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the great roads intelligence of the victory of our church and nation. Yet not even that astounding explosion could awe the bitter and intrepid spirit of the solicitor. Striving to make himself heard above the din, he called on the judges to commit those who had violated, by clamour, the dignity of a court of justice. One of the rejoicing populace was seized; but the tribunal felt it would be absurd to punish a single individual for an offence common to hundreds of thousands, and dismissed him with a gentle reprimand.

The acquitted prelates took refuge from the crowd which implored their blessing in the nearest chapel where divine service was performing. Many churches were open on that morning throughout the capital, and many pious persons repaired thither. The bells of all the parishes of the city and liberties were ringing. The jury, meanwhile, could scarcely make their way out of the hall. They were forced to shake hands with hundreds. "God bless you," cried the people; "God prosper your families; you have done like honest, good-natured gentlemen. You have saved us to-day." As the gentlemen who had supported the cause drove off, they flung from their windows handfuls of money, and bade the crowd drink to the health of the bishops and the jury. The attorney went with the tidings to Sunderland, who happened to be conversing with the Nuncio. "Never," said Powis, "within man's memory, have there been such shouts and such tears of joy as to-day." The king had that morning visited the camp on Hounslow Heath. Sunderland instantly sent a courier thither with the news. James was in Lord Feversham's tent when the express arrived. He was greatly disturbed, and exclaimed in French, "So much the worse for them!" He soon set out for London.

While he was present, respect prevented the soldiers from giving loose to their feelings; but he had scarcely quitted the camp when he heard a great shouting behind him. He was surprised, and asked what the uproar meant. 66 Nothing," was the answer. "The soldiers are glad that the bishops are acquitted." "Do you call that nothing?" said James, and then repeated, "So much the worse for them.” He might well be out of temper. His defeat had been complete and most humiliating. Had the prelates escaped on account of some technical defect in the case for the crown, had they escaped because they had not written the petition

in Middlesex, or because it was impossible to prove, according to the strict rules of law, that they had delivered to the king the paper for which they were called in question, the prerogative would have suffered no shock. Happily for the country, the fact of publication had been fully established. The counsel for the defence had therefore been forced to attack the dispensing power. They had attacked it with great learning, eloquence, and boldness. The advocates of the Government had been, by universal acknowledgment, overmatched in the contest. Not a single judge had ventured to declare that the Declaration of Indulgence was legal. One judge had in the strongest terms pronounced it illegal. The language of the whole town was, that the dispensing power had received a fatal blow.

SPEECH OF LORD CHATHAM AGAINST THE AMERICAN WAR, AND THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE INDIANS IN IT.

I CANNOT, my lords, I will not, join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. This, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment. It is not a time for adulation: the smoothness of flattery cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the throne in the language of truth. We must, if possible, dispel the delusion and darkness which envelop it, and display, in its full danger and genuine colours, the ruin which is brought to our doors. Can ministers still presume to expect support in their infatuation? Can Parliament be so dead to its dignity and duty, as to give their support to measures thus obtruded and forced upon them? Measures, my lords, which have reduced this late flourishing empire to scorn and contempt!" But yesterday, and Britain might have stood against the world; now, none so poor as to do her reverence." The people, whom we at first despised as rebels, but whom we now acknowledge as enemies, are abetted against us, supplied with every military store, have their interest consulted, and their ambassadors entertained, by our inveterate enemy; and ministers do not, and dare not, interpose with dignity or effect. The desperate state of our army abroad is in part known. No man more highly esteems and honours the British troops than I do; I know their virtues and their valour; I know they can achieve anything but impossibilities; and I know

SPEECH OF LORD CHATHAM AGAINST THE AMERICAN WAR. 345

that the conquest of British America is an impossibility. You cannot, my lords, you cannot conquer America. What is your present situation there? We do not know the worst; but we know that in three campaigns we have done nothing and suffered much. You may swell every expense, accumulate every assistance, and extend your traffic to the shambles of every German despot: your attempts will be for ever vain and impotent-doubly so, indeed, from this mercenary aid on which you rely, for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your adversaries, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty. If I were an American as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my armsnever, never, never!

But, my lords, who is the man that, in addition to the disgraces and mischiefs of the war, has dared to authorize and associate to our arms the tomahawk and scalping-knife of the savage? to call into civilized alliance, the wild and inhuman inhabitants of the woods? to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren? My lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. But, my lords, this barbarous measure has been defended, not only on the principles of policy and necessity, but also on those of morality; "for it is perfectly allowable," says Lord Suffolk, "to use all the means which God and nature have put into our hands.” I am astonished, I am shocked, to hear such principles confessed; to hear them avowed in this House, or in this country. My lords, I did not intend to encroach so much on your attention, but I cannot repress my indignation—I feel myself impelled to speak. My lords, we are called upon as members of this House, as men, as Christians, to protest against such horrible barbarity!" That God and nature have put into our hands !" What ideas of God and nature that noble Lord may entertain, I know not; but I know that such detestable principles are equally abhorrent to religion and humanity. What to attribute the sacred sanction of God and nature to the massacres of the Indian scalping-knife! to the cannibal savage, torturing, murdering, devouring, drinking the blood of his mangled victims ! Such notions shock every precept of morality, every feeling of humanity, every sentiment of honour. These abominable principles,

and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most de cisive indignation.

I call upon that right reverend, and this most learned bench, to vindicate the religion of their God, to support the justice of their country. I call upon the Bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; upon the Judges to interpose the purity of their ermine, to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honour of your lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the Constitution!

My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor even have reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving vent to my eternal abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles.

LORD BROUGHAM ON NEGRO SLAVERY.

I

his slaves. The principles,

I TRUST that, at length, the time is come, when parliament will no longer bear to be told that slave-owners are the best lawgivers on slavery no longer suffer our voice to roll across the Atlantic, in empty warnings and fruitless orders. Tell me not of rights-talk not of the property of the planter in deny his right-I acknowledge not the property. the feelings of our common nature rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it! In vain you tell me of laws that sanction such a claim ! There is a law, above all the enactments of human codes-the same, throughout the world—the same in all times such as it was, before the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the sources of power, wealth, and knowledge, to another, all utterable woes,— such is it at this day it is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man ; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal -while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and hate bloodthey shall reject, with indignation, the wild and guilty fantasy, that man can hold property in man !

In vain you appeal to treaties-to covenants between nations.

The covenants of the Almighty, whether the old covenant or the new, denounce such unholy pretensions. To these laws did they of old refer, who maintained the African trade. Such treaties did they cite and not untruly; for, by one shameful compact, you bartered the glories of Blenheim for the traffic in blood. Yet, in despite of law and of treaty. that infernal traffic is now destroyed, and its votaries put to death like other pirates. How came this change to pass? Not, assuredly, by parliament leading the way but the country at length awoke; the indignation of the people was kindled; it descended in thunder, and smote the traffic, and scattered its guilty profits to the winds. Now, then, let the planters beware-let their assemblies beware—let the government at home beware-let the parliament beware! The same country is once more awake-awake to the condition of negro slavery; the same indignation kindles in the bosom of the same people; the same cloud is gathering that annihilated the slave trade; and if it shall descend again, they on whom its crash may fall, will not be destroyed before I have warned them; but I pray, that their destruction may turn away from us the more terrible judgments of God!

APPEARANCE OF THE SKY.-(RUSKIN.)

It is a strange thing how little, in general, people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in any other of her works; and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered if, once in three days or thereabouts, a great, ugly, black rain-cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with, perhaps, a film of morning and evening mist for dew. And, instead of this, there is not a moment of any day of our lives when nature is not producing, scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most

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