ters still presume to expect support in their infatuation? Can Parliament be so dead to its dignity and duty as to be thus deluded into the loss of the one, and the violation of the other, as to give an unlimited support to measures which have heaped disgrace and misfortune upon us; measures which have reduced this late flourishing empire to ruin and contempt? But yesterday, and England might have stood against the world: now, none so poor as to do her reverence! France, my Lords, has insulted you. She has encouraged and sustained America; and, whether America be wrong or right, the dignity of this country ought to spurn at the officious insult of French interference. Can even our ministers sustain a more humiliating disgrace? Do they dare to resent it? Do they presume even to hint a vindication of their honor, and the dignity of the state, by requiring the dismissal of the plenipotentiaries of America? The people, whom they affected to call contemptible rebels, but whose growing power has at last obtained the name of enemies, the people with whom they have engaged this country in war, and against whom they now command our implicit support in every measure of desperate hostility,— this people, despised as rebels, or acknowledged as enemies, are abetted against you, supplied with every military store, their interests consulted, and their ambassadors entertained, by your inveterate enemy,-and our ministers dare not interpose with dignity or effect!

My Lords, this ruinous and ignominious situation, where we cannot act with success nor suffer with honor, calls upon us to remonstrate in the strongest and loudest language of truth, to rescue the ear of majesty from the delusions which surround it. You cannot, I venture to say it, 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, and strain every effort, still more

extravagantly; accumulate every assistance you can beg or borrow; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince, that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign country: your efforts are forever vain and impotent, doubly so from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates to an incurable resentment the minds of your enemies, to overrun them with the sordid sons of rapine and of 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 arms! - never! never! never!

7. THE CONDITION OF IRELAND.-T. F. Meagher.

(0) The war of centuries is at a close. The patronage and proseriptions of Ebrington have failed. The procrastination and economy of Russell | have triumphed. Let a thanksgiving | be proclaimed from the pulpit of St. Paul's.

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(AO) Let the Lords and Commons of England vote their gratitude

to the vicious and victorious economist! Let the guns of London

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shRC

back h R C

Tower | proclaim the triumph which has cost, in the past, coffers of s R C prone

gold and torrents of blood, and, in this year, masses of putrefac

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tion, to achieve. England! your great | difficulty is at an end; your gallant and impetuous enemy is dead. Ireland, or rather the remains

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W 1 s BC

BC back

of Ireland, are yours at last. (GO) Your red ensign floats, not from

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hs RC F

the Custom House, where you played the robber; not from Limerick

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wall, where you played the cut-throat; but it flies from a thousand |

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prone

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graveyards, where the titled | niggards of your cabinet | have won

the battle which your | soldiers | could not tèrminate.

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(AO) Go; send your scourge | steamer to the western coast to

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convey some memòrial of your cònquest; and

the halls where the flags and cannon you have captured from a world of foes are grouped SRO snatch Ft to waist

to

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together, there let a shroud, stripped from some privileged corpse, W S R C 1 W sh RC be for its proper price | displayed. Stop not thère; change your war h RCF h C pr and falling crest; America has her eagle; let England have her vûlture. What

èmblem more fit | for the (G) rapacious power whose statesmanship | WRC Ft tr to br Ft to 1 RO depopulates, and whose commerce | is gorged with fàmine | prìces?

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(0) That is her proper signal. But whatever the monarch | journal

ists of Europe may

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say, (40) Ireland, thank God, is not down | yet.

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(AG) She is on her knee; but her hand | is clinched | against | the BOFt 1 BO

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giant, and she has yet power | to strike.

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(Ø) Last year, from the Carpathian heights, we heard the cry of the Polish insurrectionists: "There is hope for Poland, while in Poland

there is a life to lose." (40) There is hope for Ireland, while in

of our comrades have fallen; but thousands upon thousands still

survive; and the fate of the dead shall quìcken the purposes of the drop and lift h C living. The stakes are too | high | for us to throw up the hand until h C prone h C W the last | card has been played; too high for us to throw ourselves

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in despair upon the coffins of our starved and swindled partners. (0) A peasant population, generous and heróic, a mechanic | population, honest and industrious, is at stake.

8. AGAINST CURTAILING THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE.-Victor Hugo.

GENTLEMEN: I address the men who govern us, and say to them, -Go on, cut off three millions of voters; cut off eight out of nine, and the result will be the same to you, if

it be not more decisive. What you do not cut off is your own faults; the absurdities of your policy of compression, your fatal incapacity, your ignorance of the present epoch, the antipathy you feel for it, and that it feels for you; what you will not cut off is the times which are advancing, the hour now striking, the ascending movement of ideas, the gulf opening broader and deeper between yourself and the age, between the young generation and you, between the spirit of liberty and you, between the spirit of philosophy and you.

What you will not cut off is this immense fact, that the nation goes to one side, while you go to the other; that what for you is the sunrise is for it the sun's setting; that you turn your backs to the future, while this great people of France, its front all radiant with light from the rising dawn of a new humanity, turns its back to the past.

Gentlemen, this law is invalid; it is null; it is dead even before it exists. And do you know what has killed it? It is that, when it meanly approaches to steal the vote from the pocket of the poor and feeble, it meets the keen, terrible eye of the national probity, a devouring light, in which the work of darkness disappears.

Yes, men who govern us, at the bottom of every citizen's conscience, the most obscure as well as the greatest, at the very depths of the soul, (I use your own expression,) of the last beggar, the last vagabond, there is a sentiment, sublime, sacred, insurmountable, indestructible, eternal, the sentiment of right!. This sentiment, which is the very essence of the human conscience, which the Scriptures call the corner-stone of justice, is the rock on which iniquities, hypocrisies, bad laws, evil designs, bad governments, fall, and are shipwrecked. This is the hidden, irresistible obstacle, veiled in the recesses of every mind, but ever present, ever active, on which you will always exhaust yourselves; and which,

whatever you do, you will never destroy. I warn you, your labor is lost; you will not extinguish it, you will not confuse it. Far easier to drag the rock from the bottom of the sea, than the sentiment of right from the heart of the people!

9. RESISTANCE TO BRITISH AGGRESSION.-Patrick Henry.

MR. PRESIDENT: It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes see not, and having ears hear not, the things which so nearly concern our temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth,― to know the worst, and to provide for it!

I have but one lamp, by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judg ing of the future but by the past. And, judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry, for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet! Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss! Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love?

Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation,—the last arguments to which