I call upon that right reverend, and this most learned bench, to vindicate the religion of their God, to support the justice of their country. I call upon the bishops to interpose the unsullied sanctity of their lawn; upon the learned judges to interpose the enmity of their ermine,--to save us from this pollution. I call upon the honor of your Lordships, to reverence the dignity of our ancestors, and to maintain your own. I call upon the spirit and humanity of my country, to vindicate the national character. I invoke the genius of the constitution! From the tapestry that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain did he defend the liberty, and establish the religion of Britain, against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than popish cruelties, and inquisitorial practices, are endured among us. To send forth the merciless cannibal, thirsting for blood!--against whom?--your Protestant brethren! to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, by the aid and instrumentality of these horrible hounds of war! Spain can no longer boast preëminence in barbarity. She armed herself with bloodhounds, to extirpate the wretched natives of Mexico, and we improve on the inhuman example even of Spanish cruelty; we turn loose these savage hell-hounds against our brethren and countrymen in America, endeared to us by every tie that can sanctify humanity. I again call upon your Lordships, and upon every order of men in the State, to stamp upon this infamous procedure the indelible stigma of the public abhorrence. And I again implore those holy prelates of our religion to do away this iniquity; let them perform a lustration, to purify the country from this deep and deadly sin. My Lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more; but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor even reposed my head upon my pillow, without giving vent to my eternal abhorrence of such enormous and preposterous principles. Lord Chatham. CXXVIII. HONORABLE AMBITION.