ples according to the forms which conscience, not the law, has prescribed. Gaze upon that picture until your soul has drunk in all its beauty, all its glory, and then let me paint for you that which is offered as a substitute. Look upon a land where war has become a passion, and blood a welcome visitant; where every avenue to genius is closed save that which leads through a field of strife; where the widow and the orphan mingle unavailing tears for the husband and the father; where literature has become a mockery and religion a reproach; upon a people, strong indeed, but terrible in their strength, with the tiger's outward beauty and the tiger's inward fierceness; upon a people correctly described by the poet when he said: "Religion, blushing, veils her sacred fires, Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine, Let no one tell me that these are imaginary dangers. At the commencement of the French Revolution, if any one predicted the excesses to which it gave birth, he would have been regarded as a madman. What security have we against the occurrence of similar scenes? We are human, as they were. Our law of being is the same; and if we once depart from the plain path of prudence and of rectitude, no human wisdom can foresee the result. The present acquisition of Cuba, in my opinion, in any way, is of questionable propriety; but if it is to come to us as the result of war and violence, instead of a blessing it will prove a deadly ill. When Caractacus was carried to Rome to grace the triumph of his conqueror, he gazed with wonder and awe upon the splendor and magnificence with which he was surrounded. Then, turning to the Emperor, he expressed his simple wonder that one so rich, so powerful, so blessed with the possession of everything that earth could bestow, should have envied him his humble cottage home in the forests of Britain. Mr. President, I need not say that I do not intend to vote for these resolutions. The one which announces our purpose not to take possession of Cuba by fraud or violence is certainly, that far, in accordance with my own feelings; but I do not see the necessity of making the declaration. It seems to me to be both undignified and unmanly to be making constant protestations of our honesty. Let us show the world by our acts that we are honest, and leave all such declarations to those whose doubtful character requires some such bolstering. Nor do I think the reaffirmation of the Monroe Doctrine would add to its importance. Our policy has long ago been announced to the world, and this restless desire to reiterate it upon all occasions looks to me somewhat as if we doubted our own resolution, and required a few legislative resolves to keep up our courage. The Senator from Michigan has expressed considerable surprise at what he terms our shrinking from meeting the questions raised by his resolutions. Sir, there may be other causes than fear which render us reluctant to vote for them. When a boy I read a story of the civil wars of England, which taught me a lesson not yet forgotten. An adherent of the Parliament had been cruelly treated by one of the opposite party. His houses had been burned down, and his fields made desolate. Some time afterwards he met an acquaintance to whom he told the story of his wrongs. It was done simply and plainly, without a single threat or execration. When he had finished, his friend asked him with surprise, "And did you not vow revenge?" "No," was the reply; "those who take the trouble to make vows are very certain that a time will come when they will need a vow to steady their purposes. I never doubted what I would do, and I made no vows." Sir, there was more danger in one such man than a whole regiment of noisy babblers. Silence is almost invariably the concomitant of determined resolution; and the world will be quite as likely to believe us in earnest, and will respect us as much for refusing to pass, year after year, a series of threatening resolutions. Mr. President, I find that I am taxing my strength too much, and I must soon close. The pilgrim who, in obedience to a vision oftentimes repeated, seized his staff and set out in search of a land in which he had been promised all the joys of Paradise, after traversing many lands, steadily pursuing his dangerous way through forests, deserts, and jungles, reached at last the only mountain which shut out from his gaze the promised land. Slowly he commenced the ascent; then paused, overcome by con tending emotions. If from that mountain top he should indeed look upon a valley, such as had appeared to him in his dreams, beautiful and glorious, where the flower had lost its thorn, where the sweetest melodies were continually poured into the ear, and the very air was redolent with perfume, how cheaply would it be purchased even by all the toils and dangers he had encountered. But then came the fear that his dream had deceived him; that he might find a barren waste of thorns and brambles, desert, cheerless, and inhospitable. Anxious to know the truth, yet dreading to have it revealed, he stood upon the mountain side unable to advance or to recede. Even such emotions, Mr. President, might now well swell the American bosom. We have reached the hillside from whose top the future of America may be viewed. But who can ascend it without a feeling of doubt and terror? Is it to be the America which all of us loved to paint in our boyish days-free, happy, and prosperous, inculcating by its precepts, and enforcing by its example, a deep love of law and order; offering a refuge and asylum to the fugitive from oppression; cultivating with assiduous care the arts of peace, and illustrating all the mild beauties of Christianity? Or is it to be that America which "progress," "manifest destiny," and "overruling necessity," are now seeking to make it, where freedom will be lost amid the clash of arms, and the wail of every good spirit will rise above the crushed and broken hope of man's capacity to govern himself? Sir, it is in our action that the answer must be found. Our country is at stake, and he who loves it as he ought should pause and ponder long and well before tampering, in any way, with so high and holy a trust. IV-82 1298 CLEON (?)-422 B. C. LEON has been called "the scorn and terror of all good men at Athens." Cicero characterizes him as turbulent, but eloquent, and he is generally classed as a typical Athenian demagogue. Perhaps much of his evil reputation is due to the comedies of Aristophanes, in which he was violently attacked. It is said that the poet had a private grudge against him, because of a complaint made to the Athenian Senate that the "Babylonians » held Athenian institutions up to ridicule. However this may be, Cleon, though the son of a tanner, and rude enough in his methods, was certainly not wholly a demagogue in the modern sense, for in his speech against the Mityleneans, reported by Thucydides, he begins by boldly questioning the fitness of the turbulent Athenian democracy to rule subject colonies. The date of Cleon's birth is uncertain. He became noted at Athens after the death of Pericles as the leader of the Athenian Democrats against the Aristocratic party under Nicias. In 425 B. C. he carrried on a successful campaign against the Spartans, but in 422 B. C., when put at the head of the expedition against Brasidas, the Lacedæmonian commander, he was defeated and killed at Amphipolis. DEMOCRACIES AND SUBJECT COLONIES (From the Speech Against Mitylene as Reported by Thucydides in the Third Book of the Peloponnesian War) PON many other occasions my own experience hath convinced me that a democracy is incapable of ruling over others, but I see it with the highest certainty now in this your present repentance concerning the Mityleneans. In security so void of terror, in safety so exempt from treachery, you pass your days within the walls of Athens, that you are grown quite safe and secure about your dependants. Whenever, soothed by their specious entreaties, you betray your judgment or relent in pity, not a soul amongst you reflects that you are acting the dastardly part, not in truth to confer obligations upon those dependants, but to endanger your own welfare and safety. It is then quite remote from your thoughts, that your rule over them is in fact a tyranny, that they are ever intent on prospects to shake off your yoke that yoke, to which they ever reluctantly submitted. It is not forgiveness on your part, after injuries received, that can keep them fast in their obedience, since this must be ever the consequence of your own superior power, and not of gratitude in them. Above all, I dread that extremity of danger to which we are exposed, if not one of your decrees must ever be carried into act and we remain forever ignorant that the community which uniformly abides by a worse set of laws hath the advantage over another which is finely modeled in every respect except in practice; that modest ignorance is a much surer support than genius which scorns to be controlled, and that the duller part of mankind in general administer public affairs much better than your men of vivacity and wit. The last assume a pride in appearing wiser than the laws; in every debate about the public good they aim merely at victory, as if there were no other points sufficiently important wherein to display their superior talents; and by such conduct they generally subvert the public welfare; the former, who are diffident of their own abilities, who regard themselves as less wise than the laws of their country— though unable to detect the specious orator, yet being better judges of equity than champions in debate, for the most part enforce rational conduct. This beyond denial is our duty at present; we should scorn competitions in eloquence and wit, nor willfully and contrary to our own opinion mislead the judgment of this full assembly. For my part, I persist in my former declarations, and I am surprised at the men who propose to have the affair of Mitylene again debated, who endeavor to protract the execution of justice, in the interest of the guilty more than of the injured. For by this means the sufferer proceeds to take vengeance on the criminal with the edge of his resentment blunted; when revenge, the opposite of wrong, the more nearly it treads upon the heels of injury, generally inflicts the more condign punishment. But I am more surprised at him, whoever he be, that shall dare to contradict, and pretend to demonstrate, that the injuries done by the Mityleneans are really for our service, and that our calamities. are hardships on our dependants. He certainly must either presume upon his own eloquence, if he contends to prove that what was plainly decreed was never decreed; or, instigated by lucre, |