downs in the pathway of man's existence are all for the best, and yet he allows them to vex and torment his peace till he bursts the boiler of his rage, and scalds his own toes. ... Plum pudding is most excellent stuff to wind off a dinner with; but all plum pudding would be worse than none at all. So you see, my friends, the troubles and trials of life are absolutely necessary to enable us to judge rightly of genuine happiness, whenever it happens to enliven the saturnine region of the heart with its presence.

If we never were to have our jackets and shirts wet with the cold rain of misfortune, we could never know how good it feels to stand out and dry in the warm rays of comfort.

Drummond, Henry (Scotland, 1851-1897.)

"The Greatest Thing in the World"-We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the religious world is Faith. That great word has been the keynote for centuries of the popular religion, and we have easily learned to look upon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. If we have been told that, we may miss the mark. I have taken you, in the chapter which I have just read, to Christianity at its source, and there we have seen "The greatest of these is love." It is not an oversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says: "If I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing." So far from forgetting, he deliberately contrasts them, "Now abideth Faith, Hope, Love," and without a moment's hesitation the decision falls: "The greatest of these is Love." Dwight, Timothy (American, 1752-1817.)

"Men Are Merely Taller Children » — Men are merely taller children. Honor, wealth, and splendor are the toys for which grown children pine; but which, however accumulated, leave them still disappointed and unhappy. never designed that intelligent beings should be satisfied with these enjoyments. By his wisdom and goodness they were formed to derive their happiness from virtue.

Edmunds, George F. (American, 1828-.)

God

The Constitution Is the Ruler-Whatever the Constitution commands, you are to do. Whatever the Constitution commands the Executive, he is to do. Whatever the Constitution authorizes to be decided, the judiciary, or some other tribunal fixed by law or by the Constitution itself, is to decide. Those are the only three ways in which government can express itself. - (1877.)

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (American, 1803-1882.)

"Nature Exists for the Excellent" - Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by the veracity of good men ; they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in our belief in such society; and actually or ideally we manage to live with superiors. We call our children and our lands by their names. Their names are wrought into the verbs of language,

their works and effigies are in our houses, and every circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote of them.

Individual Growth-Men, such as they are, very naturally seek money or power; and power because it is as good as money, -the "spoils," so called, "of office." And why not? for they aspire to the highest, and this, in their sleepwalking, they dream is highest. Wake them, and they shall quit the false good and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks and desks. This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of culture. The main enterprise of the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man. Here are the materials strewn along the ground. The private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy, - more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures of all men. Each philosopher,

each bard, each actor, has only done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for myself. The books which once we valued more than the apple of the eye, we have quite exhausted. What is that but saying that we have come up with the point of view which the universal mind took through the eyes of one scribe; we have been that man and have passed on. First, one; then, another; we drain all cisterns, and, waxing greater by all these supplies, we crave a better and more abundant food. The man has never lived that can feed us ever. The human mind cannot be enshrined in a person who shall set a barrier on any one side to this unbounded, unboundable empire. It is one central fire, which, flaming now out of the lips of Etna, lightens the capes of Sicily; and now out of the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and vineyards of Naples. It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul which animates all men. -(From the " American Scholar. Cambridge, 1837.)

Emmet, Robert (Ireland, 1778-1803.)

On Being Found Guilty of High TreasonWhat have I to say, why sentence of death should not be pronounced on me, according to law? I have nothing to say which can alter your predetermination, or that it would become me to say with any view to the mitigation of that sentence which you are here to pronounce, and which I must abide. But I have that to say which interests me more than life, and which you have labored - as was necessarily your office in the present circumstances of this oppressed country to destroy. I have much to say, why my reputation should be rescued from the load of false accusation and calumny which has been heaped upon it. I do not imagine that, seated where you are, your minds can be so free from impurity as to receive the least impression from what I am going to utter. I have no hope that I can anchor my character in the breast of a court constituted and trammeled

Emmet, Robert Continued

as this is. I only wish, and it is the utmost I expect, that your lordships may suffer it to float down your memories, untainted by the foul breath of prejudice, until it finds some more hospitable harbor to shelter it from the rude storm by which it is at present buffeted.

Were I only to suffer death, after being adjudged guilty by your tribunal, I should bow in silence, and meet the fate that awaits me withBut the sentence of the law out a murmur. which delivers my body to the executioner will, through the ministry of that law, labor, in its own vindication, to consign my character to obloquy; for there must be guilt somewhere,whether in the sentence of the court, or in the catastrophe, posterity must determine. A man in my situation, my lords, has not only to encounter the difficulties of fortune, and the force of power over minds which it has corrupted or subjugated, but the difficulties of established prejudice; -the man dies, but his memory lives; that mine may not perish, that it may live in the respect of my countrymen, I seize upon this opportunity to vindicate myself from some of the charges alleged against me. When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port, when my shade shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed their blood, on the scaffold and in the field, in defense of their country and of virtue, -this is my hope: I wish that my memory and name may animate those who survive while me, I look down with complacency on the destruction of that perfidious government which upholds its dominion by blasphemy of the Most High, which displays its powers over man as over the beasts of the forests,-which sets man upon his brother, and lifts his hand, in the name of God, against the throat of his fellow, who believes or doubts a little more, or a little less, than the government standard,-a government which is steeled to barbarity by the cries of the orphans and the tears of the widows which it has made.*

I appeal to the immaculate God,-to the throne of Heaven, before which I must shortly appear, to the blood of the murdered patriots who have gone before; that my conduct has been, through all this peril, and through all my purposes, governed only by the convictions which I have uttered, and by no other view than that of the emancipation of my country from the superinhuman oppression under which she has so long and too patiently travailed; and that I confidently and assuredly hope that, wild and chimerical as it may appear, there is still union and strength in Ireland to accomplish this noblest enterprise. Of this I speak with the confidence of intimate knowledge, and with the consolation that appertains to that confidence. Think not, my lords, I say this for the petty gratification of giving you a transitory uneasi

* Here Lord Norbury said: "The weak and wicked enthusiasts who feel as you feel are unequal to the accomplishment of their wild designs."

ness; a man who never yet raised his voice to assert a lie will not hazard his character with posterity by asserting a falsehood on a subject so important to his country, and on an occasion like this. Yes, my lords; a man who does not wish to have his epitaph written until his country is liberated will not leave a weapon in the power of envy, nor a pretense to impeach the probity which he means to preserve even in the grave to which tyranny consigns him.t Again I say, that what I have spoken was not intended for your lordships, whose situation I commiserate rather than envy; my expressions were for my countrymen; if there is a true Irishman present, let my last words cheer him in the hour of his affliction

I have always understood it to be the duty of a judge, when a prisoner has been convicted, to pronounce the sentence of the law; I have also understood that judges sometimes think it their duty to hear with patience, and to speak with humanity; to exhort the victim of the laws, and to offer, with tender benignity, opinions of the motives by which he was actuated in the crime of which he had been adjudged guilty. That a judge has thought it his duty so to have done, I have no doubt; but where is the boasted freedom of your institutions,where is the vaunted impartiality, clemency, and mildness of your courts of justice,-if an unfortunate prisoner, whom your policy, and not justice, is about to deliver into the hands of the executioner, is not suffered to explain his motives sincerely and truly, and to vindicate the principles by which he was actuated?

My lords, it may be a part of the system of angry justice to bow a man's mind, by humiliation, to the purposed ignominy of the scaffold; but worse to me than the scaffold's shame, or the scaffold's terrors, would be the shame of such foul and unfounded imputations as have been laid against me in this court. You, my lord, are a judge. I am the supposed culprit. I am a man, you are a man also. By a revolution of power we might change places, though we never could change characters. If I stand at the bar of this court, and dare not vindicate my character, what a farce is your justice! If I stand at this bar, and dare not vindicate my character, how dare you calumniate it? Does the sentence of death, which your unhallowed policy inflicts on my body, also condemn my tongue to silence, and my reputation to reproach? Your executioner may abridge the period of my existence; but, while I exist, I shall not forbear to vindicate my character and motives from your aspersions. As a man to whom fame is dearer than life, I will make the last use of that life in doing justice to that reputation which is to live after me,

He was here interrupted by Lord Norbury, who said: "You proceed to unwarrantable lengths in order to exasperate and delude the unwary, and circulate opinions of the most dangerous tendency, for the purposes of mischief."

Lord Norbury here interrupted the speaker with,- What you have hitherto said confirms and justifies the verdict of the jury."

Emmet, Robert - Continued

and which is the only legacy I can leave to those I honor and love, and for whom I am proud to perish. As men, my lord, we must appear, on the great day, at one common tribunal; and it will then remain for the Searcher of all hearts to show a collective universe who are engaged in the most virtuous actions, or actuated by the purest motives,-my country's oppres

sors or

*

My lord, shall a dying man be denied the legal privilege of exculpating himself, in the eyes of the community, of an undeserved reproach thrown upon him during his trial, by charging him with ambition, and attempting to cast away, for a paltry consideration, the liberties of his country? Why, then, insult me? or, rather, why insult justice, in demanding of me why sentence of death should not be pronounced? I know, my lord, that form prescribes that you should ask the question; the form also presumes the right of answering! This, no doubt, may be dispensed with; and so might the whole ceremony of the trial, since sentence was already pronounced at the Castle before your jury was impaneled. Your lordships are but the priests of the oracle, and I submit to the sacrifice; but I insist on the whole of the forms.†

I am charged with being an emissary of France. An emissary of France! - and for what end? It is alleged that I wished to sell the independence of my country! And for what end? Was this the object of my ambition? and is this the mode by which a tribunal of justice reconciles contradictions? No! I am no emissary. My ambition was to hold a place among the deliverers of my country,- not in power, nor in profit, but in the glory of the achievement. Sell my country's independence to France! And for what? For a change of masters? No; but for ambition! O, my country! was it personal ambition that could influence me? Had it been the soul of my actions, could I not, by my education and fortune, by the rank and consideration of my family, have placed myself among the proudest of your oppressors? My country was my idol.

Connection with France was, indeed, intended; but only as far as mutual interest would sanction or require. Were the French to assume any authority inconsistent with the purest independence, it would be the signal for their destruction. We sought aid of them; and we sought it, as we had assurance we should obtain it,-as auxiliaries in war, and allies in peace. Were the French to come as invaders or enemies, uninvited by the wishes of the people, I should oppose them to the utmost of my strength. Yes, my countrymen, I would meet them on the beach, with a sword in one hand and a torch in the other. I would meet them with all the destructive fury of war; and I would animate you to immolate them in their boats, before they had contaminated the soil. If they succeeded in landing, and if we were forced to retire before superior discipline, I would dispute every inch of ground, raze every house, burn every blade of grass before them, and the last intrenchment of liberty should be my grave. What I could not do myself, if I should fall, I would leave in charge to my countrymen to accomplish; because I should feel conscious that life, more than death, is unprofitable, when a foreign nation holds my country in subjection.

But it was not as an enemy that the succors of France were to land. I looked, indeed, for the assistance of France; but I wished to prove to France, and to the world, that Irishmen deserved to be assisted, that they were indignant at slavery, and ready to assert the independence and liberty of their country! I wished to procure for my country the guarantee which Washington procured for America,- to procure an aid which, by its example, would be as important as by its valor,-allies disciplined, gallant, pregnant with science and experience; who would preserve the good and polish the rough points of our character; who would come to us as strangers, and leave us as friends, after sharing our perils and elevating our destiny. These were my objects; not to receive new task-masters, but to expel old tyrants. These were my views, and these only become Irish

It was for these ends I sought aid from France, because France, even as an enemy, could not be more implacable than the enemy already in the bosom of my country.

*Here Lord Norbury exclaimed: "Listen, sir, to the sentence of the law."

Here Mr. Emmet paused, and the court desired him to proceed.

I have been charged with that importance, in the efforts to emancipate my country, as to be considered the keystone of the combination of Irishmen, or, as your lordship expressed it, "the life and blood of the conspiracy." You do me honor overmuch. You have given to the subaltern all the credit of a superior. There are men engaged in this conspiracy who are not only superior to me, but even to your own conceptions of yourself, my lord; men, before the splendor of whose genius and virtues I should bow with respectful deference, and who would think themselves dishonored to be called your friends, who would not disgrace themselves by shaking your blood-stained hand!§

Here he was interrupted by the court.
Here he was interrupted by Lord Norbury.

Emmet, Robert- Continued

What, my lord, shall you tell me, on the passage to the scaffold, which that tyranny, of which you are only the intermediate minister, has erected for my murder, that I am accountable for all the blood that has been and will be shed, in this struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor? Shall you tell me this, and must I be so very a slave as not to repel it? I, who fear not to approach the Omnipotent Judge, to answer for the conduct of my short life, am I to be appalled here, before a mere remnant of mortality?- by you, too, who, if it were possible to collect all the innocent blood that you have caused to be shed, in your unhallowed ministry, in one great reservoir, your lordship might swim in it!*

Let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor. Let no man attaint my memory by believing that I could have engaged in any cause but that of my country's liberty and independence, or that I could have become the pliant minion of power in the oppression and the miseries of my countrymen. The proclamation of the provisional government speaks for my views. No inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarity or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation, or treachery, from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor, for the same reason that I would resist the domestic tyrant. In the dignity of freedom I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and its enemy should enter only by passing over my lifeless corpse. And am I, who lived but for my country, who have subjected myself to the dangers of the jealous and watchful oppressor, and now to the bondage of the grave, only to give my countrymen their rights, and my country her independence, am I to be loaded with calumny, and not suffered to resent it? No! God forbid !+

If the spirits of the illustrious dead participate in the concerns and cares of those who were dear to them in this transitory life, O, ever dear and venerated shade of my departed father, look down with scrutiny upon the conduct of your suffering son, and see if I have, even for a moment, deviated from those principles of morality and patriotism which it was your care to instil into my youthful mind, and for which I am now to offer up my life!

My lords, you seem impatient for the sacrifice. The blood for which you thirst is not congealed by the artificial terrors which surround your victim;- it circulates, warmly and unruffled, through the channels which God created for nobler purposes, but which you are bent to destroy, for purposes so grievous that

-

* Here the judge interfered.

† Here Lord Norbury told the prisoner that his principles were treasonable and subversive of government, and his language unbecoming a person in his situation; and that his father, the late Dr. Emmet, was a man who would not have countenanced such sentiments.

they cry to Heaven. Be ye patient! I have but a few words more to say. I am going to my cold and silent grave. My lamp of life is nearly extinguished. My race is run. The grave opens to receive me,- and I sink into its bosom! I have but one request to ask, at my departure from this world; it is the charity of its silence. Let no man write my epitaph; for, as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace, and my tomb remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth,-then, and not till then,- let my epitaph be written! I have done. (Complete.)

Erskine, Thomas, Baron (England, 17501823.)

Degradation of Religion by Politics - The universal God of nature, the Savior of mankind, the fountain of all light, who came to pluck the world from eternal darkness, expired upon a cross, the scoff of infidel scorn; and his blessed Apostles followed him in the train of martyrs. When he came in the flesh, he might have come like the Mohammedan prophet, as a powerful sovereign, and propagated his religion with an unconquerable sword which even now, after the lapse of ages, is but slowly advancing under the influence of reason, over the face of the earth; but such a process would have been inconsistent with his mission, which was to confound the pride and to establish the universal rights of men; he came, therefore, in that lowly state which is represented in the Gospel, and preached his consolations to the poor.

When the foundation of this religion was discovered to be invulnerable and immortal, we find political power taking the church into partnership; thus began the corruptions both of religious and civil power, and, hand in hand together, what havoc have they not made in the world? Ruling by ignorance and the persecution of truth, this very persecution only hastened the revival of letters and liberty. Nay, you will find that in the exact proportion that knowledge and learning have been beat down and fettered, they have destroyed the governments which bound them. The Court of Star Chamber, the first restriction of the press of England, was erected, previous to all the great changes in the constitution. From that moment no man could legally write without an imprimatur from the state; but truth and freedom found their way with greater force through secret channels, and the unhappy Charles, unwarned by a free press, was brought to an ignominious death. When men can freely communicate their thoughts and their sufferings, real or imaginary, their passions spend themselves in air, like gunpowder scattered upon the surface; but pent up by terrors, they work unseen, burst forth in a moment, and destroy everything in their course. Let reason be opposed to reason, and argument to argument,

Erskine, Thomas, Baron-Continued and every good government will be safe. - (From his Defense of Paine.)

Precedents of Madness-Gentlemen, if precedents in bad times are to be followed, why should the lords and commons have investigated these charges, and the crown have put them into this course of judicial trial? since, without such a trial, and even after an acquittal upon one, they might have attainted all the prisoners by act of Parliament; they did so in the case of Lord Strafford. There are precedents, therefore, for all such things; but such precedents as could not, for a moment, survive the times of madness and distraction which gave them birth; and which, as soon as the spurs of the occasion were blunted, were repealed and execrated even by parliaments, which, little as I think of the present, ought not to be compared with it ;-parliaments sitting in the darkness of former times-in the night of freedom-before the principles of government were developed, and before the constitution became fixed. The last of these precedents, and all the proceedings upon it, were ordered to be taken off the file and burned, to the intent that the same might no longer be visible in after ages; an order dictated, no doubt, by a pious tenderness for national honor, and meant as a charitable covering for the crimes of our fathers. But it was a sin against posterity, it was a treason against society; for, instead of commanding them to be burned, they should rather have directed them to be blazoned, in large letters, upon the walls of our courts of justice; that, like the characters deciphered by the Prophet to the Eastern tyrant, they might enlarge and blacken in your sights,-to terrify you from acts of injustice!

"The Age of Reason">- -Gentlemen, I have no objection to the most extended and free discussion upon doctrinal points of the Christian religion; and, though the law of England does not permit it, I do not dread the reasonings of deists against the existence of Christianity itself, because, as it was said by its divine author, if it be of God, it will stand. An intellectual book, however erroneous, addressed to the intellectual world upon so profound and complicated a subject, can never work the mischief it is calculated to repress. Such works will only incite the minds of men, enlightened by study, to a closer investigation of a subject well worthy of their deepest and continued contemplation. The powers of the mind are given for human improvement in the progress of human existence. The changes produced by such reciprocations of lights and intelligences are certain in their progression, and make their way imperceptibly by the final and irresistible power of truth.

If Christianity be founded in falsehood, let us become deists in this manner, and I am contented. But this book has no such object and no such capacity; it presents no arguments to the wise and enlightened; on the contrary, it

treats the faith and opinions of the wisest with the most shocking contempt, and stirs up men, without the advantages of learning or sober thinking, to a total disbelief of everything hitherto held sacred; and, consequently, to a rejection of all the laws and ordinances of the state, which stand only upon the assumption of their truth.

Gentlemen, I can not conclude without expressing the deepest regret at all the attacks upon the Christian religion by authors who profess to promote the civil liberties of the world. For under what other auspices than Christianity have the lost and subverted liberties of mankind in former ages been reasserted? By what zeal, but the warm zeal of devout Christians, have English liberties been redeemed and consecrated? Under what other sanctions, even in our own days, have liberty and happiness been spreading to the uttermost corners of the earth? What work of civilization, what commonwealth of greatness, has this bald religion of nature ever established?

We see, on the contrary, those nations that have no other light than that of nature to direct them, sunk in barbarism, or slaves to arbitrary governments; while under the Christian dispensation the great career of the world has been slowly but clearly advancing, lighter at every step, from the encouraging prophecies of the Gospel, and leading, I trust, in the end, to universal and eternal happiness. Each generation of mankind can see but a few revolving links of this mighty and mysterious chain; but by doing our several duties in our allotted stations, we are sure that we are fulfilling the purposes of our existence.

Evarts, William Maxwell (American, 1818-.)

The Wisdom of Second Thought-Idem sentire de republica, to agree in opinion concerning the public interest, is the bond of one party, and diversity from those opinions the bond of the other; and where passions and struggles of force in any form of violence or of impeachment as an engine of power come into play, then freedom has become license, and then party has become faction, and those who do not withhold their hands until the ruin is accomplished will be subject to that judgment that temperance and fortitude and patience were not the adequate qualities for their conduct in the situation in which they were placed. Oh, why not be wise enough to stay the pressure till adverse circumstances shall not weigh down the state? Why not in time remember the political wisdom,

"Beware of desperate steps. The darkest day, Live till to-morrow, will have passed away.

-(At the Johnson impeachment trial.) Everett, Edward (American, 1794-1865.) American Responsibilities-In that unceasing march of things, which calls forward the successive generations of men to perform their part on the stage of life, we at length are summoned to appear. Our fathers have