Pagina-afbeeldingen
PDF
ePub

at once embellish and consecrate households, giving to the society of the hearth all the purity of the altar; that lingering alike in the palace and the cottage, are still to be found scattered over this land; the relic of what she was; the source perhaps of what she may be; the lone, the stately, and magnificent memorials, that rearing their majesty amid surrounding ruins serve at once as the land-marks of the departed glory, and the models by which the future may be erected.

Preserve those virtues with a vestal fidelity; mark this day, by your verdict, your horror at their profanation, and believe me, when the hand which records that verdict shall be dust, and the tongue that asks it, traceless in the grave, many a happy home will bless its consequences, and many a mother teach her little child to hate the impious treason of adultery.

SPEECH OF MR. PHILLIPS

AT THE SLIGO COUNTY MEETING.

ON Monday the 10th April, there was a large and respectable meeting in the court house, of the gentlemen, clergy, freeholders, and other inhabitants of the county of Sligo, for the purpose of taking into consideration an address of condolence to the king on the death of his royal father, and of congratulation to his majesty on his accession to the throne. Wm. Parke Esq. high sheriff, in the chair.

Owen Wynne Esq. moved an address.

Major O'Hara seconded the motion,

Charles Phillips Esq. then rose and spoke to the following effect:

I AM happy, sir, in having an opportunity of giving my concurrence both in the sentiment and principle of the proposed address. I think it should meet with the most perfect unanimity. The departed monarch deserves, and justly, every tribute which posterity can pay him. He was one of the most popular that ever swayed the sceptre of these countries. He never forgot his early declaration that he gloried in the name of Briton, and Britain now reciprocates the sentiment, and glories in the pride of his nativity. He was, indeed, a true-born Englishmen-brave, generous, benevolent and manly-in the exercise of his sway, and the exercise of his virtues so perfectly consistent that it is difficult to say whether as a man or sovereign he is most to be regretted. He commenced for the Catholic a conciliatory system-he preserved for the Protestant the inviolability of the constitution he gave to both a great example in the toleration of his principles and the integrity of his practice. The historian will dwell with delight upon those topics. He will have little to censure and much to commend. He will speak of arts, manufactures, literature encouraged he will linger long among those private virtues which wreathed themselves around his public

station-which identified his domestic with his magisterial character, and made the father of his family, the father of his people. He will not fail to remark how ample, and, at the same time, how discriminating was his patronage, and he will truly say, that if the pencil of West, directed to the sacred volume by his bounty—if the old age of Johnson, cheered and consoled by his royal liberality, were to stand alone, they would undeniably attest the purity of his taste and the piety of his morals. Attributes, such as these, sir, come home to the bosom of every man amongst us-they descend from the throne, they mingle with the fire side, they command more than majesty often can, not only the admiration but the sympathy of mankind. Nor may we forget, independent of his most virtuous example in private life, the vast public benefits, which, as a king, his reign conferred upon the countrythe liberty of the press, guaranteed, as far as reason can require it, and where restrained, only so restrained as to prevent its running into licentiousness-the trial by jury fully defined and firmly established the independence of the bench voluntarily conceded, which deprived the executive of a powerful and possible instrument, and vested the rights and property and privilege of the people in the integrity of a now unassailable tribunal. These are acts which we should register in our hearts; they should canonize the memory of the monarch; they made his realm the land-mark of European liberty, they made its constitution the model for European imitation. Let us not either in our estimate of his character forget the complexion of the times in which he lived; times of portent and prodigy, enough to perplex the council of the wise, and daunt the valour of the warrior;-in such extremities, experience becomes an infant, and calculation a contingency. From the terrific chaos of the French revolution, a comet rose and blazed athwart our hemisphere, too splendid not to allure, too ominous not to intimidate, too rapid and too eccentric for human speculation. The whole continent became absorbed in wonder; kings and statesmen and sages fell down and worshipped, and the political orbs, which had hitherto circled in harmony and peace, hurried from our system into the train of its conflagration. There was no order in politics; no consistency in morals; no steadfastness in religion.

Vice prevailed, and impious men bore sway.

Upon the tottering throne the hydra of democracy sat grinning; upon the ruined altar a wretched prostitute received devotion, and waved in mockery the burning cross over the prostrate murmurs of the new philosophy! All Europe appeared spellbound; nor like a vulgar spell did it perish in the waters. It crossed the channel. There were not wanting in England abundance of anarchists to denounce the king, and of infidels to abjure the Deity; turbulent demagogues who made the abused name of freedom the pretence for their own factious selfishness; atheists looking to be worshipped, republicans looking to be crowned; the nobles of the land were proscribed by anticipation, and their property partitioned by the disinterested patriotism of these Agrarian speculators. What do you think it was, during that awful crisis, which saved England from the hellish Saturnalia which inverted France? Was it the prophetic inspiration of Mr. Burke? The uncertain adhesion of a standing army? The precarious principles of our navy at the Nore? Or the transient resources of a paper currency ? Sir, I believe in my soul this empire owed its salvation during that storm to the personal character of the departed sovereign. When universal warfare was fulminated against monarchy, England naturally turned to its representative at home: and what did she find him? Frugal, moral, humane, religious, benevolent, domestic; a good father, a good husband, a good man, rendered the crown she gave him still more loyal, and not only preserving but purifying the trusts she had confided. She looked to his court: and did her morality blush at the splendid debauchery of a Versailles? Did her faith revolt at the gloomy fanaticism of an Escurial? Far from it. She saw the dignity which testified her sway tempered by the purity which characterised her worship; she saw her diadem glowing with the gems of empire, but those gems were illumined by a ray from the altar; she saw that aloft on his triumphal chariot her monarch needed not the memento of the republican; he never for a moment forgot that "he was a man." Sir, it would have been a lot above the condition of humanity, if his measures had not sometimes been impeached by party. But in all the conflicts of public opinion as to their policy, who ever heard an aspersion cast upon his motives? It is very true, had he followed other councils, events might have been different, but it is also well worth while to notice, would our situation have

been improved? Would Great Britain revolutionised, have given her people purer morals, more upright tribunals, more impartial justice, or more "perfect freedom" than they now participate? Did the murder of her prelates, her nobility and her king, followed by twenty years of military sway, procure for France, more popular privileges than those of which we have been in undisturbed possession? Was the chance of some problematical improvement worth the contingencies? Should we surrrender a present practical reality for the fantastic scheme of some Utopian theorist? Ought we to confound a creation so regular and so lovely, for the visionary paradise that chaos might reveal to us? The experiment has been tried, and what has been the consequence? Look to the continent at this moment. Its unsettled governments! its perturbed spirit! its pestilential doctrines! Go to the tomb of Kotzebue; knock at the cemetry of the Bourbons; providentially I have not to refer to your own murdered cabinet: you will find there how much easier it is to desolate than to create; how possible it is to ruin; how almost impracticable to restore.

Even in a neighbouring county in your own island, look at the enormous temptation which has been offered in vain to its impoverished peasantry to induce them-to what? Why merely to surrender a murderous assassin well known to have been one of a numerous association. Do you think such principles are natural to our people? Do you not think they are the result of system? Which do you believe-that such a sickening coincidence both at home and abroad is miraculous or premeditated? Sir, there is but one solution. You may depend upon it, the gulf is not yet closed whence the dreadful doctrines of treason, and assassination, and infidelity have issued. Men's minds are still feverish and delirious, and whether they nickname the fever illumination in Germany, liberality in France, radicalism in England, or by some more vulgar and unmeaning epithet at home, they are all children of the same parent; all so many common and convulsive indications of the internal vitality of the revolutionary volcano. Sir, I am not now to learn that those opinions are unpalatable to certain ultra patriots of the hour. I declared them before, and I now reiterate them still more emphatically, because they have expressed a very imprudent surprise that such opinions should proceed from me. Sir, if they mean to

« VorigeDoorgaan »