Bushnell, Horace - Continued

Habit Habits are to the soul what the veins and arteries are to the blood, the courses in which it moves.

Butler, A. P. (American, 1796–1857.)

I

The Gullies of Virginia-We yesterday heard a parallel drawn by the senator from Connecticut, between the States of New York and Virginia, with a view of illustrating the unfavorable effects of Southern institutions. thought such a comparison was very unnecessary, and that anyone might have said to that senator, that if Virginia had occasion to be proud of anything, it was of her institutions,— not only as they had exhibited their influence in her own borders, but wherever her sons had gone. Sir, if her fields are washed into gullies, let it be remembered that the crops which have grown upon them have raised statesmen and heroes. She may not boast of crowded villages and densely settled farms, but wherever they have been settled, they have been settled to good purpose; and though they do not possess the particular kind of prosperity which may have marked some of the Northern States, whenever she was disposed to exhibit her wealth, like Cornelia, when asked to show her jewels, she could point to her children.

Butler, Joseph (England, 1692-1752.)

On Evil Speaking-A good man is friendly to his fellow-creatures and a lover of mankind; and so will, upon every occasion, and often without any, say all the good he can of everybody; but, so far as he is a good man, will never be disposed to speak evil of any, unless there be some other reason for it besides barely that it is true. If he be charged with having given an ill character, he will scarce think it a sufficient justification of himself to say it was a true one, unless he can also give some further account how he came to do so: a just indignation against particular instances of villainy, where they are great and scandalous; or to prevent an innocent man from being deceived and betrayed, when he has great trust and confidence in one who does not deserve it.

Byron, George Noel Gordon, Lord (England, 1788-1824.)

Pacification by the Gallows-Setting aside the palpable injustice and the certain inefficiency of this bill, are there not capital punishments sufficient in your statutes? Is there not blood enough upon your penal code that more must be poured forth to ascend to heaven and testify against you? How will you carry this bill into effect? Can you commit a whole country to their own prison? Will you erect a gibbet in every field, and hang up men like scarecrows? or will you proceed (as you must, to bring this measure into effect) by decimation; place the country under martial law; depopulate and lay waste all around you, and restore Sherwood Forest as an acceptable gift to the crown, in its former

condition of a royal chase, and an asylum for outlaws? Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace? Will the famished wretch who has braved your bayonets be appalled by your gibbets? When death is a relief, and the only relief, it appears, that you will afford him, will he be dragooned into tranquillity? Will that which could not be effected by your grenadiers be accomplished by your executioners?

Cæsar, Caius Julius (Rome, 100-44 B. C.) Responsibilities of Greatness - Conscript Fathers, different allowances are made to different persons. When such as live in obscurity are transported by passion to the commission of any offenses, there are few who know it, their reputation and fortune being on a level: but those who are invested with great power are placed on an eminence, and their actions viewed by all; and thus the least allowance is made to the highest dignity. There must be no partiality, no hatred, far less any resentment or animosity, in such a station. What goes by the name of passion only in others, when seen in men of power, is called pride and cruelty. (From Sallust. Roman Senate, 64 B. C.)

Bad Precedents from Good Beginnings Take care, Conscript Fathers, how your present decrees may affect posterity. All bad precedents spring from good beginnings, but when the administration is in the hands of wicked or ignorant men, these precedents, at first just, are transferred from proper and deserving objects to such as are not so.- (64 B. C.)

Cahill, Daniel W. (Irish-American, 18021864.)

The Destruction of the World-St. John says, that before God pronounces the final word there is silence in heaven; and voices are heard in the air, on the water, and on the earth. At length the skies open and he pours out the first vial of his anger. And the end is come. God speaks the command; and all nature trembles as if in agony. The seas swell, and boil, and rise, and lash the skies. The mountains nod and sink, and the poles collapse. The lightnings flash, and the moaning tempests sweep over the furious deep, piling up ocean upon ocean on the trembling globe. The earth reels in convulsion, and the whole frame of creation struggles.

A mighty conflagration bursts from the melting earth, rages like a hurricane roundabout, devouring all things in its storm and flood of fire, consuming the crumbling wreck of the condemned world. The heavens become terrible, as the kindling earth and seas show their overwhelming flashes on the crimson skies. The sun muffled, the moon black, the stars fallen, floating masses like clouds of blood sweep the skies in circling fury. The Omnipotence which, in the beginning of time, formed all creation, is now concentrated in a point; and, as it were, intensifies the infinity of his wrath, till his anger

can swell no higher; and his voice is heard like thunder in the distance. With what eloquent terror does the Savior paint this scene in his own words: "Men fainting away with fear, running in wild distraction, calling on the ground to open and swallow them, and the rocks to fall on them and hide them from the face of the Lord." The earth on fire: the skies faded: the sun and the stars darkened or extinguished: mankind burning, dying: the angry voice of God coming to judge the world: and Jesus Christ describing the scene, -are realities which the history of God has never seen before; and which never again will be repeated during the endless round of eternity.

Reason asks: Oh, who is God? and what is nature? and whence is man? and where is heaven? and why is hell? and what is our destiny? Was the world made in pleasure, moved for a moment in trial and suffering, and then blotted out in anger? In one revolution of the earth on fire it is a blank. Like a burning ship at sea, sinking to the bottom on fire, the earth vanishes into nonexistence under the blue vault, where it once careered in its brilliant circle. Not a vestige remains of its omnipotent path. Its wide territory is a tenantless, dark waste the myriad lamps of the skies extinguished all former existences crumbled: silent forever all chaos: things are as if they had never been the history of Earth and Time a mere record of the forgotten past: a mere hollow vault in the infinitude of space. - (1863.)

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Caird, John (Scotland, 1820-.)

The Art of Public Speaking — Of all intellectual agencies, the faculty of public speaking is that which, in proportion to its practical influence and importance, has received the least attention in our educational system. Of course, seeing that the first condition of good speaking is that the speaker should have something to ⚫ say, indirectly all education is an education of the orator. External gifts of voice and manner, apart from more solid acquirements, may deceive and dazzle the unwary and make a slender stock of ideas go a long way with an uneducated or half-educated auditory. But such superficial qualities in the long run lose their effect, even on uncritical ears, and to the better instructed may even become offensive as a kind of tacit insult to their judgment. Knowledge and a disciplined intelligence, therefore, constitute the first condition of effective speaking. But if it be true, as we must all admit, that the possession of knowledge does not imply the power of imparting it, that profound thinkers and ripe scholars may be poor and ineffective speakers; if experience proves that men who are strong in the study may be weak on the platform or in the pulpit, and that even men whose books evince a masterly grasp of their subject may be distanced as teachers or preachers or public speakers by persons of greatly inferior gifts and attainments,- then it is obvious that something more than the possession of ideas goes to the making of the orator, and that

that system of education is incomplete which confines itself to the acquirement of knowledge and neglects the art of oral expression.

Everyone knows of the immense pains that were bestowed on the cultivation of this art in ancient times. "Ancient oratory," writes Professor Jebb, "is a fine art, an art regarded by its cultivators as analogous to sculpture, to poetry, to music." Already, before the art of rhetoric had become an elaborate system, the orators were accustomed to prepare themselves for their task, first in composition, then in delivery. "Great is the labor of oratory," says Cicero, "as is its field, its dignity, its reward.” And though it may be true that in this as in other arts, nature and original aptitude count for much, and the highest eminence is attainable by few, yet moderate success is not beyond the reach of average ability industriously and carefully cultivated. How, then, shall we explain the comparative neglect into which, in our modern educational system, this art has fallen; how shall we account for the fact that whilst every other art has its principles and methods, its long and laborious discipline, its assiduous study of the best models, the acquisition of this art is for the most part left to chance or to such proficiency as can be gained in course of time and at the expense of long-suffering audiences? How is it that in our schools and colleges everything is done for the attainment of knowledge, and nothing at all for the capacity of communicating it? (Glasgow, 1889.)

The Personal Equation in EloquenceWhat ingenuity could invent a written or printed notation that would represent the infinite, nicelydiscriminated, subtle shades of tone and accent which a great speaker instinctively employs, and which the ear and soul of a sympathetic auditory instinctively interprets. Even in deliberate speech, in exposition, narrative, calm and unimpassioned argument, there are innumerable subtle changes by which corresponding variations of thought are indicated. And when he rises to the region of emotion, has not nature wedded its own symbols to the whole gamut of feeling, entreaty, passion, pathos, tenderness, grief subdued or unrepressed, remonstrance, anger, scorn, sarcasm, reverence, awe, aspiration, homage, the agony of the penitent, the hope and trust of the believer, the mystical rapture of the saint,- has not each of these and a thousand other varieties of feeling its own appropriate form of expression, so that, through the whole continuity of speech or sermon, a speaker can suffuse articulate language with this deeper, subtler, underlying, and all-potent language of nature? Lacking this organ of spiritual power, a discourse may have every intellectual excellence, but it will fall short of the highest effect. For often

"Words are weak and far to seek
When wanted fifty-fold,
And so if silence do not speak,
And trembling lip and tearful cheek,
There's nothing told."

In one word, the ultimate reason for the greater effectiveness of spoken than of written matter is simply this, that the latter is dead and silent, the former quick with the glow and vitality of intelligence and emotion. In certain scientific observations you must eliminate what is called the personal equation; but in good speaking, the personality of the speaker, instead of needing to be discounted, is that which lends its special value to the result. What reaches the auditor is not thought frozen into abstract form, but thought welling warm and fluent from a living source. In reading a book or report the whole burden of the process is thrown upon the reader. In listening to a spoken address more than half of the burden is borne by the speaker; or, rather, activity and receptivity become almost indistinguishable. Charged alike with the electric force of sympathy, the minds of speaker and hearer meet and mingle in a common medium of intelligence and emotion.- (From an address at the University of Glasgow, November 9th, 1889. Text from the "World's Best Orations.")

Calhoun, John C. (American, 1782-1850.)

Against the Force Bill-It is said that the bill ought to pass, because the law must be enforced. The law must be enforced! The imperial edict must be executed! It is under such sophistry, couched in general terms, without looking to the limitations which must ever exist in the practical exercise of power, that the most cruel and despotic acts ever have been covered. It was such sophistry as this that cast Daniel into the lions' den, and the three Innocents into the fiery furnace. Under the same sophistry the bloody edicts of Nero and Caligula were executed. The law must be enforced! Yes, the act imposing the tea-tax "must be executed." This was the very argument which impelled Lord North and his administration in that mad career which forever separated us from the British crown. Under a similar sophistry, "that religion must be protected," how many massacres have been perpetrated, and how many martyrs have been tied to the stake! What! acting on this vague abstraction, are you prepared to enforce a law, without considering whether it be just or unjust, constitutional or unconstitutional? —(1833.)

Legislation Nullifying the Constitution To maintain the ascendency of the Constitution over the law-making majority is the great and essential point on which the success of the system must depend. Unless that ascendency can be preserved, the necessary consequence must be that the laws will supersede the Constitution; and, finally, the will of the executive, by the influence of his patronage, will supersede the laws, indications of which are already perceptible. This ascendency can only be preserved through the action of the States as organized bodies having their own separate governments, and possessed of the right, under the structure of our system, of judging of the

extent of their separate powers.-(Force Bill, February, 1833-)

Avarice and Political Corruption - The country has sunk into avarice and political corruption, from which nothing can arouse it but some measure on the part of the government, of folly and madness. — ( 1883.)

Cohesive Power of Capital - A power has risen up in the government greater than the people themselves, consisting of many, and various, and powerful interests, combined into one mass, and held together by the cohesive power of the vast surplus in the banks. This mighty combination will be opposed to any change; and it is to be feared that such is its influence, no measure to which it is opposed can become a law, however expedient and necessary; and that the public money will remain in their possession to be disposed of, not as the public interest, but as theirs, may dictate. The time, indeed, seems fast approaching, when no law can pass, nor any honor can be conferred, from the Chief Magistrate to the tidewaiter, without the assent of this powerful and interested combination, which is steadily becoming the government itself, to the utter subversion of the authority of the people.

Union, not Nation-I never use the word "Nation" in speaking of the United States; I always use the word "Union," or "Confederacy.» We are not a nation, but a union, a confederacy of equal and sovereign States. England is a nation, Austria is a nation, Russia is a nation, but the United States are not a nation.

Force and Consent-Does any man, in his senses, believe that this beautiful structure, this harmonious aggregate of States, produced by the joint consent of all, can be preserved by force? Its very introduction would be the certain de-' struction of this Federal Union. No, no! You cannot keep the States united in their constitutional and federal bonds by force. Has reason fled from our borders? Have we ceased to reflect? It is madness to suppose that the Union can be preserved by force.

Virtues of the Puritans-By what causes has so inconsiderable a beginning as that of the colonies of New England, under such formidable, and apparently almost insurmountable difficulties, resulted, in so brief a period, in such mighty consequences? They are to be found in the high moral and intellectual qualities of the pilgrims. Their faith, piety, and confident trust in a superintending Providence; their stern virtues; their patriotic love of liberty and order; their devotion to learning; and their indomitable courage and perseverance. These are the causes which surmounted every obstacle, and which have led to such mighty results.

Governmental Power and Popular Incapacity The quantum of power on the part of