I quote from Mahon's "History of England," volume VII., page 135, the language of the younger Pitt in favor of Fox's motion for a committee on the American war in the year 1781. I now read what he said:

For my part, I am persuaded and will affirm that it is a most accursed, wicked, barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical war. It was conceived in injustice; it was nurtured and brought forth in folly; its footsteps were marked with blood, slaughter, persecution, devastation.

In 1794, when the acquittal of Horne Tooke diffused such triumph all over England and gave a never-to-be-forgotten lesson to power through that great political safeguard,― that life-preserver in stormy times,- the trial by jury, Mr. Sheridan, in answer to Lord Mornington upon the address, said in reference to the atrocities committed in France:

. The surrounding States had goaded them into a still more savage state of madness, fury, and desperation. We had unsettled their reason, and then reviled their insanity; we drove them to the extremities that produced the evils we arraigned; we baited them like wild beasts until, at length, we made them so.

Such has been your conduct towards France, that you have created the passions which you persecute; you mark a nation to be cut off from the world; you covenant for their extermination; you swear to hunt them in their inmost recesses; you load them with every species of execration; and you now come forth with whining declarations on the horror of their turning upon you with the fury which you inspired. . . . Good God! sir, will those who stood forth with a parade of disinterested patriotism and vaunted the sacrifices they had made, and the exposed situation they had chosen in order the better to oppose the friends of Brissot in England - will they thank the noble lord for reminding us how soon these lofty professions dwindled into little jobbing pursuits for followers and dependents as unfit to fill the offices procured for them as the offices themselves were unfit to be created? Will the train of newly-titled alarmists, of supernumerary negotiators, of pensioned paymasters, agents, and commissaries thank him for remarking to us how profitable their panic has been to themselves and how expensive to their country? What a contrast, indeed, do we exhibit! What! in such an hour as this, at a moment pregnant with the national fate, when, pressing as the emergency may be, the hard task of squeezing the money from the pockets of an impoverished people, from the toil, the drudgery of the shivering poor, must make the most practised collector's heart ache while he tears it from them, can it be that people of high rank and professing high principles — that they or their families should seek to thrive on the spoils of misery and fatten on the meals wrested from industrious poverty? Can it be that this should be the case with the very persons who state the unprecedented peril of the country as the sole cause of their being found in the ministerial ranks? The Constitution is in danger, religion is in danger, the very existence of the nation itself is endangered; all personal and party considerations ought to vanish; the war must be supported by every possible exertion and by every possible sacrifice; the people must not

murmur at their burdens- it is for their salvation; their all is at stake. The time is come when all honest and disinterested men should rally round the throne as round a standard - for what? Ye honest and disinterested men, to receive, for your own private emolument, a portion of those very taxes wrung from the people on the pretense of saving them from the poverty and distress which you say the enemy would inflict, but which you take care no enemy shall be able to aggravate. Oh! shame! shame! is this a time for selfish intrigues and the little, dirty traffic for lucre and emolument? Does it suit the honor of a gentleman to ask at such a moment? Does it become the honesty of a minister to grant? Is it intended to confirm the pernicious doctrine, so industriously propagated by many, that all public men are impostors, and that every politician has his price? Or even where there is no principle in the bosom, why does not prudence hint to the mercenary and the vain to abstain awhile, at least, and wait the fitting of the times? Improvident impatience! Nay, even from those who seem to have no direct object of office or profit, what is the language which their actions speak? "The Throne is in danger! We will support the Throne; but let us share the smiles of royalty." "The order of nobility is in danger!" "I will fight for nobility," says the Viscount, "but my zeal would be much greater if I were made an Earl." .. Is there nothing that whispers to that right honorable gentleman that the crisis is too big, that the times are too gigantic, to be ruled by the little hackneyed every-day means of ordinary corruption?

On the subject of Reeve's libel Mr. Sheridan remarked:

Never was there any country in which there was so much absence of public principle, and at the same time so many instances of private worth. Never was there so much charity and humanity towards the poor and the distressed. . . Yet amidst these phenomena of private virtue it was to be remarked that there was almost a total want of public spirit and a most deplorable contempt of public principle. . . . When Rome fell, she fell by the weight of her own vices. ... But when Great Britain falls, she will fall with a people full of private worth and virtue; she will be ruined by the profligacy of the Government and the security of her inhabitants, the consequences of those pernicious doctrines which have taught her to place a false confidence in her strength and freedom, and not to look with distrust and apprehension to the misconduct and corruption of those to whom she has trusted the management of her resources.

Again, in 1795:

I am sorry that it is hardly possible for any man to speak in this house, and to obtain credit for speaking from a principle of public spirit; that no man can oppose a minister without being accused of faction, and none, who usually oppose, can support a minister or lend him assistance in anything without being accused of doing so from interested motives.

On the assessed tax bill:

But we have gained, forsooth, several ships by the victory of the first of June - by the capture of Toulon - by the acquisition of those charnel-houses in the

West Indies, in which fifty thousand men have been lost to this country. Consider the price which has been paid for these successes. For these boasted successes, I will say, give me back the blood of Englishmen which has been shed in this fatal contest - give me back the two hundred and fifty millions of debt which it has occasioned — give me back the honor of the country which has been tarnished — give me back the credit of the country which has been destroyed — give me back the solidity of the Bank of England which has been overthrown; the attachment of the people to their ancient Constitution, which has been shaken by acts of oppression and tyrannical laws — give me back the kingdom of Ireland, the connection of which is endangered by a cruel and outrageous system of military coercion - give me back that pledge of eternal war, which must be attended with inevitable ruin!

And in June, 1798, the year of the Irish rebellion:

What! when conciliation was held out to the people, was there any discontent? When the government of Ireland was agreeable to the people, was there any discontent? After the prospect of that conciliation was taken away,-after Lord Fitzwilliam was recalled,― after the hopes which had been raised were blasted,— when the spirit of the people was beaten down, insulted, despised, I will ask any gentlemen to point out a single act of conciliation which has emanated from the government of Ireland? On the contrary, has not that country exhibited one continual scene of the most grievous oppression, of the most vexatious proceedings; arbitrary punishments inflicted; torture declared necessary by the highest authority in the sister-kingdom next to that of the legislature? And do gentlemen say that the indignant spirit which is roused by such government is unprovoked? Is this conciliation? Is this lenity? Has everything been done to avert the evils of the rebellion? It is the fashion to say, and the address holds the same language, that the rebellion which now rages in the sister-kingdom has been owing to the machinations of "wicked men." Agreeing to the amendment proposed, it was my first intention to move that these words should be omitted. But, sir, the fact they assert is true. It is, indeed, to the measures of wicked men that the deplorable state of Ireland is to be imputed. It is to those wicked ministers who have broken the promises they held out, who betrayed the party they seduced into their views to be the instruments of the foulest treachery that ever was practised against any people. It is to those wicked ministers who have given up that devoted country to plunder-resigned it a prey to this faction by which it has so long been trampled upon, and abandoned it to every species of insult and oppression by which a country was ever overwhelmed, or the spirit of a people insulted, that we owe the miseries into which Ireland is plunged, and the dangers by which England is threatened.

Such, sir, was the burning language of Sheridan in the British Parliament. on the various questions discussed, and yet who ever heard of any movement- who ever saw the honorable Speaker descend from his chair and by his talents and influence upon the floor seek either to expel or to censure him?

Again, sir, no member here can have forgotten the memorable language of Mr. Corwin of Ohio, in the Senate of the United States, during the Mexican war.

He said:

Were I a Mexican, as I am an American, I would welcome these invaders with bloody hands to hospitable graves.

Yet no one ever dreamed of either expelling or censuring Mr. Corwin for this remarkable utterance based upon sentiments hostile to the war then being waged on the part of our country against Mexico.

Sir, in a free country like ours, is not a latitude of debate to be allowed? Is not discussion to be as broad as it is under a monarchical government in the Parliament of Great Britain? Sir, there is no subject on which a free people are more sensitive than that of free speech. It is regarded, and justly so, as one of the bulwarks of liberty, and any attempt to abridge it, and especially in these halls, must be, as it ought to be, condemned by the American people. And to-day, sir, if this House commits the great blunder of expelling the member from Ohio by the passage of this resolution, mark my prediction, he will rally around him a formidable party—not that the people indorse him or sympathize with him in the sentiments contained in his speech, but in vindication of the sacred right of free speech in the representative hall of the national legislature.

Mr. Speaker, I rose not only for the purpose of saying to the House that I for one could not and would not vote for the resolution of expulsion which has been offered here by the honorable Speaker of the House of Representatives, and to add that I think he has done the very worst day's work he could possibly have done by introducing a resolution expelling the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Long], but also for another purpose, and that is, to express my dissent from every position taken by the gentleman from Ohio in that speech. I differ with him toto cœlo. He is for giving up the struggle. He is for Disunion. He is for the recognition of the Southern Confederacy, now, at once. It occurs to me if the view of the gentleman from Ohio were carried out, it would be the saddest day the American people would ever be called upon to witness. Who that has an American heart in his bosom can tolerate for a moment the idea that this great struggle is to be abandoned in ignominy and in disgrace, to the eternal shame of the cause of liberty throughout the world? I do not believe this Government is likely to fail in the struggle. I believe that the people of the loyal States have every assurance and confidence that it will result in our success, and that we shall recover authority over every inch of territory belonging to the United States. In opinion I wholly dissent from the gentleman from Ohio as well as from the gentleman from Maryland.

I believe, sir, that this rebellion will be overcome; not that the Southern people will be exterminated or subjugated, but I believe that their military power will be broken, and when it is broken, - such is my confidence in their good sense, that they will then return to their allegiance and submit to those liberal terms which, I doubt not, will be proposed. It has often been reiterated that this rebellion is without excuse or justification. This is true to the letter. No people on earth, prior to this civil war, ever enjoyed a higher degree of liberty or a larger amount of happiness than the people of the Southern States. And it is right that they should be continually reminded that this rebellion is the offspring of the violent and ungovernable passions of their leading men. In proof of this I desire to quote two extracts from speeches made by Mr. A. H. Stephens, of Georgia, the Vice-President of the Confederate States. In a speech delivered before the Legislature of Georgia on the 14th day of November, 1860, after the election of Mr Lincoln, he used the following language:

The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of the South secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man constitutionally chosen to that high office is sufficient cause for any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because a man has been constitutionally elected, puts us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution. Many of us have sworn to support it. Can we, therefore, for the mere election of a man to the Presidency, and that, too, in accordance with the prescribed forms of the Constitution, make a point of resistance to the Government, and without becoming the breakers of that sacred instrument ourselves, withdraw ourselves from it? Would we not be in the wrong? Whatever fate is to befall this country, let it never be laid to the charge of the people of the South, and especially to the people of Georgia, that we were untrue to our national engagements. Let the fault and the wrong rest upon others. If all our hopes are to be blasted, if the Republic is to go down, let us be found to the last moment standing on the deck, with the Constitution of the United States waving over our heads. Let the fanatics of the North break the Constitution if such is their fell purpose. Let the responsibility be upon them. I shall speak presently more of their acts; but let not the South, let us not be the ones to commit the aggression. We went into the election with this people. The result was different from what we wished; but the election has been constitutionally held. Were we to make a point of resistance to the Government and go out of the Union on that account, the record would be made up hereafter against us.

And subsequently, in the secession convention of Georgia, in January, 1861, he spoke as follows: