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senate or on the bench of justice, men who, if able, would murder you for speaking truth? Will you teach your children that there is no guilt in murder? Will you instruct them to think lightly of duelling, and train them up to destroy or be destroyed in the bloody field? Will you bestow your suffrage, when you know that, by withholding it, you may ar rest this deadly evil-when this too is the only way in which it can be done, and when the present is perhaps the only period, in which resistance can avail-when the remedy is so easy, so entirely in your power; and when God, if you do not punish these guilty men, will most inevitably punish you? Have you beheld a dying father, conveyed, bleeding and agonizing, to his distracted family, had you heard their pierc. ing shrieks, and witnessed their frantic agony; would you reward the savage man who had plunged them in distress? Had the duellist destroyed your neighbor-had your own father been killed by the man who solicits your suffragehad your son, laid low by his hand, been brought to your door, pale in death, and weltering in blood-would you then think the crime a small one? Would you honor with your confi. dence, and elevate to power by your vote, the guilty monster? And what would you think of your neighbors, if, regardless of your agony, they should reward him? And yet, such scenes of unutterable anguish are multiplied every year. Every year the duellist is cutting down the neighbor of somebody. Every year, and many times in the year, a father is brought dead or dying to his family, or a son is laid breathless at the feet of his parents; and every year you are patronizing by your votes the men who commit these crimes, and looking with cold indifference upon, and even mocking the sorrows of your neighbor. Beware-I admonish you to beware, lest, having no feeling for the sorrows of another, you be called to weep for your own sorrow; lest your own kindred fall by the hand of the very murderer, for whom you vote, or by the hand of some one, whom his example has trained to the work of blood.

XC. THE EXILE AT REST.*

By the Rev. John Pierpont.

His falchiont flashed along the Nile ;
His hosts he led through Alpine snows;
O'er Moscow's towers, that blazed the while,
His eagle flag unrolled-and froze.

Here sleeps he now, alone! not one
Of all the Kings whose crowns he gave,
Bends o'er his dust-nor wife nor son
Has ever seen or sought his grave.

Behind this sea-girt rock, the star

That led him on from crown to crown Has sunk ;-and nations from afar Gazed as it faded and went down.

High is his couch;-the ocean flood
Far, far below, by storms is curled;
As round him heaved, while high he stood,
A stormy and unstable world.

Alone he sleeps! the mountain cloud,

That Night hangs round him, and the breath

Of morning scatters, is the shroud

That wraps tho conqueror's clay in death.

Pause here! The far-off world at last

Breathes free ;-the hand that shook its thrones,

And to the earth its mitres cast,

Lies powerless now beneath these stones.

Hark! comes there, from the pyramids,
And from Siberian wastes of snow,

And Europe's hills, a voice that bids

The world he awed to mourn him?-No:

* Napoleon Bonaparte, as he lies buried at St. Helena. + Pronounced, fål-shun.

The only, the perpetual dirge

That's heard here, is the sea-bird's cry,—

The mournful murmur of the

surge,

The cloud's deep voice-the wind's low sigh.

XCI.-IMPEACHMENT OF WARREN HASTINGS.

**

Extract from Mr. Sheridan's Speech, on summing up the Evidence on the Second Charge against Warren Hastings, Esq., delivered before the High Court of Parliament, June, 1788.

My Lords,-I SHALL not waste your lordships' time nor my own by any preliminary observations on the importance of the subject before you, or on the propriety of our bringing it, in this solemn manner, to a final decision. We are, my lords, anxious, in stating the crimes with which he is charged, to keep out of recollection the person of the unfortunate prisoner. In prosecuting him to conviction, we are impelled only by a sincere abhorrence of his guilt, and a sanguine hope of remedying future delinquency. We can have no private incentive to the part we have taken. We are actuated singly by the zeal we feel for the public welfare, and by an honest solicitude for the honor of our country, and the happiness of those who are under its dominion and protection. It is in the hope, my lords, of accomplishing these salutary ends, of restoring character to England, and happiness to India, that we have come to the bar of this exalted tribunal.

In looking round for an object fit to be held out to an oppressed people, and to the world as an example of national justice, we are forced to fix our eyes on Mr. Hastings. It is he, my lords, who has degraded our fame, and blasted our fortunes in the East. It is he, who has tyrannized, with relentless severity, over the devoted natives of those regions. It is he who must atone, as a victim, for the multiplied calamities he has produced!

What, my lords, do you think of the tyranny and savage apathy of a man who could act in open defiance of those prejudices, which are so interwoven with the very existence

* See note on page 99.

of the females of the East, that they can be removed only by death? What do your lordships think of the atrocity of a man, who could threaten to profane and violate the sanctuary of the princesses of Oude, by declaring that he would storm it with his troops, and expel the inhabitants from it by force? There is, my lords, displayed in the whole of this black transaction a wantonness of cruelty and ruffian-like ferocity that, happily, are not often incident, even to the most depraved and obdurate of our species. Had there been in the composition of the prisoner's heart one generous propensity or lenient disposition even slumbering and torpid, it must have been awaked and animated into kindness and mercy towards these singularly interesting females. Their character and situation at the time, presented every circumstance to disarm hostility, and to kindle the glow of manly sympathy. But no tender impression could be made on his soul, which is as hard as adamant, and as black as sin. Stable as the everlasting hills in its schemes and purposes of villany, it has never once been shaken by the cries of affliction, the claims of charity, or the complaints of injustice. With steady, undeviating step, he marches on to the consummation of the abominable projects of wickedness, which are engendered and contrived in its gloomy recesses. What his soul prepares, his hands are ever ready to execute.

XCII. THE CHARACTER OF FILAL PIETY.

Extract from the same Speech.

My Lords,--THE counsel of Mr. Hastings, in recommending an attention to the public in preference to the private letters, remarked particularly, that one of the latter should not be taken in evidence, because it was evidently and abstractly private, relating the anxieties of Mr. Middleton, on account of the illness of his son. This is a singular argument indeed. The circumstance, however, undoubtedly merits strict observation, though not in the view in which it was placed by the counsel. It goes to show that some at least of the persons concerned in these transactions, felt the force of those ties which their efforts were directed to tear asunder; that

those who could ridicule the respective attachment of a mo ther and a son; who could prohibit the reverence of the son to the mother; who could deny to maternal debility, the protection which filial tenderness should afford, were yet sensible of the straining of those cords by which they are connected. There is something in the present business, with all that is horrible to create aversion, so vilely loathsome, as to excite disgust. It is, my lords, surely superfluous to dwell on the sacredness of the ties, which those aliens to feeling, those apostates to humanity, thus divided. In such an assembly, as the one before which I speak, there is not an eye but must look reproof to this conduct, not a heart but must anticipate its condemnation. 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 that gratitude, which, softening under the sense of recollected good, is eager to own the vast, countless debt, it never, alas! can pay, for so many long years of unceasing solicitudes, honourable self denials, life preserving cares. It is that part of our practice, where duty drops its awe, where reverence refines into love. It asks no aid of memory. It needs not the deductions of reason. Pre-existing, paramount over all, whether moral law or human rule, few arguments can increase and none can diminish it. It is the sacrament of our nature; not only the duty, but the indulgence of man. It is his first great privilege. It is among his last, most endearing delights, when the bosom glows with the idea of reverbe rated love; when to requite on the visitations of nature, and return the blessings that have been received; when what was emotion, fixed into vital principle; what was instinct, habituated into a master passion, sways all the sweetest energies of man, hangs over each vicissitude of all that must pass away, aids the melancholy virtues in their last, sad tasks of life; to cheer the languors of decrepitude and age; "explore the thought; explain the aching eye!"

But, my lords, I am ashamed to consume so much of your lordships' time, in attempting to give a cold picture of this sacred impulse, when I behold so many breathing testimonies of its influence around me; when every countenance in this assembly is beaming and erecting itself into the recognition of this universal principle!

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