world. If we cry, like children, for the moon, like children we must cry

.on.

"Tribunals Fall With Peace»-Laws are commanded to hold their tongues among arms; and tribunals fall to the ground with the peace they are no longer able to uphold.

Virtue Contagious as Well as Vice-Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest, manly principle will daily accumulate.

Burke, Father "Tom" (Ireland, nineteenth century.)

All Men Fit for Freedom - The Parliament of 1872 was a failure, I grant it. Mr. Froude says that that Parliament was a failure because the Irish are incapable of self-legislation. It is a serious charge to make now against any people, my friends. I who am not supposed to be a philosopher, and, because of the habit that I wear, am supposed not to be a man of very large mind, I stand up here to-night and I assert my conviction that there is not a nation or a race under the sun that is not capable of selflegislation, and that has not a right to the inheritance of freedom.- (From his reply to Froude, New York, 1872.)

Freedom of Conscience- The conscience of man, and consequently of a nation, is supposed to be the great guide in all the relations that individuals or the people bear to God. Conscience is so free that Almighty God himself respects it. It is a theological axiom that if a man does wrong when he thinks he is doing right, the wrong will not be attributed to him by Almighty God.- (From his reply to Froude, New York, 1872.)

Bushnell, Horace (American, 1802-1876.)

The Greatness and Littleness of Man-The immortal Kepler, piloting science into the skies, and comprehending the vastness of heaven, for the first time, in the fixed embrace of definite thought, only proves the magnificence of man as a ruin, when you discover the strange ferment of irritability and "superstition wild," in which his great thoughts are brewed and his mighty life dissolved.

So, also, Bacon proves the amazing wealth and grandeur of the human soul only the more sublimely that, living in an element of cunning, servility, ingratitude, and dying under the shame of a convict, he is yet able to dignify disgrace by the stupendous majesty of his genius, and commands the reverence even of the world, as to one of its sublimest benefactors. And the poet's stinging line,

"The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind, pictures, only with a small excess of satire, the magnificence of ruin comprehended in the

man.

Probably no one of mankind has raised himself to a higher pitch of renown by the superlative attributes of genius displayed in his writings, than the great English dramatist; flowering out, nevertheless, into such eminence of glory, on a compost of fustian, buffoonery, and other vile stuff, which he so magnificently covers with splendor and irradiates with beauty, that disgust itself is lost in the vehemence of praise. And so we shall find, almost universally, that the greatness of the world's great men is proved by the inborn qualities that tower above the ruins of weakness and shame, in which they appear, and out of which, as solitary pillars and dismantled temples they rise.

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