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having no root in consent or affection no foundation in similarity of interests no support from any one principle which cements men together in society, could only be upheld by alternate stratagem and force. The unhappy people of India, feeble and effeminate as they are from the softness of their climate, and subdued and broken as they have been by the knavery and strength of civilization, still occasionally start up in all the vigor and intelligence of insulted nature. To be governed at all, they

must be governed with a rod of iron; and our empire in the East would, long since, have been lost to Great Britain, if civil skill and military prowess had not united their efforts to support an authority — which Heaven never gave - by means which it never can sanction.

Gentlemen, I think I can observe that you are touched with this way of considering the subject, and I can account for it. I have not been considering it through the cold medium of books, but have been speaking of man and his nature, and of human dominion, from what I have seen of them myself among reluctant nations submitting to our authority. I know what they feel, and how such feelings can alone be repressed. I have heard them in my youth from a naked savage, in the indignant character of a prince surrounded by his subjects, addressing the Governor of a British colony, holding a bundle of sticks in his hand, as the notes of his unlettered eloquence. "Who is it," said the jealous ruler over the desert, encroached upon by the restless foot of English adventure "who is it that causes this river to rise in the high mountains, and to empty itself into the ocean? Who is it that causes to blow the loud winds of winter, and that calms them again in summer? Who is it that rears up the shade of those lofty forests, and blasts them with the quick lightning at his pleasure? The same Being who gave to you a country on the other side of the waters, and gave ours to us; and by this title we will defend it," said the warrior, throwing down his tomahawk upon the ground, and raising the war-sound of his nation. These are the feelings of subjugated man all round the globe; and depend upon it, nothing but fear will control where it is vain to look for affection.

If England, from a lust of ambition and dominion, will insist on maintaining despotic rule over distant and hostile nations, beyond all comparison more numerous and extended than herself,

and gives commission to her viceroys to govern them with no other instructions than to preserve them, and to secure permanently their revenues, with what color of consistency or reason can she place herself in the moral chair, and affect to be shocked at the execution of her own orders; adverting to the exact measure of wickedness and injustice necessary to their execution, and, complaining only of the excess as the immorality, considering her authority as a dispensation for breaking the commands of God, and the breach of them as only punishable when contrary to the ordinances of man? Such a proceeding, gentlemen, begets serious reflection. It would be better, perhaps, for the masters and the servants of all such governments to join in supplication, that the great Author of violated humanity may not confound them together in one common judgment. Lord Erskine.

CLV.

DECLARATION OF RIGHT.

MIGHT, as a constituent, come to your bar and demand my liberty. I do call upon you by the laws of the land, and their violation; by the instructions of eighteen counties; by the arms, inspiration, and providence of the present moment- tell us the rule by which we shall go; assert the law of Ireland; declare the liberty of the land! I will not be answered by a public lie, in the shape of an amendment; nor, speaking for the subjects' freedom, am I to hear of faction. I wish for nothing but to breathe in this our island, in common with my fellow-subjects, the air of liberty. I have no ambition, unless it be to break your chain and contemplate your glory. I never will be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking to his rags. He may be naked, - he shall not be in irons. And I do see the time at hand; the spirit is gone forth; the Declaration of Right is planted; and though great men should fall off, yet the cause shall live; and though he who utters this should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the humble organ who conveys it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of the holy man, will not die with the prophet, but survive him.

H. Grattan.

CLVI.

POLITICS AND RELIGION.

THAT religion has, in fact, nothing to do with the politics of many who profess it, is a melancholy truth. But that it has of right, no concern with political transactions, is quite a new discovery. If such opinions, however, prevail, there is no longer any mystery in the character of those whose conduct in political matters violates every precept and slanders every principle of the religion of Christ. But what is politics? Is it not the science and the exercise of civil rights and civil duties? And what is religion? Is it not an obligation to the service of God, founded on his authority, and extending to all our relations, personal and social? Yet religion has nothing to do with politics! Where did you learn this maxim? The Bible is full of directions for your behavior as citizens. It is plain, pointed, awful in its injunctions on ruler and ruled as such: yet religion has nothing to do with politics! You are commanded "in ALL your ways to acknowledge Him." In EVERYTHING, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, to let your requests be made known unto God." "And WHATSOEVER YE DO, IN WORD OR DEED, to do ALL IN THE NAME of the Lord Jesus." Yet religion has nothing to do with politics! Most astonishing! And is there any part of your conduct in which you are, or wish to be, without law to God, and not under the law of Jesus Christ? Can you persuade yourselves that political men and measures are to undergo no review in the judgment to come? That all the passion and violence, the fraud and falsehood and corruption, which pervade the system of party, and burst out like a flood at the public elections, are to be blotted from the catalogue of unchristian deeds, because they are politics? Or that a minister of the gospel may see his people, in their political career, bid defiance to their God in breaking through every moral restraint, and keep a guiltless silence, because religion has nothing to do with politics? I forbear to press the argument farther; observing only that many of our difficulties and sins may be traced to this pernicious notion. Yes, if our religion had had more to do with our politics; if, in the pride of our citizenship, we had not forgotten our Christianity; if we had prayed more and wrangled less about the affairs of our country, it would have been infinitely better for us at this day.

J. M. Mason.

STANDARD SELECTIONS.

POETRY.

CLVII.

THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.

O SAY, can you see, by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming! And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there; O say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

On that shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses !
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream:
'Tis the Star-Spangled Banner!

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O, long may it wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where are the foes who so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,

A home and a country should leave us no more?

Their blood hath washed out their foul footsteps' pollution! No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;
And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

O, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war's desolation! Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a Nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto, — “In God is our trust ;”

And the Star-Spangled Banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

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