Reminiscences of Charles Butler, Esq, Volume 1

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John Murray, 1822

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Page 103 - German despot ; your attempts will be for ever vain and impotent — doubly so, indeed, from this mercenary aid on which you rely; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your adversaries, to overrun them with the mercenary sons of rapine and plunder, devoting them and their possessions to the rapacity of hireling cruelty. If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms : Never, never, never...
Page 103 - I CANNOT, my Lords, I will not, join in congratulation on misfortune and disgrace. This, my Lords, is a perilous and tremendous moment. It is not a time for adulation: the smoothness of flattery cannot save us in this rugged and awful crisis. It is now necessary to instruct the throne in the language of truth.
Page 103 - I call upon the honour of your lordships to reverence the dignity of your ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution. From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord* frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country.
Page 7 - O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, And tip with silver every mountain's head; Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise, A flood of glory bursts from all the skies : The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light.
Page 103 - ... against your protestant brethren, to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name,* with these horrible hell-hounds of savage war! — hell-hounds, I say, of savage war.
Page 103 - These abominable principles, and this more abominable avowal of them, demand the most decisive indignation. I call upon that right reverend, and this most learned bench, to vindicate the religion of their God, to support the justice of their country.
Page 103 - ... of the woods; to delegate to the merciless Indian the defence of disputed rights, and to wage the horrors of his barbarous war against our brethren ? My lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. But, my lords, this barbarous measure has been defended, not only on the principles of policy and necessity, but also on those of morality ; " for it is perfectly allowable," says Lord Suffolk, " to use all the means which God and nature have put into our hands.
Page 130 - Ali and his more ferocious son, absolve themselves of their impious vow, that when the British armies traversed, as they did, the Carnatic for hundreds of miles in all directions, through the whole line of their march they did not see one man, not one woman, not one child, not one four-footed beast of any description whatever. One dead uniform silence reigned over the whole region.
Page 129 - ... fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple. The miserable inhabitants flying from their flaming villages in part were slaughtered ; others, without regard to sex, to age, to the respect of rank, or sacredness of function ; fathers torn from children, husbands from wives, enveloped in a whirlwind of cavalry, and amidst the goading spears of drivers, and the trampling of pursuing horses, were swept into captivity in an unknown and hostile land. Those who were able to...
Page 129 - Then ensued a scene of woe, the like of which no eye had seen, no heart conceived, and which no tongue can adequately tell. All the horrors of war before known or heard of, were mercy to that new havoc. A storm of universal fire blasted every field, consumed every house, destroyed every temple.

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