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Transcriber’s Notes

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BRITISH ORATIONS

A selection of the more important and representative political addresses of the past two centuries, with biographical notes, critical comment, political, oratorical, and literary estimate.

Edited by Charles K. Adams, President of the University of Wisconsin. With an additional volume edited by John Alden.

Four volumes, each complete in itself and sold separately. Each, 12°, gilt top, $1.25.

The orators included are: Sir John Eliot, John Pym, Lord Chatham, Edmund Burke, Charles J. Fox, Sir James Mackintosh, Lord Erskine, George Canning, Lord Macaulay, Richard Cobden, John Bright, Lord Beaconsfield, William Ewart Gladstone, Lord Mansfield, Daniel O’Connell, Lord Palmerston, Robert Lowe, Joseph Chamberlain, Lord Rosebery.

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS NEW YORK & LONDON

REPRESENTATIVE BRITISH ORATIONS

WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND EXPLANATORY NOTES BY

JOHN ALDEN

_Videtisne quantum munus sit oratoris historia?_ --CICERO, _De Oratore_, ii, 15

✩✩✩✩

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

COPYRIGHT, 1900 BY G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

The Knickerbocker Press, New Rochelle, N. Y.

PREFACE.

In preparing this--the fourth volume of _Representative British Orations_--a work which, in its three-volume form, has met with a large acceptance from the public, the editor has been embarrassed by fulness rather than lack of material. Indeed, in its former shape, the book fairly justified its title: it was representative rather than exhaustive of the subject. From the rich field of possible material the editor has selected specimens of oratory diverse enough in style and occasion, but each, it is hoped, typical of the general trend of the period covered (1813–1898),--of the change from the passionate, partisan forensics of O’Connell to the calm emphasis of Lord Rosebery.

Helps to the study of this period have naturally been many; but the editor must not fail to acknowledge his constant indebtedness to the brilliant and invaluable “History of Our Own Times” of Mr. Justin McCarthy, and in a lesser degree to Mr. Fyffe’s “Modern Europe.” To Charles Gorham Marrett, Esq., he wishes to record his personal obligations.

J. A.

PORTLAND, ME. _October, 1899._

CONTENTS.

PAGE DANIEL O’CONNELL 1

DANIEL O’CONNELL 9 IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE: COURT OF KING’S BENCH, DUBLIN, JULY 27, 1813.

LORD PALMERSTON 117

LORD PALMERSTON 125 ON THE CASE OF DON PACIFICO: HOUSE OF COMMONS, JUNE 25, 1850.

ROBERT LOWE, VISCOUNT SHERBROOKE 225

ROBERT LOWE, VISCOUNT SHERBROOKE 232 AGAINST THE REFORM ACT: HOUSE OF COMMONS, MAY 31, 1866.

THE RIGHT HONORABLE JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN, M.P. 285

JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 292 SPLENDID ISOLATION.

JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN 303 THE TRUE CONCEPTION OF EMPIRE.

LORD ROSEBERY 313

LORD ROSEBERY 318 THE DUTY OF PUBLIC SERVICE.

ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES 347

DANIEL O’CONNELL.

From the somewhat picturesque assemblage of Irish political agitators emerges the figure of one in many ways the most picturesque, and, in most, the greatest of them. The period (1775–1847) of O’Connell’s activities discloses him as one of the generation that came in with Scott and Wordsworth--children of the overlapping centuries, whom shortly the French Revolution was to stir to many things strange to the world of 1775.

The facts of O’Connell’s life arrange themselves concisely from his birth, August 6, 1775, from a good family of County Kerry; his French education at S. Omer and Douay; and his legal sojourn at the customary Lincoln’s Inn; to his call to the Irish Bar (May 19, 1798), and the beginning of his identification with the Irish cause. From his speech in 1813 in defence of Magee,--the basis of this selection,--this identification became ever more complete. It was in 1823 that he founded the “Catholic Association.” In 1828 he was elected to Parliament from County Clare, but was not allowed to take his seat. He stood again, was again elected; and, in 1830, just at the acme of his popularity, at last entered Parliament unchallenged. Now followed within and without the Commons the struggle for Irish liberties that is almost synonymous with the name O’Connell. The year 1843 marks the high tide of his system of agitation by mass-meetings--the “Monster-Meetings,” so-called. This device of popular _propaganda_ was O’Connell’s own; and probably none have ever swayed more temperately than he the mighty forces of a Celtic audience, obedient to the incitations of impassioned oratory. For the most part in the open air and in the countryside O’Connell would draw from a radius of many miles a serious, sympathetic, and--strange to say--sober host of peasantry, in whom his voice woke infallibly the sense of race and religion as things to be fought for, not with the obvious musket, but with orderly combination, moderate measures, and all that a tempered and single-minded zeal could do. The Irish people had long hailed him as their “Liberator”; he was the leader to whom they looked for Catholic Emancipation and the repeal of the forced union with Great Britain; and yet it is not the least tribute to O’Connell’s powers that he was able to restrain a people laboring under acknowledged wrongs, and racially prone to insurrection, from any serious appeal to arms. The Government of that day was not moved by such considerations. The sequence of the “Monster-Meetings” was that O’Connell was arrested and tried on what must now appear a trivial charge of treason. He was even convicted; but the sentence failed to receive the approval of the House of Lords. Although clear of his difficulties, the man was broken, his superb powers gone; and like a true Catholic he had the wish to die at Rome. Before he left England he appeared again in Parliament and tried to speak--his fine voice sunk to a husky whisper. The report in “Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates” of the day’s proceedings, in reference to this episode, is laconically significant; it runs--“Mr. O’Connell was understood to say * * *” On his journey, the “Liberator” died May 5, 1847, at Genoa, whence his body was returned. But in response to a rhetorical instinct that was medieval, Celtic, and yet, one feels, in this case not unjustifiable, his friends caused his heart to be embalmed and sent to Rome, where it rests in the eternal sanctuary of Saint Agatha.

The character of O’Connell challenges the biographer. In everything, perhaps, save his love for moderation, the man was Celtic; and every one does not care for the Celt. Surely he had the defects of the race: improvidence, unbounded invective, a speech too prodigal of epithet and ornament, the ultrasanguine temperament, and, more or less, the histrionic pose. Oppose to these that, as a Catholic, under great provocations, he was tolerant; as an agitator, moderate in his programme; as a man, generous, high-spirited, and, after a convivial youth, notably temperate. Manifestly it is a character that lends itself to the old-style biography of balance. The easiest estimate of it is to say outright that O’Connell was pure demagogue; but if so, he was one of the greatest. He lived in a time when the conduct of political discussion knew no amenities. It was the day of slander, innuendo, high words for high words, and then--the duel. For the high words, see O’Connell’s reported speeches almost anywhere; as for the duelling, he had killed his man at the outset of his prominence, and lived a life of repentance for it. No man, it appears as we read the diatribes of the day, has been more soundly abused in English: his replies seem almost to strain the language of abuse. Thus it is that to the modern taste his style so often strikes a false note, and seems a crude mixture of passion and prejudice unworthy of a fame so great. Therefore O’Connell can least of all men be judged merely by his own words: the critic has always to remember the place and the moment,--the crowded, sympathetic court-room, the biased judge and hostile jury; or the myriad; upturned faces on a green hillside, mobile to each turning of the rhetorical screw. At such hours O’Connell must have yielded to his own art; the orator was subordinated to oratory, and often said ridiculous things.

It was all of a character with O’Connell’s temperamental _intensity_. In the usual sense of the word, then, he cannot be called a demagogue--a mere puppet of the popular will. When the people and O’Connell had two minds about a question, it was not the “Liberator” who changed. Thus, for his opposition to Trades Unions, he was mobbed and hooted in the very streets of Dublin. Nor did he take the demonstration seriously; he knew his people too well for that. In a word, his appeal and influence were racial rather than parochial; he must be counted not as a great politician, or even statesman, but as one of the “shepherds of the people,”--in Mr. Gladstone’s phrase, an _ethnagogue_.

His genius found its play in a complete and overwhelming attack of any project: the maxim, μηδὲν ἄγαν, was never its game. As a young man, he forged early to the front of his profession; as he gained freely, so he was always in debt; and when, as one of the leading advocates of Ireland, the ambition of O’Connell looked farther and saw, as one must fancy, a higher art in agitation, he abandoned the certain prosperities of a legal career and left at his death barely £1000. He was a man of emotions, then, subject to moods and aberrations; best at _ex tempore_ effort; poorly read--singular to state--even in Irish history; and if a great orator, surely an orator with something of the actor there. His name will be cherished among his people as one in whom their wrongs found an eloquent and imperative voice; the world will be disposed to regard him as a fine example of the partly ineffectual, partly admirable type Reformer, whose particular programme, as yet but half realized, was, in Mr. Lecky’s words,[A] “to open in Ireland a new era, with a separate and independent Parliament and perfect religious equality.”

[A] “Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland,” N. Y., 1872, p. 226.

DANIEL O’CONNELL.

IN DEFENCE OF JOHN MAGEE: COURT OF KING’S BENCH, DUBLIN, JULY 27, 1813.

The speeches delivered at Dublin in the summer of 1813 by O’Connell as counsel for John Magee, then on trial for libel, have received the _exequatur_ of Mr. Lecky, who considers them as the “Liberator’s” greatest efforts at the Bar. Magee was the proprietor of the _Evening Post_ newspaper, in which, on the occasion of the Duke of Richmond’s departure from Ireland, there had appeared comments on his conduct as Lord Lieutenant in which the Government, probably with some eagerness, had discovered a libellous tendency. For the _Evening Post_ was notably pro-Catholic; what was more, its circulation and influence were large; and the Government from its own standpoint had good reasons either to repress the sheet or to change its political complexion. Hence the somewhat tenuous charge of libel laid against Magee.

The specimen here presented of O’Connell’s eloquence was, after the trial, piously published by Magee, and later included in that badly printed volume, “Select Speeches of O’Connell,” edited by his son, and published by J. Duffy, Dublin, 1865. With some difficulty a probable text has been constructed out of the impressions of worn types and obvious misprints then given to the world.

The speech itself will be found to be characteristic of O’Connell. The bitter fountains of invective, the _sæva indignatio_ of a just cause, keen and subtle irony, great facility of phrase and ornament, denunciation, defiance, and then a sudden modulation into an almost fawning fairness of tone--all are here. It is a plea not over-logical in arrangement; often desultory in the show passages; and, from the nature of the case, often legal in reference. But shorn, not only from considerations of space, of certain eccentricities and excursions, it is hoped that it will leave a definite picture of a great rhetorical orator, and of the two jewels of his style,--virile emphasis and impassioned intensity.

I consented to the adjournment yesterday, gentlemen of the jury, from that impulse of nature which compels us to postpone pain; it is, indeed, painful to me to address you; it is a cheerless, a hopeless task to address you--a task which would require all the animation and interest to be derived from the working of a mind fully fraught with the resentment and disgust created in mine yesterday, by that farrago of helpless absurdity with which Mr. Attorney-General regaled you.[1]

But I am now not sorry for the delay. Whatever I may have lost in vivacity, I trust I shall compensate for in discretion. That which yesterday excited my anger, now appears to me to be an object of pity; and that which then roused my indignation, now only moves to _contempt_. I can now address you with feelings softened, and, I trust, subdued; and I do, from my soul, declare, that I now cherish no other sensations than those which enable me to bestow on the Attorney-General, and on his discourse, pure and unmixed compassion.

It was a discourse in which you could not discover either order, or method, or eloquence; it contained very little logic, and no poetry at all; violent and virulent, it was a confused and disjointed tissue of bigotry, amalgamated with congenial vulgarity. He accused my client of using Billingsgate, and he accused him of it in language suited exclusively for that meridian. He descended even to the calling of names: he called this young gentleman a “malefactor,” a “Jacobin,” and a “ruffian,” gentlemen of the jury; he called him “abominable,” and “seditious,” and “revolutionary,” and “infamous,” and a “ruffian” again, gentlemen of the jury; he called him a “brothel keeper,” a “pander,” “a kind of bawd in breeches,” and a “ruffian” a third time, gentlemen of the jury.

I cannot repress my astonishment, how Mr. Attorney-General could have _preserved_ this dialect in its native purity; he has been now for nearly thirty years in the class of polished society; he has, for some years, mixed amongst the highest orders in the state; he has had the honor to belong for thirty years to the first profession in the world--to the only profession, with the single exception, perhaps, of the military, to which a high-minded gentleman could condescend to belong--the Irish Bar. To that Bar, at which he has seen and heard a Burgh and a Duquery; at which he must have listened to a Burston, a Ponsonby, and a Curran; to a Bar which still contains a Plunket, a Ball, and, despite of politics, I will add, a Bushe. With this galaxy of glory flinging their light around him, how can he alone have remained in darkness? How has it happened, that the twilight murkiness of his soul, has not been illumined with a single ray shot from their lustre? Devoid of taste and of genius, how can he have had memory enough to preserve this original vulgarity? He is, indeed, an object of compassion, and, from my inmost soul, I bestow on him my forgiveness, and my bounteous pity.[2]

But not for him alone should compassion be felt. Recollect, that upon his advice--that with him, as the prime mover and instigator of those rash, and silly, and irritating measures of the last five years which have afflicted and distracted this long-suffering country, have originated--with him they have all originated. Is there not then compassion due to the millions whose destinies are made to depend upon his counsel? Is there no pity to those who, like me, must know that the liberties of the tenderest pledges of their affections, and of that which is dearer still, of their country, depend on this man’s advice?

Yet, let not pity for us be unmixed; he has afforded the consolation of hope; his harangue has been heard; it will be reported--I trust faithfully reported; and if it be but read in England, we may venture to hope that there may remain just so much good sense in England as to induce the conviction of the folly and the danger of conducting the government of a brave and long-enduring people by the counsels of so tasteless and talentless an adviser.

See what an imitative animal man is! The sound of ruffian--ruffian--ruffian, had scarcely died on the Attorney-General’s lips, when you find the word honored with all the permanency of print, in one of his pensioned and well-paid, but ill-read, newspapers. Here is the first line in the _Dublin Journal_ of this day:--“The ruffian who writes for the _Freeman’s Journal_.” Here is an apt scholar--he profits well of the Attorney-General’s tuition. The pupil is worthy of the master--the master is just suited to the pupil.

I now dismiss the style and measure of the Attorney-General’s discourse, and I require your attention to its matter. That matter I must divide, although with him there was no division, into two unequal portions. The first, as it was by far the greater portion of his discourse, shall be that which was altogether inapplicable to the purposes of this prosecution. The second, and infinitely the smaller portion of his speech, is that which related to the subject matter of the indictment which you are to try. He has touched upon and disfigured a great variety of topics. I shall follow him at my good leisure through them. He has invited me to a wide field of discussion. I accept his challenge with alacrity and with pleasure.

This extraneous part of his discourse, which I mean first to discuss, was distinguished by two leading features. The first consisted of a dull and reproving sermon, with which he treated my colleagues and myself, for the manner in which we thought fit to conduct this defence. He talked of the melancholy exhibition of four hours wasted, as he said, in frivolous debate, and he obscurely hinted at something like incorrectness of professional conduct. He has not ventured to speak out, but I will. I shall say nothing for myself; but for my colleagues--my inferiors in professional standing, but infinitely my superiors in every talent and in every acquirement--my colleagues, whom I boast as my friends, not in the routine language of the Bar, but in the sincerity of my esteem and affection; for my learned and upright colleagues, I treat the unfounded insinuation with the most contemptuous scorn!

All I shall expose is the utter inattention to the fact, which, in small things as in great, seems to mark the Attorney-General’s career. He talks of four hours. Why, it was past one before the last of you were digged together by the Sheriff, and the Attorney-General rose to address you before three. How he could contrive to squeeze four hours into that interval, it is for him to explain; nor should I notice it, but that it is the particular prerogative of dulness to be accurate in the detail of minor facts, so that the Attorney-General is without an excuse when he departs from them, and when for four hours you have had not quite two. Take this also with you, that we assert our uncontrollable right to employ them as we have done; and as to his advice, we neither respect, nor will we receive it; but we can afford cheerfully to pardon the vain presumption that made him offer us counsel.

For the rest, he may be assured that we will never imitate his example. We will never volunteer to mingle our politics, whatever they may be, with our forensic duties. I made this the rigid rule of my professional conduct; and if I shall appear to depart from this rule now, I bid you recollect that I am compelled to follow the Attorney-General into grounds which, if he had been wise, he would have avoided.

Yes; I am compelled to follow him into the discussion of his conduct towards the Catholics. He has poured out the full vial of his own praise on that conduct--praise in which, I can safely assure him, he has not a single unpaid rival. It is a topic upon which no unbribed man, except himself, dwells. I admit the disinterestedness with which he praises himself, and I do not envy him his delight, but he ought to know, if he sees or hears a word of that kind from any other man, that that man receives or expects compensation for his task, and really deserves money for his labor and invention.

My lord, upon the Catholic subject, I commence with one assertion of the Attorney-General, which I trust I misunderstood. He talked, as I collected him, of the Catholics having imbibed principles of a seditious, treasonable, and revolutionary nature! He seemed to me, most distinctly, to charge us with treason! There is no relying on his words for his meaning--I know there is not. On a former occasion, I took down a repetition of this charge full seventeen times on my brief, and yet, afterwards, it turned out that he never intended to make any such charge; that he forgot he had ever used those words, and he disclaimed the idea they naturally convey. It is clear, therefore, that upon this subject he knows not what he says; and that these phrases are the mere flowers of his rhetoric, but quite innocent of any meaning!

Upon this account I pass him by, I go beyond him, and I content myself with proclaiming those charges, whosoever may make them, to be false and base calumnies! It is impossible to refute such charges in the language of dignity or temper. But if any man dares to charge the Catholic body, or the Catholic Board, or any individuals of that Board with sedition or treason, I do here, I shall always in this court, in the city, in the field, brand him as an infamous and profligate _liar_!

Pardon the phrase, but there is no other suitable to the occasion. But he is a profligate liar who so asserts, because he must know that the whole tenor of our conduct confutes the assertion. What is it we seek?

Chief Justice.--What, Mr. O’Connell, can this have to do with the question which the jury are to try?

Mr. O’Connell.--_You heard the Attorney-General traduce and calumniate us--you heard him with patience and with temper--listen now to our vindication!_

I ask, what is it we seek? What is it we incessantly and, if you please, clamorously petition for? Why, to be allowed to partake of the advantages of the constitution. We are earnestly anxious to share the benefits of the constitution. We look to the participation in the constitution as our greatest political blessing. If we desired to destroy it, would we seek to share it? If we wished to overturn it, would we exert ourselves through calumny, and in peril, to obtain a portion of its blessings? Strange, inconsistent voice of calumny! You charge us with intemperance in our exertions for a participation in the constitution, and you charge us at the same time, almost in the same sentence, with a design to overturn that constitution. The dupes of your hypocrisy may believe you; but, base calumniators, you do not, you cannot, believe yourselves!