Charles Sumner: his complete works, volume 01 (of 20)

The moments lost in listlessness or squandered in unprofitable dissipation, gathered into aggregates, are hours, days, weeks, months, years. The daily sacrifice of a single hour...

It is a beautiful picture in Grecian story, that there was at least one spot, the small island of Delos, dedicated to the gods, and kept at all times sacred from War. No hostile...

The one hour here unappropriated is absorbed in the "all to Heaven." Sir Matthew Hale, another eminent name in jurisprudence, studied sixteen hours a day for the first two years...

1. One of the most important is the prejudice from _belief in its necessity_. When War is called a necessity, it is meant, of course, that its object can be attained in no other...

"Seigneur, _j'ai reçu un soufflet_. Vous savez ce qu'est un soufflet, lorsqu'il se donne à main ouverte sur le beau milieu de la joue. _J'ai ce soufflet fort sur le coeur; et je...

This same error Congress has committed before. The Act of February 24, 1807 (Statutes at Large, Vol. II. p. 419), provides for volunteers in companies, "whose commissioned offic...

What may we expect from him as to the _Mexican War_? This brings me to a melancholy inquiry, on which I am the less disposed to dwell because it has already been so fully consid...

On more than one occasion, he urged, with conclusive force, the importance of reducing the unwritten law to the certainty of a code, compiling and bringing into one body fragmen...

Believe me still, as I have ever been, The steadfast lover of my fellow-men; My weakness, love of holy liberty; My crime, the wish that all mankind were free: Free, not by blood...

These might seem pictures from the life of Alaric, who led the Goths to Rome, or of Attila, general of the Huns, called the Scourge of God, and who boasted that the grass did no...

Is not the answer prompt and decisive in favor of that system which most completely protects the prisoner from the pernicious influence of brethren in guilt? It is a venerable p...

The science of Comparative Philology, which our Scholar has illustrated, may rank with shining pursuits. It challenges a place by the side of that science which received such de...

To William Penn belongs the distinction, destined to brighten as men advance in virtue, of first in human history establishing the _Law of Love_ as a rule of conduct in the inte...

"Whene'er you speak, remember every cause Stands not on eloquence, but stands on laws; Pregnant in matter, in expression brief, Let every sentence stand with bold relief; On tri...

In the _Fortifications and Arsenals_ of Europe, crowning every height, commanding every valley, frowning over every plain and every sea, wealth beyond calculation has been sunk....

_For what use is the Militia of the United States?_ This immense system spreads, with innumerable suckers, over the whole country, draining its best life-blood, the unbought ene...

JOHN PICKERING, whose recent death we deplore, was born in Salem, February 7, 1777, at the darkest and most despondent period of the Revolution. His father, Colonel Pickering, w...

Among the Memoirs of the American Academy, published in 1833, (Vol. I. New Series) is the Dictionary of the Abnaki Language, in North America, by Father Sebastian Rasles, with a...

Similar testimony was offered by Edward Everett in a letter dated at Cambridge, September 5, 1846, where he thanks Mr. Sumner for his "most magnificent address,--an effort certa...

I do not speak of him as Theologian, although his labors have earned this title also. It is probable that no single mind, in our age, has exerted a greater influence over theolo...

If any one doubt the practical sagacity and consummate statesmanship of Charles Sumner let him read the speech in the Trent case. He had a most difficult task. He had to reconci...

"But it is said that this resolution must be taken as 'a test of Patriotism.' To this I have but one answer. If Patriotism ask me to assert a falsehood, I have no hesitation in...

[40] The pivotal character of Trial by Battle, as an illustration of War, will justify a reference to the modern authorities, among which are Robertson, who treats it with persp...

Nor can we dishonor the revered authors of the Constitution by supposing that they set their hands to it, believing that under it slavery was to be _perpetual_,--that the Republ...

But we cannot fail to accomplish great good. It is in obedience to a prevailing law of Providence, that no act of self-sacrifice, of devotion to duty, of humanity can fail. It s...

By the Mexican War Bill (approved May 13, 1846) the President was authorized "to call for and accept the services of any number of volunteers, not exceeding fifty thousand," and...

This great scene, in its essential parts, has been repeated in another age and country. The theatre was an African wilderness, with Christian converts for Roman Senators. The li...

And when the youth becomes a man, his country invites his service in war, and holds before his bewildered imagination the prizes of worldly honor. For him the pen of the histori...

I have dwelt upon their lives and characters, less in grief for what we have lost than in gratitude for what we possessed so long, and still retain, in their precious example. P...

The enormous expenditures lavished upon this war, now extending to fifty millions of dollars,--we have been told recently on the floor of the Senate that they were near one hund...