Oratory, British and Irish: The Great Age (from the Accession of George the Third to the Reform Bill, 1832)Godfrey Locker Lampson A.L. Humphreys, 1918 - 599 pages |
Common terms and phrases
abuses argument army authority bill blessings Britain British bull-baiting called cause character civil civil list consider constitution corruption Court crimes crown danger declared defence despotism doctrine duty East India Bill effect empire enemy England English established Europe existence favour feel force France freedom French French Revolution gentlemen give glory happiness heart honourable friend hope house of Bourbon House of Commons House of Lords human influence interest Ireland Irish judge jury justice king legislature liberty look Lord mankind means measure ment military mind minister moral nation nature never noble object opinion Parliament parliament of Ireland peace persons political present principles protection question reason reform religion revolution right honourable gentleman Roman Catholic Slave Trade slaves speak speech spirit stand supposed things throne tion trade trust virtue WARREN HASTINGS whole wisdom wish
Popular passages
Page 50 - All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences, we give and take, we remit some rights that we may enjoy others, and we choose rather to be happy citizens than subtle disputants.
Page 55 - All this, I know well enough, will sound wild and chimerical to the profane herd of those vulgar and mechanical politicians who have no place among us: a sort of people who think that nothing exists but what is gross and material, and who, therefore, far from being qualified to be directors of the great movement of empire, are not fit to turn a wheel in the machine.
Page 94 - A storm of universal 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.
Page 54 - Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil. They may have it from Spain, they may have it from Prussia. But until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you.
Page 19 - ... solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the general Congress at Philadelphia. I trust it is obvious to your lordships that all attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retract; let us retract while we can, not when we must.
Page 45 - Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law, and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions.
Page 45 - Permit me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies, which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study.
Page 20 - ... mercenary aid on which you rely ; for it irritates, to an incurable resentment, the minds of your enemies, 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 20 - You may swell every expense and every effort still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow ; traffic and barter with every little pitiful German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles...
Page 45 - English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people ; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these things ; when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, but that through a wise and salutary...