Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

tercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel and to decide.

A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the treasury trembled at the the name of Pitt through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her.

Nor were his political abilities his only talents: his eloquence was an æra in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. Like Murray, he did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation; nor was he like Townshend, for ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed.

Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through the universe.

INVECTIVE AGAINST MR. CORRY, IN REPLY TO HIS ASPERSIONS.

My guilt or innocence have little to do with the question here. I rose with the rising fortunes of my country-I am willing to die with her expiring liberties. I submit to the calumnies of an individual hired to betray them and slander me. The indisposition of my body has left me perhaps no means but that of lying down with fallen Ireland and recording upon her tomb my dying testimony against the flagitious corruption that has murdered her independence. The right honorable gentleman has said that this was not my placethat instead of having a voice in the councils of my country, I should now stand a culprit at her bar-at the bar of a court of criminal judicature, to answer for my treasons. The Irish people have not so read my history-but let that pass-if I am what he has said I am, the people are not therefore to forfeit their constitution. In point of argument the attack is bad-in point of taste or feeling, if he had either, it is worse-in point of fact it is false, utterly and absolutely false, as rancorous a falsehood as the most malignant motives could suggest to the prompt sympathy of a shameless and a venal defence. The right honorable gentleman has suggested examples which I should have shunned, and examples which I should have followed. I shall never follow his, and I have ever avoided it. I shall never be ambitious to purchase public scorn by private infamy-the lighter characters of the model have as little chance of weaning me from the habits of a life spent, if not exhausted, in the cause of my native land. Am I to renounce those habits now for ever, and at the beck of whom? I should rather say of what-half a minister -half a monkey-a 'prentice politician, and a master coxcomb. He has told you that what he said of me here, he would say any where. I believe he would say thus of me in any place where he thought himself safe in saying it. Nothing can limit his calumnies but his fears in parliament he has calumniated me to-night, in the king's courts he would calumniate me to-morrow, but had he said or dared to insinuate one-half as much elsewhere, the indignant spirit of an honest man would have answered the vile and venal slanderer with -a blow:

tercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel and to decide.

A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the treasury trembled at the the name of Pitt through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her.

Nor were his political abilities his only talents: his eloquence was an æra in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. Like Murray, he did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation; nor was he like Townshend, for ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed.

Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through the universe.

INVECTIVE AGAINST MR. CORRY, IN REPLY TO HIS ASPERSIONS.

My guilt or innocence have little to do with the question here. I rose with the rising fortunes of my country-I am willing to die with her expiring liberties. I submit to the calumnies of an individual hired to betray them and slander me. The indisposition of my body has left me perhaps no means but that of lying down with fallen Ireland and recording upon her tomb my dying testimony against the flagitious corruption that has murdered her independence. The right honorable gentleman has said that this was not my placethat instead of having a voice in the councils of my country, I should now stand a culprit at her bar-at the bar of a court of criminal judicature, to answer for my treasons. The Irish people have not so read my history-but let that pass-if I am what he has said I am, the people are not therefore to forfeit their constitution. In point of argument the attack is bad-in point of taste or feeling, if he had either, it is worse-in point of fact it is false, utterly and absolutely false, as rancorous a falsehood as the most malignant motives could suggest to the prompt sympathy of a shameless and a venal defence. The right honorable gentleman has suggested examples which I should have shunned, and examples which I should have followed. I shall never follow his, and I have ever avoided it. I shall never be ambitious to purchase public scorn by private infamy-the lighter characters of the model have as little chance of weaning me from the habits of a life spent, if not exhausted, in the cause of my native land. Am I to renounce those habits now for ever, and at the beck of whom? I should rather say of what-half a minister -half a monkey-a 'prentice politician, and a master coxcomb. He has told you that what he said of me here, he would say any where. I believe he would say thus of me in any place where he thought himself safe in saying it. Nothing can limit his calumnies but his fears in parliament he has calumniated me to-night, in the king's courts he would calumniate me to-morrow, but had he said or dared to insinuate one-half as much elsewhere, the indignant spirit of an honest man would have answered the vile and venal slanderer with -a blow:

tercourse, he came occasionally into our system, to counsel and to decide.

A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the treasury trembled at the the name of Pitt through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country and the calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her.

Nor were his political abilities his only talents: his eloquence was an æra in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive wisdom; not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and sometimes the music of the spheres. Like Murray, he did not conduct the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation; nor was he like Townshend, for ever on the rack of exertion; but rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the flashings of the mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but could not be followed.

Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an eloquence, to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of slavery asunder, and to rule the wilderness of free minds with unbounded authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and strike a blow in the world that should resound through the universe.

INVECTIVE AGAINST MR. CORRY, IN REPLY TO HIS ASPERSIONS.

My guilt or innocence have little to do with the question here. I rose with the rising fortunes of my country-I am willing to die with her expiring liberties.

« ForrigeFortsett »