speed; but heartily and honestly helping me in the best and greatest work which the hands of the lawgiver can undertake. The course is clear before us; the race is glorious to run. You have the power of sending your name down through all times, illustrated by deeds of higher fame and

more useful import than ever were done within these walls. You saw the greatest warrior of the age-conqueror of Italy, humbler of Germany, terror of the North,-you saw him account all his matchless victories poor compared with the triumph which you are now in a condition to win!-saw

him contemn the fickleness of fortune, while, in despite of her, he could pronounce his memorable boast,

I shall go down to posterity with my code in my hand!' You have vanquished him in the field; strive now to rival him in the sacred arts of peace! Outstrip him as a lawgiver whom in arms you overcame ! The lustre of the regency will be eclipsed by the more solid and enduring splendour of the reign. The praise which false courtiers feigned for our Edwards and Harrys,—the Justinians of their day, will be the just tribute of the wise and good to that monarch under whose sway so mighty an undertaking shall be accomplished. Of a truth, sceptres are chiefly to be envied for that they bestow the power of thus conquering and ruling. It was the boast of Augustus-it formed part of the glare in which the perfidies of his earlier years were lost-that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble; a praise not unworthy a great prince, and to which the present reign has its claim also. But how much nobler will be our sovereign's boast, when he shall have it to say that he found law dear, and left it cheap; found it a sealed book, and left it an open letter; found it the patrimony of the rich, and left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression, and left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence! To me, much reflecting on these things, it has always seemed a worthier honour to be the instrument of making you bestir yourselves in this high matter, than to enjoy all that office can bestow-office, of which the patronage would be irksome encumbrance, the emoluments superfluous, to one content, with the rest of his industrious fellow-citizens, that his own hands minister to his wants; and as for the power supposed to follow it,

R

I have lived nearly half a century, and I have learned that power and place may be severed. But one power I do prize-that of being the advocate of my countrymen here, and their fellow-labourers elsewhere, in those things which concern the best interests of mankind. That power, I know full well, no Government can give, no change take away!

LESSON 54.

FAMOUS SPEECHES.

IV. SHERIDAN: ON INDIA.

Had a stranger at this time gone into the province of Oude, ignorant of what had happened since the death of Surajah Dowlah-that man who, with a savage heart, had still great lines of character; and who, with all his ferocity in war, had yet, with a cultivating hand, preserved to his country the riches which it derived from benignant skies and a prolific soil;-if this stranger, ignorant of all that

had happened in the short interval, and observing the wide and general devastation, and all the horrors of the scene, of plains unclothed and brown, of vegetables burned up and extinguished, of villages depopulated and in ruins, of temples unroofed and perishing, of reservoirs broken down and dry,-he would naturally inquire, 'What war has thus laid waste the fertile fields of this once beautiful and opulent country? What civil dissensions have happened thus to tear asunder and separate the happy societies that once possessed these villages? What disputed succession, what religious rage, has, with unholy violence,

those temples,

demolished and disturbed

SHERIDAN.

and taken from earth every

unobtruding

exercise of its

merciless en

spread the horsword? What of Providence the fountain,

the face of the vestige of ver

dure? Or, rather, what monsters have stalked over the country, tainting and poisoning with pestiferous breath what the voracious appetite could not devour?'

To such questions what must be the answer? No wars have ravaged these lands and depopulated these villages-no civil discords have been felt no disputed succession-no religious rageno merciless enemy-no affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged for the moment, cut off the sources of resuscitation-no voracious and poisoning monsters. No! all this has been accomplished by the friendship, generosity, and kindness of the

English nation. They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and, lo! those are the fruits of their alliance.'

What then! Shall we be told that under such circumstances the exasperated feelings of a whole people, thus goaded and spurred on to clamour and resistance, were excited by the poor and feeble influence of the Begums? When we hear the description of the fever-paroxysm-delirium, into which despair had thrown the natives, when, on the banks of the polluted Ganges, panting for breath, they tore more widely open the lips of their gaping wounds to accelerate their dissolution; and, while their blood was issuing, presented their ghastly eyes to heaven, breathing their last and fervent prayer that the dry earth might not be suffered to drink their blood, but that it might rise up to the throne of God, and rouse the eternal Providence to avenge the wrongs of their country;-will it be said that this was brought about by the incantations of those Begums in their secluded Zenana? or that they could inspire this enthusiasm and this despair into the breasts of a people who felt no grievance and had suffered no torture? What motive, then, could have such influence in their bosom? What motive! That which nature, the common parent, plants in the bosom of man, and which, though it may be less active in the Indian than in the Englishman, is still congenial with, and makes part of, his being;-that feeling which tells him that man was never made to be the property of man; but that when, through pride and insolence of power, one human creature dares to tyrannize over another, it is a power usurped, and resistance is a duty; that feeling which tells him that all power is delegated for the good, not for the injury,