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ernments. No, sir; the law of liberty must be inscribed on the heart of the citizen, - "the Word," if I may use the expression without You must irreverence, ❝must become Flesh. » have a whole people trained, disciplined, bred,— yea, and born, - as our fathers were, to institutions like ours. Before the Colonies existed, the Petition of Rights, that Magna Charta of a more enlightened age, had been presented, in 1628, by Lord Coke and his immortal compeers. Our founders brought it with them, and we have not gone one step beyond them. They brought these maxims of civil liberty, not in their libraries, but in their souls; not as philosophical prattle, not as barren generalities, but as rules of conduct; as a symbol of public duty and private right, to be adhered to with religious fidelity; and the very first pilgrim that set his foot upon the rock of Plymouth stepped forth a living constitution, armed at all points to defend and perpetuate the liberty to which he had devoted his whole being. Lincoln, Abraham (American, 1809-1865.)

"A House Divided Against Itself »—« A I house divided against itself cannot stand." believe this government cannot endure permaI do not exnently half slave and half free. pect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the house to fall,-but I do expect it I will cease to be divided. It will become all Either the oppoone thing or all the other.

nents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new-North as well as South.-(Springfield, Illinois, June 17th, 1858.)

« Government of the People, By the People, and For the People »- Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a large sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work that they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion;

that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.-(Complete. Gettysburg, November 19th, 1863.)

Livy (Rome, 59 B. C.-17 A. D.)

Canuleius Against the Patricians - This is not the first time, O Romans, that patrician arrogance has denied to us the rights of a common humanity. What do we now demand ? First, the right of intermarriage; and then that the people may confer honors on whom they please. And why, in the name of Roman manhood, my countrymen,-why should these poor boons be refused? Why, for claiming them, was I near being assaulted, just now in the senate house? Will the city no longer stand, because we - will the empire be dissolved, claim that plebeians shall no longer be excluded from the consulship? Truly the patricians will, by and by, begrudge us a participation in the light of day; they will be indignant that we breathe the same air; that we share with them the faculty of speech; that we wear the forms of human beings!

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Lowell, James Russell 1891.)

(American, 1819

The Empire of the Soul-John Quincy Adams, making a speech at New Bedford, many years ago, reckoned the number of whaleships (if I remember rightly) that sailed out of that port, and, comparing it with some former period, took it as a type of American success. But, alas! it is with quite other oil that those far shining lamps of a nation's true glory which burn forever must be filled. It is not by any amount of material splendor or prosperity, but only by moral greatness, by ideas, by works of imagination, that a race can conquer the future. No voice comes to us from the once mighty Assyria but the hoot of the owl that nests amid her crumbling palaces. Of Carthage, whose merchant fleets once furled their sails in every port of the known world, nothing is left but the deeds of Hannibal. She lies dead on the shore of her once subject sea, and the wind of the desert only flings its handfuls of burial sand upon her corpse. A fog can blot Holland or Switzerland out of existence. But how large is the space occupied in the maps of the soul by little Athens or powerless Italy! They were great by the soul, and their vital force is as indestructible as the soul!-( 1855. )

Lubbock, Sir John (England, 1834-.)

A Rule of Study - I remember years ago consulting Mr. Darwin as to the selection of a course of study. He asked me what interested me most, and advised me to choose that subject. This, indeed, applies to the work of life generally.

"Bags of Wind for Sacks of Treasure » -In old days books were rare and dear. Now,

on the contrary, it may be said with greater truth than ever that, —

"Words are things, and a small drop of ink, Falling like dew upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."

Our ancestors had a difficulty in procuring them. Our difficulty now is what to select. We must be careful what we read, and not, like the sailors of Ulysses, take bags of wind for sacks of treasure. (1887.)

Luther, Martin (Germany, 1483-1546.)

Here I Stand; I Cannot Do OtherwiseI cannot choose but adhere to the word of God, which has possession of my conscience; nor can I possibly, nor will I ever make any recantation, since it is neither safe nor honest to act contrary to conscience! Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise; so help me God! Amen. (Before the Diet at Worms, 1521.)

Lycurgus (Greece, 396–323 B. C.)

Peroration of the Speech Against Leocrates- Be sure, judges, that each of you, by the vote which he now gives in secret, will lay his thought bare to the gods. And I deem that this day, judges, you are passing a collective sentence on all the greatest and most dreadful forms of crime in all of which Leocrates is manifestly guilty; on treason, since he abandoned the city to its troubles and brought it under the hand of the enemy; on subversion of the democracy, since he did not stand the ordeal of the struggle for freedom; on impiety, since he has done what one man could to obliterate the sacred precincts and to demolish the temples; on ill-treatment of parents, for he sought to destroy the monuments and to abolish the liturgy of the dead; on a soldier's desertion of his post and avoidance of his duty,- for he did not place his personal service at the disposal of the generals. Who, then, will acquit this man,-who will condone misdeeds which were deliberate ? Who is so foolish as, by saving this man, to place his own safety at the mercy of cowardly deserters, who will show compassion to this man, and so elect to die unpitied at the hands of the enemy? Who will conciliate the gratitude of his country's betrayer in order to make himself obnoxious to the vengeance of the gods?

In the cause of my country, of the temples, and of the laws, I have fairly and justly set forth the issue, without disparaging or vilifying the defendant's private life or bringing any irrelevant accusation. You must reflect, every one of you, that to acquit Leocrates is to pass sentence of death and enslavement on your country. Two urns are before you, and the votes which you give are, in the one case, for the overthrow of your city; in the other, for its safety and its domestic welfare. If you absolve Leocrates, you will vote for betraying the city, the temples, and the ships, -if you put him to death, you will exhort

men to cherish and preserve their country, her revenues, and her prosperity. Deem, then, Athenians, that a prayer goes up to you from the very land and all its groves, from the harbors, from the arsenals, from the walls of the city; deem that the shrines and holy places are summoning you to protect them, and, remembering the charges against him, make Leocrates a proof that compassion and tears do not prevail with you over solicitude for the laws and for the common weal.-(Delivered at Athens.)

Lysias (Greece, c. 459-c. 380 B. C.)

Denouncing the Thirty Tyrants-Remember the cruel indignities which you suffered; how you were dragged from the tribunal and the altars; how no place, however sacred, could shelter you against their violence; while others, torn from their wives, their children, their parents, after putting a period to their miserable lives, were deprived of funeral rites. For these tyrants imagined their government to be so firmly established that even the vengeance of the gods was unable to shake it.

But you who escaped immediate death, who fled you knew not whither, no asylum affording you protection; everywhere taking refuge, yet everywhere abandoned; who, leaving your children among strangers or enemies, and destitute of all the necessaries of life, made your way to the Pireum, where, overcoming all opposi tion, you showed the triumph of virtue over numbers and force, regained the city for yourselves and freedom for your countrymen,— what must have been your situation had you proved unfortunate in the engagement?

Again compelled to fly, no temples, no altars, could have saved you. The children who accompanied you would have been reduced to the vilest servitude; those whom you left behind, deprived of all help, would, at a mean price, have been sold to your enemies.

But why should I mention what might have happened, not being able to relate what was actually done? For it is impossible for one man, in the course of one trial, to enumerate the means which were employed to undermine the power of this state, the arsenals which were demolished, the temples sold or profaned, the citizens banished or murdered, and whose dead bodies were impiously left disinterred.

Those slaughtered citizens now watch your decree, uncertain whether you will prove accomplices in their death, or avengers of their murder.

I will cease accusing. You have heard, you have seen, you have suffered! It only remains for you to give sentence !-( Peroration against Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty Tyrants accused of murder.(Text from "The World's Best Orations.")

Lytton, Lord (Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer, Baron Lytton, England, 18031873.)

Demosthenes and the Classics-All men in modern times, famous for their eloquence,

have recognized Demosthenes as their model. Many speakers in our own country have literally translated passages from his orations and produced electrical effects upon sober English senators by thoughts first uttered to passionate Athenian crowds. Why is this? Not from the style, -the style vanishes in translation. It is because thoughts the noblest, appeal to emotions the most masculine and popular. You see in Demosthenes the man accustomed to deal with the practical business of men,-to generalize details, to render complicated affairs clear to the ordinary understanding, and, at the same time, to connect the material interests of life with the sentiments that warm the breast and exalt the soul. It is the brain of an accomplished statesman in unison with a generous heart, thoroughly in earnest, beating loud and high-with the passionate desire to convince breathless thousands how to baffle a danger and to save their country.

A little time longer and Athens is free no more. The iron force of Macedon has banished liberty from the silenced Agora. But liberty had already secured to herself a gentle refuge in the groves of the Academy, - there, still to the last, the Grecian intellect maintains the same social, humanizing, practical aspect. The immense mind of Aristotle gathers together, as in a treasure-house, for future ages, all that was valuable in the knowledge that informs us of the earth on which we dwell, - the political constitutions of states, and their results on the character of nations, the science of ethics, the analysis of ideas, natural history, physical science, critical investigation, omne immensum peragravit; and all that he collects from wisdom he applies to the earthly uses of man. Yet it is not by the tutor of Alexander, but by the pupil of Socrates, that our vast debt to the Grecian mind is completed. When we remount from Aristotle to his great master, Plato, it is as if we looked from nature up to nature's God. There, amidst the decline of freedom, the corruption of manners, - just before the date when, with the fall of Athens, the beautiful ideal of sensuous life faded mournfully away, there, on that verge of time, stands the consoling Plato, preparing philosophy to receive the Christian dispensation, by opening the gates of the Infinite, and proclaiming the immortality of the soul. Thus the Grecian genius, ever kindly and benignant, first appears to awaken man from the sloth of the senses, to enlarge the boundaries of self, to connect the desire of glory with the sanctity of household ties, to raise up, in luminous contrast with the inert despotism of the old Eastern World, the energies of freemen, the duties of citizens; and, finally, accomplishing its mission as the visible Iris to states and heroes, it melts into the rainbow announcing a more sacred covenant, and spans the streams of the heathen Orcus with an arch lost in the Christian's heaven.- (From the "World's Best Orations.» Delivered at Edinburgh, 1854.)

Macaulay, Thomas Babington (England, 1800-1859.)

«Be

The Life of Law-It is easy to say: bold; be firm; defy intimidation; let the law have its course; the law is strong enough to put down the seditious." Sir, we have heard this blustering before, and we know in what it ended. It is the blustering of little men, whose lot has fallen on a great crisis. Xerxes scourging the waves, Canute commanding the waves to recede from his footstool, were but types of the folly. The law has no eyes; the law has no hands; the law is nothing-nothing but a piece of paper printed by the king's printer, with the king's arms at the top-till public opinion breathes the breath of life into the dead letter... (1831.)

The New Zealander in the Ruins of London-She (Rome) saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain,- before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch,- when idols were still worshiped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveler, from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.

Fitness for Self-Government-Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim! If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may, indeed, wait forever.

Government Makes the Difference-When I look to one country as compared to another, at the different epochs of their history, I am forced to believe that it is upon law and government that the prosperity and morality, the power and intelligence, of every nation depend. When I compare Spain (in which the traveler is met by the stiletto in the streets, and by the carbine in the high roads) to England, in the poorest parts of which the traveler passes without fear, I think the difference is occasioned by the different governments under which the people live.

MacDuffie, George (American, 1788-1851.)

Representative Government - It is obvious that liberty has a more extensive and durable foundation in the United States than it ever has had in any other age or country. By the representative principle, -a principle unknown and impracticable among the Ancients, the whole mass of society is brought to operate in constraining the action of power, and in the conservation of public liberty.

McKinley, William (American, 1843 −.)

Abra Kohn to Abraham Lincoln - What more beautiful conception than that which prompted Abra Kohn, of Chicago, in February, 1861, to send to Mr. Lincoln, on the eve of his starting to Washington to take the office of President to which he had been elected, a flag of our country, bearing upon its silken folds these words from the fifth and ninth verses of the first chapter of Joshua: "Have I not commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord our God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. There shall no man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life. As I was with Moses, so shall I be with thee. I will not fail thee nor forsake thee."

Could anything have given Mr. Lincoln more cheer or been better calculated to sustain his courage or strengthen his faith in the mighty work before him? Thus commanded, thus assured, Mr. Lincoln journeyed to the capital, where he took the oath of office and registered in heaven an oath to save the Union; and "the Lord our God" was with him and did not fail nor forsake him until every obligation of oath and duty was sacredly kept and honored. Not any man was able to stand before him. Liberty was enthroned, the Union was saved, and the flag which he carried floated in triumph and glory upon every flagstaff of the Republic. - (Cleveland, 1894. )

"Benevolent Assimilation»- Finally it should be the earnest and paramount aim of the military administration to win the confidence, respect, and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines by so saving them in every possible way that full measure of individual rights and liberty which is the heritage of free people, and by proving to them that the mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation, substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule.-(From instructions sent to General Otis, December 27th, 1898, signed by the President, December 21st.)

Mackintosh, Sir James (Scotland, 1765-1832.) "Pernicious Activity of Government »— A government on the spot, though with the means of obtaining correct information, is exposed to the delusions of prejudice; for a government at a distance, the only safe course to pursue is to follow public opinion. In making the practical application of this principle, if I find the government of any country engaged in squabbles with the great mass of the people, if I find it engaged in vexatious controversies and ill-timed disputes, especially if that government be the government of a colony,-I say that there is a reasonable presumption against that government. I do not charge it with injustice, but I charge it with imprudence and indiscretion; and I say that it is unfit to hold the authority intrusted to it.

Corruptionists in Politics-Some, indeed the basest of the race, the sophists, the rhetors,

the poet laureates of murder, who were cruel only from cowardice and calculating selfishness, are perfectly willing to transfer their venal pens to any government that does not disdain their infamous support. These men, republicans from servility, who published rhetorical panegyrics on massacre, and who reduced plunder to a system of ethics, are as ready to preach slavery as anarchy. But the more daring, I had almost said the more respectable, ruffians cannot so easily bend their heads under the yoke. These fierce spirits have not lost "the unconquerable will, the study of revenge, immortal hate." They leave the luxuries of servitude to the mean and dastardly hypocrites, to the Belials and Mammons of the infernal faction. They pursue their old end of tyranny under their old pretext of liberty. The recollection of their unbounded power renders every inferior condition irksome and vapid, and their former atrocities form, if I may so speak, a sort of moral destiny which irresistibly impels them to the perpetration of new crimes. They have no place left for penitence on earth. They labor under the most awful proscription of opinion that ever was pronounced against human beings. They have cut down every bridge by which they could retreat into the society of men. Awakened from their dreams of democracy, the noise subsided that deafened their ears to the voice of humanity; the film fallen from their eyes which hid from them the blackness of their own deeds; haunted by the memory of their inexpiable guilt; condemned daily to look on the faces of those whom their hands made widows and orphans, they are goaded and scourged by these real furies, and hurried into the tumult of new crimes, which will drown the cries of remorse, or, if they be too depraved for remorse, will silence the curses of mankind. Tyrannical power is their only refuge from the just vengeance of their fellow-creatures.-(On the French Revolution in the case of Peltier, 1803.)

Mann, Horace (American, 1796-1859.)

Ignorance a Crime-In all the dungeons of the old world, where the strong champions of freedom are now pining in captivity beneath the remorseless power of the tyrant, the morning sun does not send a glimmering ray into their cells, nor does night draw a thicker veil of darkness between them and the world, but the lone prisoner lifts his iron-laden arms to heaven in prayer, that we, the depositories of freedom and of human hopes, may be faithful to our sacred trust; while, on the other hand, the pensioned advocates of despotism stand, with listening ear, to catch the first sound of lawless violence that is wafted from our shores, to note the first breach of faith or act of perfidy among us, and to convert them into arguments against liberty and the rights of man.

The experience of the ages that are past, the hopes of the ages that are yet to come, unite their voices in an appeal to us; they

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