which then threatened England, has a grandeur and solemnity every way worthy of the orator and the occasion.

Under the head of "the Eloquence of Popular Assemblies" we must include those judicial orations that are delivered before the English House of Lords, and the Senate of the United States, in cases of trial by impeachment. Thus, in the important trial of Hastings, managed by the House of Commons, and argued before the House of Lords, and in the impeachment of President Johnson, the nature of the trials admitted a near approach to the eloquence of popular assemblies. In such cases the rules of strict law are inapplicable; the appeals of the speaker are made to the general principles of the constitution; and the decision is trusted, in a great measure, to the equity and common sense of the judges, whose numbers constitute them a popular assembly, although a very intelligent one.

An Athenian orator whom Cicero places immediately after Demosthenes, and almost on the same level.

This verse is one of the finest examples of climax.

LESSON CX.

THE CONCLUSION OF BURKE'S FINAL SPEECH ON THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS.

1. My Lords, I have done! The part of the Commons is concluded! With a trembling hand, we consign the product of these long, long labors to your charge. Take it! TAKE IT! It is a sacred trust! Never before was a cause of such magnitude submitted to any human tribunal!

2. My Lords, at this awful close, in the name of the Commons, and surrounded by them, I attest the retiring, I attest the advancing generations, between which, as a link in the chain of eternal order, we stand. We call this nation, we call this world to witness, that the Commons have shrunk from no labor; that we have been guilty of no prevarications; that we have made no compromise with crime; that we have not feared any odium whatsoever, in the long warfare which we have carried on with the crimes, the vices, the exorbitant wealth, the enormous and overpowering influence of Eastern corruption.

3. A business which has so long occupied the councils and tribunals of Great Britain can not possibly be hurried over in the course of vulgar, trite, and transitory events. Nothing but some of those great Revolutions that break the traditionary chain of human memory, and alter the very face of nature itself, can possibly obscure it. My Lords, we are all elevated to a degree of importance by it. The mean

est of us will, by means of it, become more or less the concern of posterity.

4. My Lords, your House yet stands; it stands, a great edifice; but, let me say, it stands in the midst of ruins-in the midst of ruins that have been made by the greatest moral earthquake that ever convulsed and shattered this globe of ours. My Lords, it has pleased Providence to place us in that state, that we appear every moment to be on the verge of some great mutation. There is one thing, and one thing only, that defies mutation-that which existed before the world itself. I mean JUSTICE; that justice which, emanating from the Divinity, has a place in the breast of every one of us, given us for our guide with regard to ourselves, and with regard to others; and which will stand after this globe is burned to ashes, our advocate or our accuser before the great Judge, when he comes to call upon us for the tenor of a well-spent life.

5. My Lords, the Commons will share in every fate with your Lordships. There is nothing sinister which can happen to you in which we are not involved. And if it should so happen that your Lordships, stripped of all the decorous distinctions of human society, should, by hands at once base and cruel, be led to those scaffolds and machines of murder upon which great kings and glorious queens have shed their blooda, amid the prelates, the nobles, the magistrates who supported their thrones, may you in those moments feel that consolation which I am persuaded they felt in the critical moments of their dreadful agony.

6. My Lords, if you must fall, may you so fall! But if you stand-and stand I trust you will, together with the fortunes of this ancient monarchy; together with the ancient laws and liberties of this great and illustrious kingdom-may you stand as unimpeached in honor as in power! May you stand, not as a substitute for virtue; may you stand, and long stand, the terror of tyrants; may you stand, the refuge of afflicted nations; may you stand, a sacred tem ple for the perpetual residence of inviolable JUSTICE.

a In allusion to the atrocities of the French Revolution, and, especially, to the execution of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, King and Queen of France.

LESSON CXI.

MR. SHERIDAN'S PART IN THE IMPEACHMENT AND TRIAL OF HASTINGS.

I. INCIDENTS OF THE TRIAL.

1. In the impeachment and trial of Hastings, Mr. Burke assigned to Sheridan the management of the charge of plundering the friendly province of Oude, and the exposure of the cruelties inflicted on the native princes to extort from them their treasures.

2. In February, 1787, Mr. Sheridan addressed the House in favor of impeachment. His speech on this occasion was so poorly reported that it is almost wholly lost; but according to the representations of all who heard it, it was an astonishing exhibition of eloquence. The whole assembly, at the conclusion, broke forth into expressions of tumultuous applause. Mr. Pitt followed in a few remarks, and concluded by saying that "an abler speech was probably never delivered."

3. A motion was made to adjourn, that the House might have time to recover their calmness and "collect their reason;" and Mr. Stanhope, in seconding this motion, declared that he had come to the House prepossessed in favor of Mr. Hastings, but that nothing less than a miracle could now prevent him from voting for impeachment. Twenty years later, Mr. Fox and Mr. Windham, two of the severest judges in England, spoke of this speech with undiminished admiration. The former declared it to be "the best speech ever made in the House of Commons ;" and the latter, that it was "the greatest that had been delivered within the memory of man."

4. A curious anecdote concerning this speech is related by the historian Bissett. He says, "The late Mr. Logan, well known for his literary efforts, and author of a masterly defense of Mr. Hastings, went that day to the House, prepossessed for the accused and against the accuser. At the expiration of the first hour he said to a friend, 'All this is

declamatory assertion without proof;' when the second was finished, 'This is a wonderful oration;' at the close of the third, 'Mr. Hastings has acted unjustifiably;' the fourth, 'Mr. Hastings is a most atrocious criminal;' and at last, ‘Of all the monsters of iniquity, the most enormous is Warren Hastings".""

5. When, a year later, Mr. Sheridan had assigned to him, on the trial, the management of this same charge against Hastings, the expectation of the public was wrought up to the highest pitch to hear him. During the four days on which he spoke, the great hall was crowded to suffocation; and such was the eagerness to obtain seats, that fifty guineas were in some instances paid for a single ticket. All who heard his speech agreed in pronouncing it one of astonishing power; but, like most of the speeches of that day, it was poorly reported. From what has been preserved, we give a couple of extracts, no doubt transmitted to us in a very imperfect state.

II. THE PLEA OF STATE NECESSITY.

1. "Driven from every other hold, the prisoner is obliged to resort, as a justification of his enormities, to the stale pretext of State Necessity! Of this last disguise it is my duty to strip him.

2. "I will venture to say, my Lords, that no one instance of real necessity can be adduced. The necessity which the prisoner alleges listens to whispers for the purpose of crimination, and deals in rumor to prove its own existence. His a State Necessity! No, my Lords, that imperial tyrant, genuine State Necessity, is yet a generous despot - and when he acts he is bold in his demeanor, rapid in his decisions, though terrible in his grasp. What he does, my Lords, he dares avow; and avowing, scorns any other justification than the high motives which placed the iron sceptre in his hands.

3. "Even when its rigors are suffered, its apology is also known; and men learn to consider it in its true light, as a power which turns occasionally aside from just government, when its exercise is calculated to prevent greater evils than

it occasions. But a quibbling, prevaricating necessity, which tries to steal a pitiful justification from whispered accusations and fabricated rumors-no, my Lords, that is no State Necessity! Tear off the mask, and you see coarse, vulgar avarice lurking under the disguise.

4. "The State Necessity of Mr. Hastings is a juggle. It is a being that prowls in the dark. It is to be traced in the ravages which it commits, but never in benefits conferred or evils prevented. I can conceive justifiable occasions for the exercise even of outrage, where high public interests demand the sacrifice of private right. If any great man, in bearing the arms of his country-if any admiral, carrying the vengeance and the glory of Britain to distant coasts, should be driven to some rash acts of violence, in order, perhaps, to give food to those who are shedding their blood for their country-there is a State Necessity in such a case, grand, magnanimous, and all-commanding, which goes hand in hand with honor.

5. "If any great general, defending some fortress, barren, perhaps, itself, but a pledge of the pride and power of Britain-if such a man, fixed like an imperial eagle on the summit of a rock, should strip its sides of the verdure and foliage with which it might be clothed, while covered on the top with that cloud from which he was pouring down his thunders on the foe would he be brought by the House of Commons to your barb? No, my Lords, never would his grateful and admiring countrymen think of questioning actions which, though accompanied by private wrong, yet were warranted by real necessity. But is the State Necessity which is pleaded by the prisoner, in defense of his conduct, of this description? I challenge him to produce a single instance in which any of his private acts were productive of public advantage, or averted impending evil."

III. THE DESOLATION OF OUDE.

6. "If, my Lords, a stranger had at this time entered the province of Oude, ignorant of what had happened since the death of Sujah Dowlah-if, observing the wide and general desolation of fields unclothed and brown; of vegetation