Part 1

Uniform with British Orations

AMERICAN ORATIONS, to illustrate American Political History, edited, with introductions, by ALEXANDER JOHNSTON, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Economy in the College of New Jersey. 3 vols., 16 mo, $3.75.

PROSE MASTERPIECES FROM MODERN ESSAYISTS, comprising single specimen essays from IRVING, LEIGH HUNT, LAMB, DE QUINCEY, LANDOR, SYDNEY SMITH, THACKERAY, EMERSON, ARNOLD, MORLEY, HELPS, KINGSLEY, RUSKIN, LOWELL, CARLYLE, MACAULAY, FROUDE, FREEMAN, GLADSTONE, NEWMAN, LESLIE STEPHEN. 3 vols., 16 mo, bevelled boards, $3.75 and $4.50.

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, NEW YORK AND LONDON

REPRESENTATIVE BRITISH ORATIONS

WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

BY CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS.

_Videtisne quantum munus sit oratoris historia?_ —CICERO, _DeOratore_, ii, 15

✩

NEW YORK & LONDON G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS The Knickerbocker Press 1884

COPYRIGHT G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 1884.

Press of G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS New York

TO

A. D. A.

CONTENTS.

PAGE SIR JOHN ELIOT 1

SIR JOHN ELIOT 13 ON THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND UNDER THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM. DELIVERED IN HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 3, 1628.

JOHN PYM 27

JOHN PYM 37 ON THE SUBJECT OF GRIEVANCES IN THE REIGN OF CHARLES I. HOUSE OF COMMONS, APRIL 5, 1640.

LORD CHATHAM 85

LORD CHATHAM 98 ON THE RIGHT OF TAXING AMERICA. HOUSE OF COMMONS, JANUARY 14, 1766.

LORD CHATHAM 120 ON AN ADDRESS TO THE THRONE CONCERNING AFFAIRS IN AMERICA. HOUSE OF LORDS, NOVEMBER 18, 1777.

LORD MANSFIELD 143

LORD MANSFIELD 150 ON THE RIGHT OF ENGLAND TO TAX AMERICA. HOUSE OF LORDS, FEBRUARY 3, 1766.

EDMUND BURKE 172

MR. BURKE 182 ON MOVING RESOLUTIONS FOR CONCILIATION WITH AMERICA. HOUSE OF COMMONS, MARCH 22, 1775.

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 299

PREFACE.

The three small volumes here offered to the public have been prepared in the hope that they would be of some service in showing the great currents of political thought that have shaped the history of Great Britain during the past two hundred and fifty years. The effort has been not so much to make a collection of the most remarkable specimens of English eloquence, as to bring together the most famous of those oratorical utterances that have changed, or here tended to change, the course of English history.

Eliot and Pym formulated the grievances against absolutism, a contemplation of which led to the revolution that established Anglican liberty on its present basis. Chatham, Mansfield, and Burke elaborated the principles which, on the one hand, drove the American colonies into independence, and, on the other, enabled their independence to be won and secured. Mackintosh and Erskine enunciated in classical form the fundamental rights which permanently secured the freedom of juries and the freedom of the press. Pitt, in the most elaborate as well as the most important of all his remarkable speeches, expounded the English policy of continuous opposition to Napoleon; and Fox, in one of the most masterly of his unrivalled replies, gave voice to that sentiment which was in favor of negotiations for peace. Canning not only shaped the foreign policy of the nation during the important years immediately succeeding the Napoleonic wars, but put that policy into something like permanent form in what has generally been considered the masterpiece of his eloquence. Macaulay’s first speech on the Reform Bill of 1832 was the most cogent advocacy of what proved to be nothing less than a political revolution; and Cobden, the inspirer and apostle of Free Trade, enjoys the unique distinction of having reversed the opinions of a prime-minister by means of his persuasive reasonings. Bright embodied in a single eloquent address the reasons why so many have thought the foreign policy of England to be only worthy of condemnation. Beaconsfield concentrated into one public utterance an expression of the principles which it has long been the object of the Conservative party to promulgate and defend; and Gladstone, in one of his Mid-Lothian speeches, put into convenient form the political doctrines of the Liberals in regard to affairs both at home and abroad. It is these speeches, which at one time or another have seemed to go forth as in some sense the authoritative messages of English history to mankind, that are here brought together.

The speeches are in almost all cases given entire. A really great oration is a worthy presentation of a great subject, and such an utterance does not lend itself readily to abridgment, for the reason that its very excellence consists of a presentation in just proportion of all its parts. An orator who has a great message to deliver, and who fulfils his task in a manner worthy of his subject, excludes every thing that does not form an essential part of his argument; and therefore in editing these orations it has seldom been thought wise to make either reductions or omissions. In a few instances, notably in the speeches of Fox and Cobden, a few elaborations of purely local and temporary significance have been excluded; but the omissions in all cases are indicated by asterisks.

In the introductions to the several speeches an effort has been made to show not only the political situation involved in the discussion, but also the right of the orator to be heard. These two objects have made it necessary to place before the reader with some fulness the political careers of the speakers and the political questions at issue when the speeches were made. The illustrative notes at the end of the volumes are designed simply to assist the reader in understanding such statements and allusions as might otherwise be obscure.

I cannot submit these volumes to the public without expressing the hope that they will in some small measure at least contribute to a juster appreciation of that liberty which we enjoy, and to a better understanding of the arduous means by which free political institutions have been acquired.

C. K. A.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, ANN ARBOR, _November 22, 1884_.

SIR JOHN ELIOT.

During the second half of the sixteenth century and the first half of the seventeenth, the political and religious energies of Europe were very largely devoted to the settlement of questions that had been raised by that great upheaval known as the Protestant Reformation. On the Continent a reaction had almost everywhere set in. Not only were the new religious doctrines very generally stifled, but even those political discontents which seemed to follow as an inseparable consequence of the religious movement, were put down with a rigorous hand. The general tendency was toward the establishment of a firmer absolution both in Church and in State.

But in England this tendency was arrested. It was the good fortune of the nation to have a monarch upon the throne who vigorously resisted every foreign attempt to interfere with English affairs. It was doubtless the political situation rather than earnestness of religious conviction that led Elizabeth to make the Church of England independent of the Church of Rome. But in securing political independence she also secured the success of the Reformation. Doubtless she was neither able nor inclined to resist the prevailing tendency toward political absolutism; but it had been indispensable to her success that she should enlist in the cause of religious and political independence all the powers of the nation. However, as soon as independence was established by the destruction of the Spanish Armada, it became evident that there was another question to be settled of not less significance. That question was whether the English Constitution was to be developed in the direction of its traditional methods, or whether the government and people should adopt the reactionary methods that were coming to be so generally accepted on the Continent. It took a century of strife to answer the question. The struggle did not become earnest during the reign of Elizabeth, but it cost Charles I. his head, and the Stuart dynasty its right to the throne. For three generations the kings were willing to stake every thing in favor of the Continental policy, while Parliament was equally anxious to maintain the traditional methods. It was unavoidable that a conflict should ensue; and the Great Revolution of the seventeenth century was the result.

James I., during the whole of his reign, showed a disposition to override whatever principles of the Constitution stood in the way of his personal power. Charles I. was a man of stronger character than his father, and he brought to the service of the same purpose a greater energy and a more determined will. As soon as he ascended the throne in 1625, it began to look as though a contest would be inevitable between royal will on the one hand and popular freedom on the other. The King, determined to rule in his own way, not only questioned the right of Parliament to inquire into grievances, but even insisted upon what he regarded as his own right to levy money for the support of the Government without the consent of Parliament. This determination Parliament was disposed to question, and in the end to resist.

Under the maxim of the English Government, that “the King can do no wrong,” there is but one way of securing redress, in case of an undue exercise of royal power. As the Constitution presumes that the King never acts except under advice, his ministers, as his constitutional advisers, may be held responsible for all his acts. The impeachment of ministers, therefore, is the constitutional method of redress. It was the method resorted to in 1626. Articles of Impeachment were brought by the House of Commons against the King’s Prime Minister and favorite, the Duke of Buckingham.

One of the most prominent members of Parliament, and the foremost orator of the day was Sir John Eliot. This patriot, born in 1590, and consequently now thirty-six years of age, was appointed by the Commons one of the managers of the impeachment. With such skill and vigor did he conduct the prosecution against Buckingham, that the king determined to put a stop to the impeachment by ordering Eliot’s arrest and imprisonment. Eliot was thrown into the Tower; but the Commons regarded the arrest as so flagrant a violation of the rights of members that they immediately resolved “not to do any more business till they were righted in their privileges.” The King, in view of this unexpected evidence of spirit on the part of the Commons, deemed it prudent to relent. Eliot was discharged; and the Commons, on his triumphal reappearance in the House, declared by vote “that their managers had not exceeded the commission entrusted to them.”

Thus the first triumph in the contest was gained by the Commons. But the King was not unwilling to resort to even more desperate measures. He determined to raise money independently of Parliament, and, if Parliament should continue to pry into the affairs of his minister, to dispense with Parliament almost or quite altogether. This desperate determination he undertook to carry out chiefly by the raising of forced loans and the issuing of monopolies. But here again the King met with a more strenuous opposition than he had anticipated. Eliot and Hampden, with some seventy-six other members of the English gentry refused to make the contribution demanded. As such defiance threatened to break down the whole system, the King was forced either to resort to extreme measures or to abandon his method. He resolved upon the former course, but he was forced to the latter. He threw Eliot and Hampden into prison; but the outcry of the people was so great and so general that the necessary money could not be raised, and so he was obliged to call his third Parliament. Eliot and Hampden, though in prison, were elected members; and the King, not deeming it prudent to retain them, ordered their release a few days before the opening of the session.

The special object for which Parliament had been called by the King was the granting of money; but the members were in no mood to let the opportunity pass without securing from the monarch an acknowledgment of their rights in definite form. Accordingly, they appointed Sir Edward Coke, the most distinguished lawyer of the time, to draw up a petition to the King that should embody a declaration of the constitutional privileges on which they reposed their rights. The result was the famous “Petition of Right,” an instrument which, in the history of English liberty, has been only second in importance to the Great Charter itself. The petition asked the King’s assent to a number of propositions, the most important of which were that no loan or tax should be levied without the consent of Parliament; that no man should be imprisoned except by legal process; and that soldiers should not be quartered upon the people without the people’s consent. These propositions introduced nothing new into the Constitution. They professed simply to ask the King’s approval of principles and methods that had been acknowledged and acted upon for hundreds of years. The great significance of the Petition of Right was that it designed to secure the assent of the monarch to a reign of law instead of a reign of arbitrary will. The object of Parliament was to put into definite form a clear expression of the King’s purpose. They desired to know whether his intention was to rule according to the precedents of the English Constitution that had been taking definite form for centuries, or whether, on the contrary, he was determined to build up a system of absolutism similar to that which was very generally coming to prevail on the Continent. The petition passed the two Houses and went to the King for his approval. He gave an evasive answer.[1][A] Parliament was taken by surprise and seemed likely to be baffled. It was a crisis of supreme danger. Sir John Eliot was the first to see that if they were now to thwart the King’s purpose it must be done by availing themselves immediately of the responsibility of Buckingham. He determined that the proper course was a remonstrance to the King; and it was in moving this remonstrance that his great speech was made.

[A] Numerals inserted in the course of the work refer the reader to corresponding Illustrative Notes at the end of each volume.

On hearing the King’s answer, Parliament, in great perplexity and despondency, immediately adjourned till the next day. When, on the morning of June 3, 1628, the Commons came together, “the King’s answer,” says Rushworth, “was read, and seemed too scant, in regard to so much expense, time, and labor as had been expended in contriving the petition. Whereupon Sir John Eliot stood up and made a long speech, and a lively representation of all grievances, both general and particular, as if they had never before been mentioned.”[2]

Throughout the speech there is a compactness and an impetuosity truly remarkable. No one at all familiar with the history and condition of the time, will fail to see that it was a masterly presentation of the issues at stake. It is pervaded with a tone of loyalty—even of affection—toward the King. The argument was founded on the theory that even under the best of kings, with an irresponsible form of administration, there can be no security against selfish and ambitious ministers, and that under any government whatever there can be no adequate guarantees against such abuses except in the provisions of law. The orator introduces no grievance personal to himself, though he had already twice suffered imprisonment for words spoken in debate. His entire object seems to have been to expose abuses that had oppressed the people during the ten years under Buckingham’s rule, and to show how, by means of his duplicity and incompetency, the honor of the country had been sacrificed, its allies betrayed, and those necessities of the King created which gave rise to the abuses complained of in the Petition of Right.

Aside from the striking oratorical merits of the speech and the light it throws on the all-important struggles of the time, there are two circumstances that tend to give it peculiar interest. It is the earliest parliamentary speech of real importance that has been preserved to us. The age in which it was delivered is enough to account for the antique air of the orator’s style—a style, however, which will be especially relished by all those who have learned to enjoy the quaint literary flavor of our early masters of English prose. The other circumstance of especial interest is the fact that soon after the delivery of the speech, and in consequent of it, Eliot was thrown into prison, where, after an ignominious confinement and a brutal treatment of two and a half years, he died a martyr’s death. His earnest plea not only cost him his life, but it cost him a long period of ignominy that was far worse than death. But he kept the faith, and calmly underwent his slow martyrdom. The last word that he sent out from his prison was an expression of belief that upon the maintenance or the abandonment of the privileges of Parliament would depend the future glory or misery of England. By the ability of his advocacy, by the constancy of his purpose, and by the manner of his death, he fully deserved that the author of the “Constitutional History of England” should call him, as he does, “the most illustrious confessor in the cause of liberty whom that time produced.”

SIR JOHN ELIOT.

ON THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND UNDER THE DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 3, 1628.

MR. SPEAKER:

We sit here as the great council of the King, and, in that capacity it is our duty to take into consideration the state and affairs of the kingdom; and, where there is occasion, to give them in a true representation by way of council and advice, what we conceive necessary or expedient for them.

In this consideration, I confess, many a sad thought has frighted me: and that not only in respect of our dangers from abroad, which yet I know are great, as they have been often in this place prest and dilated to us; but in respect of our disorders here at home, which do inforce those dangers, as by them they were occasioned.

For I believe I shall make it clear unto you, that as at first the causes of those dangers were our disorders, our disorders still remain our greatest dangers. It is not now so much the potency of our enemies, as the weakness of ourselves, that threatens us; and that saying of the Father may be assumed by us, _Non tam potentia sua quam negligentia nostra_. Our want of true devotion to Heaven, our insincerity and doubling in religion, our want of councils, our precipitate actions, the insufficiency or unfaithfulness of our generals abroad, the ignorance or corruption of our ministers at home, the impoverishing of the sovereign, the oppression and depression of the subject, the exhausting of our treasures, the waste of our provisions, consumption of our ships, destruction of our men!—These make the advantage to our enemies, not the reputation of their arms. And if in these there be not reformation, we need no foes abroad! Time itself will ruin us.

You will all hold it necessary that what I am about to urge seem not an aspersion on the state or imputation on the government, as I have known such mentions misinterpreted. Far is it from me to purpose this, that have none but clear thoughts of the excellency of his Majesty, nor can have other ends but the advancement of his glory.

To shew what I have said more fully, therefore, I shall desire a little of your patience extraordinary to open the particulars: which I shall do with what brevity I may, answerable to the importance of the cause and the necessities now upon us; yet with such respect and observation to the time as I hope it shall not be thought too troublesome.

For the first, then, our insincerity and doubling in religion, the greatest and most dangerous disorder of all others, which has never been unpunished, and for which we have so many strange examples of all states and in all times to awe us,—what testimony does it want? Will you have authority of books? look on the collections of the committee for religion, there is too clear an evidence. Will you have records? see then the commission procured for composition with the papists in the North? Note the proceedings thereupon. You will find them to little less amounting than a toleration in effect, though upon some slight payments; and the easiness in _them_ will likewise shew the favor that’s intended. Will you have proofs of men? witness the hopes, witness the presumptions, witness the reports of all the papists generally. Observe the dispositions of commands, the trust of officers, the confidence of secrecies of employments, in this kingdom, in Ireland, and elsewhere. They all will shew it has too great a certainty. And, to these, add but the incontrovertible evidence of that all-powerful hand which we have felt so sorely, to give it full assurance! For as the Heavens oppose themselves to us, it was our impieties that first opposed the Heavens.

For the second, our want of councils, that great disorder in a State with which there cannot be stability,[3] if effects may shew their causes, as they are often a perfect demonstration of them, our misfortunes, our disasters, serve to prove it! And (if reason be allowed in this dark age, by the judgment of dependencies, the foresight of contingencies, in affairs) the consequences they draw with them confirm it. For, if we view ourselves at home, are we in strength, are we in reputation, equal to our ancestors? If we view ourselves abroad, are our friends as many, are our enemies no more? Do our friends retain their safety and possessions? Do our enemies enlarge themselves, and gain from them and us? What council, to the loss of the Palatinate,[4] sacrificed both our honor and our men sent thither; stopping those greater powers appointed for that service, by which it might have been defensible? What council gave directions to that late action whose wounds lie yet a bleeding? I mean the expedition unto Rhée,[5] of which there is yet so sad a memory in all men! What design for us, or advantage to our State, could that work import? You know the wisdom of our ancestors, the practice of their times; and how they preserved their safeties! We all know, and have as much cause to doubt as they had, the greatness and ambition of that kingdom, which the old world could not satisfy! Against this greatness and ambition we likewise know the proceedings of that princess, that never to be forgotten excellence, Queen Elizabeth; whose name, without admiration, falls not into mention with her enemies. You know how she advanced herself, how she advanced this kingdom, how she advanced this nation, in glory and in State; how she depressed her enemies, how she upheld her friends; how she enjoyed a full security, and made them then our scorn, who now are made our terror![6]

Some of the principles she built on, were these; and if I be mistaken, let reason and our statesmen contradict me.