The World's Best Orations Part 7

If there is any man so base or so weak as to prefer a dependence on Great Britain to the dignity and happiness of living a member of a free and independent nation, let me tell him that necessity now demands what the generous principle of patriotism should have dictated.

We have no other alternative than independence, or the most ignominious and galling servitude. The legions of our enemies thicken on our plains; desolation and death mark their b.l.o.o.d.y career; whilst the mangled corpses of our countrymen seem to cry out to us as a voice from heaven:--

"Will you permit our posterity to groan under the galling chains of our murderers? Has our blood been expended in vain? Is the only benefit which our constancy till death has obtained for our country, that it should be sunk into a deeper and more ignominious va.s.salage?

Recollect who are the men that demand your submission, to whose decrees you are invited to pay obedience. Men who, unmindful of their relation to you as brethren; of your long implicit submission to their laws; of the sacrifice which you and your forefathers made of your natural advantages for commerce to their avarice; formed a deliberate plan to wrest from you the small pittance of property which they had permitted you to acquire. Remember that the men who wish to rule over you are they who, in pursuit of this plan of despotism, annulled the sacred contracts which they had made with your ancestors; conveyed into your cities a mercenary soldiery to compel you to submission by insult and murder; who called your patience cowardice, your piety hypocrisy."

Countrymen, the men who now invite you to surrender your rights into their hands are the men who have let loose the merciless savages to riot in the blood of their brethren; who have dared to establish Popery triumphant in our land; who have taught treachery to your slaves, and courted them to a.s.sa.s.sinate your wives and children.

These are the men to whom we are exhorted to sacrifice the blessings which Providence holds out to us; the happiness, the dignity, of uncontrolled freedom and independence.

Let not your generous indignation be directed against any among us who may advise so absurd and maddening a measure. Their number is but few, and daily decreases; and the spirit which can render them patient of slavery will render them contemptible enemies.

Our Union is now complete; our const.i.tution composed, established, and approved. You are now the guardians of your own liberties. We may justly address you, as the _decemviri_ did the Romans, and say, "Nothing that we propose can pa.s.s into a law without your consent.

Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends."

You have now in the field armies sufficient to repel the whole force of your enemies and their base and mercenary auxiliaries. The hearts of your soldiers beat high with the spirit of freedom; they are animated with the justice of their cause, and while they grasp their swords can look up to Heaven for a.s.sistance. Your adversaries are composed of wretches who laugh at the rights of humanity, who turn religion into derision, and would, for higher wages, direct their swords against their leaders or their country. Go on, then, in your generous enterprise with grat.i.tude to Heaven for past success, and confidence of it in the future. For my own part, I ask no greater blessing than to share with you the common danger and common glory. If I have a wish dearer to my soul than that my ashes may be mingled with those of a Warren and Montgomery, it is that these American States may never cease to be free and independent.

AELRED

(1109-1166)

Saint Aelred, Ealred, or Ethelred. was abbot of the Cistercian monastery at Rievaulx, Yorks.h.i.+re, in the twelfth century. Thirty-two of his sermons, collected and published by Richard Gibbon, remain as examples of the pulpit eloquence of his age; but not very much is remembered of Aelred himself except that he was virtuous enough to be canonized, and was held in high estimation as a preacher during the Middle Ages. He died in 1166.

His command of language is extraordinary, and he is remarkable for the c.u.mulative power with which he adds clause to clause and sentence to sentence, in working towards a climax.

A FAREWELL

It is time that I should begin the journey to which the law of our order compels me, desire incites me, and affection calls me. But how, even for so short a time, can I be separated from my beloved ones? Separated, I say, in body, and not in spirit; and I know that in affection and spirit I shall be so much the more present by how much in body I am the more absent. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of my flesh; my wish is, that I may lay down among you the tabernacle of my flesh, that I may breathe forth my spirit in your hands, that ye may close the eyes of your father, and that all my bones should be buried in your sight! Pray, therefore, O my beloved ones, that the Lord may grant me the desire of my soul. Call to mind, dearest brethren, that it is written of the Lord Jesus, when he was about to remove his presence from his Disciples, that he, being a.s.sembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem. Following, therefore, his example, since, after our sweet banquet, we have now risen from the table, I, who in a little while am about to go away, command you, beseech you, warn you, not to depart from Jerusalem.

For Jerusalem signifies peace. Therefore, we commend peace to you, we enjoin peace to you. Now, Christ himself, our Peace, who hath united us, keep you in the unity of the spirit and in the bond of peace; to whose protection and consolation I commend you under the wings of the Holy Ghost; that he may return you to me, and me to you in peace and with safety. Approach now, dearest sons, and in sign of the peace and love which I have commended to you, kiss your father; and let us all pray together that the Lord may make our way prosperous, and grant us when we return to find you in the same peace, who liveth and reigneth one G.o.d, through all ages of ages.

Amen.

A SERMON AFTER ABSENCE

Behold, I have returned, my beloved sons, my joy and my crown in the Lord! Behold! I have returned after many labors, after a dangerous journey; I am returned to you, I am returned to your love. This day is the day of exultation and joy, which, when I was in a foreign land, when I was struggling with the winds and with the sea, I so long desired to behold; and the Lord hath heard the desire of the poor. O love, how sweetly thou inflamest those that are absent!

How deliciously thou feedest those that are present; and yet dost not satisfy the hungry till thou makest Jerusalem to have peace and fillest it with the flour of wheat! This is the peace which, as you remember, I commended to you when the law of our order compelled me for a time to be separated from you; the peace which, now I have returned, I find (Thanks be to G.o.d!) among you; the peace of Christ, which, with a certain foretaste of love, feeds you in the way that shall satisfy you with the plent.i.tude of the same love in your country. Well, beloved brethren, all that I am, all that I have, all that I know, I offer to your profit, I devote to your advantage.

Use me as you will; spare not my labor if it can in any way serve to your benefit. Let us return, therefore, if you please, or rather because you please, to the work which we have intermitted; and let us examine the Holy Ghost enduing us with the light of truth, the heavenly treasures which holy Isaiah has laid up under the guise of parables, when he writes that parable which the people, freed from his tyranny, shall take up against the king of Babylon. "And it shall come to pa.s.s in the day that the Lord shall give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve, that thou shalt take up this parable against the king of Babylon." Let us, therefore, understand the parable as a parable. Not imagining that it was spoken against Nebuchadnezzar, the prince of that earthly Babylon, but rather against him who is from the North, the prince of confusion. ... If any one of us, then, who was once set in the confusion of vices, and oppressed by the yoke of iniquity, now rejoices that he rests from his labors, and is without confusion for that which is past, and has cast off the yoke of that worst of slaveries, let him take up this parable against the king of Babylon. There is labor in vice, there is rest in virtue; there is confusion in l.u.s.t, there is security in chast.i.ty; there is servitude in covetousness, there is liberty in charity. Now, there is a labor in vice, and labor for vice, and labor against vice. A labor in vice, when, for the sake of fulfilling our evil desires, the ancient enemy inflicts hard labor upon us. There is a labor for vice, when any one is either afflicted against his will, for the evil which he has done, or of his will is troubled by the labor of penance. There is a labor against vice, when he that is converted to G.o.d is troubled with divers temptations. There is also a confusion in vice, when a man, distracted by most evil pa.s.sions, is not ruled by reason, but hurried along confusedly by the tumult of vices; a confusion for vice, when a man is found out and convicted of any crime, and is therefore confounded, or when a man repenting and confessing what he has done is purified by healthful confusion and confession; and there is a confusion against vice, when a man, converted to G.o.d, resists the temptation from which he suffers, by the recollection of former confusion.

Wonder not if I have kept you longer to-day than my wont is, because desirous of you, after so long a hunger, I could not be easily satiated with your presence. Think not, indeed, that even now I am satiated; I leave off speaking because I am weary, not because I am satisfied. But I shall be satisfied when the glory of Christ shall appear, in whom I now embrace you with delight, you, with whom I hope that I shall be happily found in him, to whom is honor and glory to ages of ages. Amen.

ON MANLINESS

Fort.i.tude comes next, which is necessary in temptation, since perfection of sanct.i.ty cannot be so uninterruptedly maintained in this life that its serenity will be disturbed by no temptations. But as our Lord G.o.d seems to us, in times when everything appears peaceful and tranquil, to be merciful and loving and the giver of joy, thus when he exposes us either to the temptations of the flesh, or to the suggestions of demons, or when he afflicts us with the troubles, or wears us out with the persecutions of this world, he seems, as it were, a hard and angry master. And happy is he who becomes valiant in this his anger, now resisting, now fighting, now flying, so as to be found neither infirm through consenting, nor weak through despairing. Therefore, brethren, whoever is not found valiant in his anger cannot exult in his glory. If we have pa.s.sed through fire and water, so that neither did the fire consume us, nor the water drown us, whose is the glory? Is it ours, so that we should exult in it as if it belonged to us? G.o.d forbid! How many exult, brethren, when they are praised by men, taking the glory of the gifts of G.o.d as if it were their own and not exulting in the honor of Christ, who, while they seek that which is their own and not the things of Jesus Christ, both lose that which is their own and do not gain that which is Christ's! He then exults in Christ's glory, who seeks not his glory but Christ's, and he understands that, in ourselves, there is nothing of which we can boast, since we have nothing that is our own. And this is the way in which, in individual men, the City of Confusion is overthrown, when chast.i.ty expels luxury, fort.i.tude overthrows temptations, humility excludes vanity. Furthermore, we have sanctification from the faith and sacraments of Christ, fort.i.tude from the love of Christ, exultation in the hope of the promises of Christ. Let us each do what we can, that faith may sanctify us, love strengthen us, and hope make us joyful in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be honor and glory forever and forever. Amen.

AESCHINES (389-314 B.C.)

Professor R. C. Jebe says of Aeschines, the rival of Demosthenes for supremacy at Athens, that when the Rhodians asked him to teach them oratory, he replied that he did not know it himself. He took pride in being looked upon as a representative of natural oratorical genius who had had little help from the traditions of the schools.

"If, however, Aeschines was no rhetorical artist," writes Doctor Jebb, "he brought to public speaking the twofold training of the actor and the scribe. He had a magnificent voice under perfect musical control. 'He compares me to the sirens,' says Aeschines of his rival."

First known as an actor, playing "tritagonist" in the tragedies of Sophocles and the other great Athenian dramatists, Aeschines was afterwards clerk to one of the minor officials at Athens; then secretary to Aristophon and Eubulos, well-known public men, and later still secretary of the _ekklesia_ or a.s.sembly.

The greatest event of his life was his contest with Demosthenes 'De Corona' (Over the Crown). When Ktesiphon proposed that Athens should bestow a wreath of gold on Demosthenes for his public services, Aechines, after the bill proposing it had come before the a.s.sembly, challenged it and gave notice of his intention to proceed against Ktesiphon for proposing an unconst.i.tutional measure. One of the allegations in support of its unconst.i.tutionally was that "to record a bill describing Demosthenes as a public benefactor was to deposit a lying doc.u.ment among the public archives." The issues were thus joined between Aeschines and Demosthenes for one of the most celebrated forensic contests in history. Losing the case Aeschines went into banishment. He died at Samos, B.C. 314, in his seventy-fifth year. He is generally ranked next to Demosthenes among Greek orators. For the following from the oration of Aeschines, the reader is under obligations to Professor Jebb's admirable translation.

AGAINST CROWNING DEMOSTHENES (Against Ktesiphon)

Our days have not fallen on the common chances of mortal life. We have been set to bequeath a story of marvels to posterity. Is not the king of Persia, he who cut through Athos, and bridged the h.e.l.lespont, he who demands earth and water from the Greeks, he who in his letters presumes to style himself lord of all men from the sunrise to the sunset, is he not struggling at this hour, no longer for authority over others, but for his own life? Do you not see the men who delivered the Delphian temple invested not only with that glory but with the leaders.h.i.+p against Persia? While Thebes-- Thebes, our neighbor city--has been in one day swept from the face of Greece--justly it may be in so far as her general policy was erroneous, yet in consequence of a folly which was no accident, but the judgment of heaven. The unfortunate Lacedaemonians, though they did but touch this affair in its first phase by the occupation of the temple,--they who once claimed the leaders.h.i.+p of Greece,-- are now to be sent to Alexander in Asia to give hostages, to parade their disasters, and to hear their own and their country's doom from his lips, when they have been judged by the clemency of the master they provoked. Our city, the common asylum of the Greeks, from which, of old, emba.s.sies used to come from all Greece to obtain deliverance for their several cities at our hands, is now battling, no more for the leaders.h.i.+p of Greece, but for the ground on which it stands. And these things have befallen us since Demosthenes took the direction of our policy. The poet Hesiod will interpret such a case. There is a pa.s.sage meant to educate democracies and to counsel cities generally, in which he warns us not to accept dishonest leaders. I will recite the lines myself, the reason, I think, for our learning the maxims of the poets in boyhood being that we may use them as men:--

"Oft hath the bad man been the city's bane; Oft hath his sin brought to the sinless pain: Oft hath all-seeing Heaven sore vexed the town With dearth and death and brought the people down; Cast down their walls and their most valiant slain, And on the seas made all their navies vain!"

Strip these lines of their poetic garb, look at them closely, and I think you will say these are no mere verses of Hesiod--that they are a prophecy of the administration of Demosthenes, for by the agency of that administration our s.h.i.+ps, our armies, our cities have been swept from the earth. ... "O yes," it will be replied, "but then he is a friend of the const.i.tution." If, indeed, you have a regard only to his delicacy you will be deceived as you were before, but not if you look at his character and at the facts. I will help you to estimate the characteristics which ought to be found in a friend of the const.i.tution; in a sober-minded citizen. I will oppose to them the character that may be looked for in an unprincipled revolutionist. Then you shall draw your comparison and consider on which part he stands--not in his language, remember, but in his life. Now all, I think, will allow that these attributes should belong to a friend of the const.i.tution: First, that he should be of free descent by both parents so that the disadvantage of birth may not embitter him against those laws which preserve the democracy.

Second, that he should be able to show that some benefit has been done to the people by his ancestors; or, at the worst, that there had been no enmity between them which would prompt him to revenge the misfortunes of his fathers on the State. Third, he should be virtuous and temperate in his private life, so that no profligate expense may lead him into taking bribes to the hurt of the people.

Next, he should be sagacious and able to speak--since our ideal is that the best course should be chosen by the intelligence and then commended to his hearers by the trained eloquence of the orator, --though, if we cannot have both, sagacity must needs take rank before eloquence. Lastly, he must have a stout heart or he may play the country false in the crisis of danger or of war. The friend of oligarchy must be the opposite of all this. I need not repeat the points. Now, consider: How does Demosthenes answer to these conditions?

[After accusing Demosthenes of being by parentage half a Scythian, Greek in nothing but language, the orator proceeds: ]--

In his private life, what is he? The tetrarch sank to rise a pettifogger, a spendthrift, ruined by his own follies. Then having got a bad name in this trade, too, by showing his speeches to the other side, he bounded on the stage of public life, where his profits out of the city were as enormous as his savings were small.

Now, however, the flood of royal gold has floated his extravagance.

But not even this will suffice. No wealth could ever hold out long against vice. In a word, he draws his livelihood not from his own resources but from your dangers. What, however, are his qualifications in respect to sagacity and to power of speech? A clever speaker, an evil liver! And what is the result to Athens?

The speeches are fair; the deeds are vile! Then as to courage I have a word to say. If he denied his cowardice or if you were not aware of it, the topic might have called for discussion, but since he himself admits in the a.s.semblies and you know it, it remains only to remind you of the laws on the subject. Solon, our ancient lawgiver, thought the coward should be liable to the same penalties as the man who refuses to serve or who has quitted his post.

Cowardice, like other offenses, is indictable.

Some of you will, perhaps, ask in amazement: Is a man to be indicted for his temperament? He is. And why? In order that every one of us fearing the penalties of the law more than the enemy may be the better champion of his country. Accordingly, the lawgiver excludes alike the man who declines service, the coward, and the deserter of his post, from the l.u.s.tral limits in the market place, and suffers no such person to receive a wreath of honor or to enter places of public wors.h.i.+p. But you, Ktesiphon, exhort us to set a crown on the head to which the laws refuse it. You by your private edict call a forbidden guest into the forefront of our solemn festival, and invite into the temple of Dionysos that dastard by whom all temples have been betrayed. ... Remember then, Athenians, that the city whose fate rests with you is no alien city, but your own. Give the prizes of ambition by merit, not by chance. Reserve your rewards for those whose manhood is truer, whose characters are worthier.

Look at each other and judge not only with your ears but with your eyes who of your number are likely to support Demosthenes. His young companions in the chase or the gymnasium? No, by the Olympian Zeus! He has not spent his life in hunting or in any healthful exercise, but in cultivating rhetoric to be used against men of property. Think of his boastfulness when he claims by his emba.s.sy to have s.n.a.t.c.hed Byzantium out of the hands of Philip, to have thrown the Acharnians into revolt, to have astonished the Thebans with his harangue! He thinks that you have reached the point of fatuity at which you can be made to believe even this--as if your citizen were the deity of persuasion instead of a pettifogging mortal! And when at the end of his speech, he calls as his advocates those who shared his bribes, imagine that you see upon this platform where I now speak before you, an array drawn up to confront their profligacy--the benefactors of Athens: Solon, who set in order the Democracy by his glorious laws, the philosopher, the good legislator, entreating you with the gravity which so well became him never to set the rhetoric of Demosthenes above your oaths and above the laws; Aristides, who a.s.sessed the tribute of the Confederacy, and whose daughters after his death were dowered by the State--indignant at the contumely threatened to justice and asking: Are you not ashamed? When Arthmios of Zeleia brought Persian gold to Greece and visited Athens, our fathers well-nigh put him to death, though he was our public guest, and proclaimed him expelled from Athens and from all territory that the Athenians rule; while Demosthenes, who has not brought us Persian gold but has taken bribes for himself and has kept them to this day, is about to receive a golden wreath from you! And Themistokles, and they who died at Marathon and Plataea, aye, and the very graves of our forefathers--do you not think they will utter a voice of lamentation, if he who covenants with barbarians to work against Greece shall be--crowned!

FREDERICK A. AIKEN (1810-1878)

In defending the unpopular cause of the British soldiers who were engaged in the Boston Ma.s.sacre, John Adams said:--

"May it please your honor and you, gentlemen of the jury, I am for the prisoner at the bar, and shall apologize for it only in the words of the Marquis of Beccaria: 'If I can but be the instrument of preserving one life, his blessings and tears of transport shall be a sufficient compensation to me for the contempt of all mankind.'"

Something of the same idea inspires the fine opening of Aiken's defense of Mrs. Surratt. It lacks the sinewy a.s.sertiveness of Adams's terse and almost defiant apology for doing his duty as a lawyer in spite of public opinion, but it justifies itself and the plea it introduces.

Until within the recent past, political antagonisms have been too strong to allow fair consideration for such orations as that of Aiken at the Surratt trial. But this is no longer the case. It can now be considered on its merits as an oration, without the a.s.sumption that it is necessary in connection with it to pa.s.s on the evidence behind it.

The a.s.sa.s.sins of President Lincoln were tried by military commission under the War Department's order of May 6th, 1865. The prosecution was conducted by Brigadier-General Joseph Holt, as judge advocate-general, with Brevet-Colonel H. L. Burnett, of Indiana, and Hon. John A. Bingham, of Ohio, a.s.sisting him. The attorneys for the defense were Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland; Thomas Ewing, of Kansas; W. E. Doster, of Pennsylvania; Frederick A. Aiken, of the District of Columbia; Walter S. c.o.x, John W. Clampit, and F. Stone, of Maryland. The fault of the Adams oration in the case of the Boston Ma.s.sacre is one of excessive severity of logic. Aiken errs in the direction of excessive ornament, but, considering the importance of the occasion and the great stress on all engaged in the trial as well as on the public, the florid style may have served better than the force of severe logic could have done.

DEFENSE OF MRS. MARY E. SURRATT

For the lawyer as well as the soldier, there is an equally pleasant duty--an equally imperative command. That duty is to shelter the innocent from injustice and wrong, to protect the weak from oppression, and to rally at all times and all occasions, when necessity demands it, to the special defense of those whom nature, custom, or circ.u.mstance may have placed in dependence upon our strength, honor, and cheris.h.i.+ng regard. That command emanates and reaches each cla.s.s from the same authoritative and omnipotent source. It comes from a superior whose right to command none dare question, and none dare disobey. In this command there is nothing of that _lex_ _talionis_ which nearly two thousand years ago nailed to the cross its Divine Author.