Beadle's Dime National Speaker, Embodying Gems of Oratory and Wit, Particularly Adapted to American Schools and Firesides: Speaker Series Number 2, Revised and Enlarged Edition
General
Beadle's Dime National Speaker, Embodying Gems of Oratory and Wit, Particularly Adapted to American Schools and Firesides: Speaker Series Number 2, Revised and Enlarged Edition
Recitations
The query may well
arise whether we are not fast reaching the time when the question is
not of the right or wrong of this or that legislation, the benefit
of this or that public policy, but whether this or that party shall
divide the spoils of office among their political camp followers. We
hear of angry words and fierce invectives, of rumors of corruption, of
bribery in public office; they belong to no one party, they are not
ranked under any one leader; these things came because the people have
lost sight, in the strifes of men for office, of that great destiny
which God offers to Americans. I believe the love of country dwells
in the people's hearts. The honest-hearted sons of toil will be true
to the country and its constitution. That love may have slumbered for
a time, but the great heart of the country _will_ be true to itself.
Its love _can not_ be hedged in by the paling of any man's door-yard.
It _will_ sweep away every barrier of strife, and keep us one united
people.
BRITISH INFLUENCE.--_John Randolph._
Imputations of British influence have been uttered against the
opponents of this war. Against whom are these charges brought? Against
men who, in the war of the Revolution, were in the Councils of the
Nation, or fighting the battles of your country! And by whom are these
charges made? By runaways, chiefly from the British dominions, since
the breaking out of the French troubles. The great autocrat of all
the Russias receives the homage of our high consideration. The Dey of
Algiers and his divan of pirates are very civil, good sort of people,
with whom we find no difficulty in maintaining the relations of peace
and amity. "Turks, Jews, and Infidels,"--Melimelli or the Little
Turtle,--barbarians and savages of every clime and color, are welcome
to our arms. With chiefs of banditti, negro or mulatto, we can treat
and can trade. Name, however, but England, and all our antipathies are
up in arms against her. Against whom? Against those whose blood runs
in our veins; in common with whom we claim Shakspeare, and Newton, and
Chatham, for our countrymen; whose form of government is the freest
on earth, our own only excepted; from whom every valuable principle
of our own institutions has been borrowed,--representation, jury
trial, voting the supplies, writ of habeas corpus, our whole civil and
criminal jurisprudence;--against our fellow-Protestants, identified in
blood, in language, in religion, with ourselves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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