"The soldier is proof against an argument--but he is not proof against a bullet. The man that will listen to reason--let him be reasoned with. But it is the weaponed arm of the patriot that can alone prevail against battalioned despotism. "Then, my lord, I do not condemn the use of arms as immoral, nor do I conceive it profane to say that the King of Heaven--the Lord of Hosts! the God of Battles!--bestows his benediction upon those who unsheath the sword in the hour of a nation's peril. From that evening on which, in the valley of Bethulia, he nerved the arm of the Jewish girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, down to this our day, in which he has blessed the insurgent chivalry of the Belgian priest, His Almighty hand hath ever been stretched forth from His throne of Light to consecrate the flag of freedom--to bless the patriot's sword! Be it in the defence, or be it in the assertion of a people's liberty, I hail the sword as a sacred weapon; and if, my lord, it had sometimes taken the shape of the serpent, and reddened the shroud of the oppressor with too deep a dye, like the anointed rod of the High Priest, it has at other times, and as often, blossomed into celestial flowers to deck the freeman's brow. "Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for in the passes of the Tyrol it cut to pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and, through those cragged passes, struck a path to fame for the peasant insurrectionists of Inspruck! Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for at its blow a giant nation started from the waters of the Atlantic, and by its redeeming magic, and in the quivering of its crimsoned light the crippled colony sprang into the attitude of a proud Republic--prosperous, limitless, and invincible! Abhor the sword--stigmatize the sword? No, my lord, for it swept the Dutch marauders out of the fine old towns of Belgium--scourged them back to their own phlegmatic swamps--and knocked their flag and sceptre, their laws and bayonets, into the sluggish waters of the Scheldt. "My lord, I learned that it was the right of a nation to govern itself, not in this hall, but on the ramparts of Antwerp; I learned the first article of a nation's creed upon those ramparts, where freedom was justly estimated, and where the possession of the precious gift was purchased by the effusion of generous blood. My lord, I honor the Belgians for their courage and their daring, and I will not stigmatize the means by which they obtained a citizen-king, a chamber of Deputies."