540

And, Mr. Speaker, it is that two-thirds of our territory, rich as it is in gold and silver, embedded together in the same deposits, in the same mountains, so that you cannot extract the one without extracting the other, it is that portion of our territory that would give us the money that we need, the money of the world, good money, hard money, Democratic money,—a country that the civilized world must look to for its future monetary supply if it is to continue on what is called the hard-money basis. And yet we are to-day asked to do what? To lay the blighting hand of confiscation upon the millions of people inhabiting that country, to turn them out as tramps upon the land, merely to satisfy the greed of English gold.

Oh, my God, shall we do such a thing as that? Will you crush the people of your own land and send them abroad as tramps? Will you kill and destroy your own industries, and especially the production of your precious metals that ought to be sent abroad everywhere,— will you do this simply to satisfy the greed of Wall Street, the mere agent of Lombard Street, in oppressing the people of Europe and of this country? It cannot be done, it shall not be done! I speak for the great masses of the Mississippi Valley, and those west of it, when I say you shall not do it!

Any political party that undertakes to do it will, in God's name, be trampled, as it ought to be trampled, into the dust of condemnation, now and in the future. Speaking as a Democrat, all my life battling for what I conceived to be Democracy, and what I conceived to be right, I am yet an American above Democracy. I do not intend, we do not intend, that any party shall survive, if we can help it, that will lay the confiscating hand upon Americans in the interest of England or of Europe. Now, mark it. This may be strong language, but heed it. The people mean it, and, my friends of the Eastern Democracy, we bid farewell when you do that thing.

Now, you can take your choice of sustaining America against England, American interests, and American laborers and producers, or you can go out of power. We have come to the Parting of the Ways. I do not pretend to speak for anybody but myself and my constituents, but I believe that I do speak for the great masses of the great Mississippi Valley when I say that we will not submit to the domination of any political party, however much we may love it, that lays the sacrificing hand upon silver and will demonetize it in this country.

LORD BOLINGBROKE

(1678-1751)

ENRY ST. JOHN (Viscount Bolingbroke), the friend of Pope, and the most admired orator of his day in England, was born

at Battersea in 1678. His great reputation as an orator is now completely beyond the reach of criticism since, according to the British Encyclopedia, not one of his speeches has come down to us. When for the purposes of this work a search was made through the parliamentary debates to test this statement, only a report attributed to him and a few sentences of debate in the third person were found to represent him. His prose writings, however, were numerous and they are still readily accessible. Professor Morley recently republished a number of his letters. He died in 1751. Heading the Tories successfully under Queen Anne, Bolingbroke, an adherent of the Stuarts, was out-generaled by the Whigs after her death, and learning that they intended to impeach him he left England, remaining abroad from 1715 to 1723. This experience suggested his celebrated 'Reflections upon Exile,' from which an extract is taken to illustrate his admirable prose style, on which it is said that Edmund Burke formed his style as an orator.

D

MISFORTUNE AND EXILE

ISSIPATION of mind and length of time are remedies to which the greatest part of mankind trust in their afflictions. But the first of these works a temporary, the second a slow effect; and such are unworthy of a wise man. Are we to fly from ourselves that we may fly from our misfortunes, and only to imagine that the disease is cured because we find means to get some moments of respite from pain? Or shall we expect from time, the physician of brutes, a lingering and uncertain deliverance? Shall we wait to be happy till we can forget that we are miserable, and owe to the weakness of our faculties a tranquillity which ought to be the effect of their strength? Far otherwise. Let us set all our past and present afflictions at once before our eyes. Let us resolve to overcome them, instead of

flying from them, or wearing out the sense of them by long and ignominious patience. Instead of palliating remedies, let us use the incisive knife and the caustic, search the wound to the bottom, and work an immediate and radical cure.

The recalling of former misfortunes serves to fortify the mind against later. He must blush to sink under the anguish of one wound, who survives a body seamed over with the scars of many, and who has come victorious out of all the conflicts wherein he received them. Let sighs and tears, and fainting under the slightest stroke of adverse fortune be the portion of those unhappy people whose tender minds a long course of felicity has enervated; while such as have passed through years of calamity bear up, with a noble and immovable constancy, against the heaviest. Uninterrupted misery has this good effect, as it continually torments, it finally hardens.

Such is the language of philosophy; and happy is the man who acquires the right of holding it. But this right is not to be acquired by pathetic discourse. Our comfort can alone give it to us; and, therefore, instead of presuming on our strength, the surest method is to confess our weakness, and, without the loss of time, to apply ourselves to the study of wisdom. This was the advice which the oracle gave to Zeno, and there is no other way of securing our tranquillity amidst all the accidents to which human life is exposed.

In order to which great end, it is necessary that we stand watchful, as sentinels, to discover the secret wiles and open attacks of the capricious goddess, Fortune, before they reach us. Where she falls upon us unexpectedly, it is hard to resist; but those who wait for her will repel her with ease. The sudden invasion of an enemy overthrows such as are not on their guard; but they who foresee war, and prepare themselves for it before it breaks out, they stand, without difficulty, the first and fiercest onset. I learned this important lesson long ago, and never trusted to Fortune even while she seemed to be at peace with me. The riches, the honors, the reputations, and all the advantages which her treacherous indulgence poured upon me, I placed so that she might snatch them away, without giving me any disturbance. I kept a great interval between me and them. She took them, but she could not tear them from me. No man suffers by bad fortune, but he who has been deceived by good. If we grow fond of her gifts, fancy that they belong to us, and

543 are perpetually to remain with us, if we lean upon them, and expect to be considered for them, we shall sink into all the bitterness of grief, as soon as our vain and childish minds, unfraught with solid pleasures, become destitute even of those which are imaginary. But if we do not suffer ourselves to be transported by prosperity, neither shall we be reduced by adversity. Our souls will be proof against the dangers of both these states; and, having explored our strength, we shall be sure of it; for, in the midst of felicity, we shall have tried how we can bear misfortune.

It is much harder to examine and judge than to take up opinions on trust; and, therefore, the far greatest part of the world borrow from others those which they entertain concerning all the affairs of life and death. Hence, it proceeds that men are so unanimously eager in the pursuit of things which, far from having any inherent real good, are varnished over with a specious and deceitful gloss, and contain nothing answerable to their appearances. Hence, it proceeds, on the other hand, that in those things which are called evils there is nothing so hard and terrible as the general cry of the world threatens. The word "exile" comes, indeed, harsh to the ear, and strikes us like a melancholy and execrable sound, through a certain persuasion which men have habitually concurred in. Thus, the multitude has ordained. But the greatest part of their ordinances are abrogated by the wise.

Rejecting, therefore, the judgment of those who determine according to popular opinions, or the first appearances of things, let us examine what exile really is. It is, then, a change of place; and, lest you should say that I diminish the object, and conceal the most shocking parts of it, I add, that this change of place is frequently accompanied by some or all of the following inconveniences: by the loss of the estate we have enjoyed, and the rank which we held; by the loss of that consideration and power which we were in possession of; by a separation from our family and our friends; by the contempt we may fall into; by the ignominy with which those who have driven us abroad will endeavor to sully the innocence of our characters, and to justify the injustice of their own conduct.

All these shall be spoken to hereafter. In the meanwhile let us consider what evil there is in change of place, abstractedly and by itself.

544

To live deprived of one's country is intolerable. Is it so? How comes it, then, to pass, that such numbers of men live out of their country by choice? Observe how the streets of London and Paris are crowded. Call over those millions by name, and ask them, one by one, of what country they are; how many will you find, who, from different parts of the earth, come to inhabit these great cities, which afford the largest opportunities, and the largest encouragement to virtue and vice. Some are drawn by ambition, and some are sent by duty; many resort thither to improve their minds, and many to improve their fortunes; others bring their beauty, and others their eloquence, to market. Remove from hence, and go to the utmost extremities of the East or West; visit the barbarous nations of Africa, or the inhospitable regions of the North; you will find no climate so bad, no country so savage, as not to have some people who come from abroad and inhabit there by choice.

Among numberless extravagances which have passed through the minds of men, we may justly reckon for one that notion of a secret affection, independent of our reason, and superior to our reason, which we are supposed to have for our country; as if there were some physical virtue in every spot of ground, which necessarily produced this effect in every one born upon it.

There is nothing surely more groundless than the notion here advanced, nothing more absurd. We love the country in which we were born, because we receive particular benefits from it, and because we have particular obligations to it; which ties we may have to another country, as well as to that we are born in; to our country by election, as well as to our country by birth. In all other respects, a wise man looks on himself as a citizen of the world; and, when you ask him where his country lies, points, like Anaxagoras, with his finger to the heavens.

Varro, the most learned of the Romans, thought, since nature is the same wherever we go, that this single circumstance was sufficient to remove all objections to change of place, taken by itself, and stripped of the other inconveniences which attend exile. M. Brutus thought it enough that those who go into banishment cannot be hindered from carrying their virtue along with them. Now, if any one judge that each of these comforts is in itself insufficient, he must, however, confess that both of them, joined together, are able to remove the terrors of the exile. For what trifles must all we leave behind us be esteemed, in comparison