The orator, a treasury of English eloquence

Front Cover
1864
 

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Page 6 - But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?
Page 73 - My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong- to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles.
Page 24 - For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are...
Page 6 - ... Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents.
Page 20 - The applause of listening senates to command, The threats of pain and ruin to despise, To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their...
Page 25 - ... an advocate, by the sacred duty which he owes his client, knows, in the discharge of that office, but one person in the world, THAT CLIENT AND NONE OTHER. To save that client by all expedient means, — to protect that client at all hazards and costs to all others, and among others to himself, — is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties ; and he must not regard the alarm — the suffering — the torment — the destruction — which he may bring upon any other.
Page 1 - ... we are living at a period of most wonderful transition, which tends rapidly to accomplish that great end — to which indeed all history points — the realisation of the unity of mankind. Not a unity which breaks down the limits and levels the peculiar characteristics of the different nations of the earth, but rather a unity the result and product of those very national varieties and antagonistic qualities.
Page 29 - Our inclinations are not in our power, nor should either of us be held answerable to the other because nature has not made us suitable to each other. Tranquil and comfortable society is, however, in our power ; let our intercourse, therefore, be restricted to that...
Page 84 - 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...
Page 62 - FILIAL PIETY !" It is the primal bond of society — it is that instinctive principle, which, panting for its proper good, soothes, unbidden, each sense and sensibility of man ! — it now quivers on every lip ! — it now beams from every eye ! — it is an emanation of that gratitude...

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