mighty woes that have made this land a spectacle to angels and men? The soil has drunk blood and is glutted. Millions mourn for myriads slain, or, envying the dead, pray for oblivion. Towns and villages have been razed. Fruitful fields have been turned back to wilderness. It came to pass, as the prophet said: "The sun was turned to darkness and the moon to blood." The course of law was ended. The sword sat chief magistrate in half the nation; industry was paralyzed; morals corrupted; the public weal invaded by rapine and anarchy; whole States ravaged by avenging armies. The world was amazed. The earth reeled. When the flag sunk here, it was as if political night had come, and all beasts of prey had come forth to devour. That long night is ended. And for this returning day we have come from afar to rejoice and give thanks.- (From the oration on the "Raising of the Flag Over Fort Sumter," April 14th, 1865. Brewer's Text.)

Bible and Sharp's Rifles - You might just as well read the Bible to buffaloes as to those fellows who follow Atchison and Stringfellow; but they have a supreme respect for the logic that is embodied in Sharp's rifles. - (From a speech to a Kansas immigration meeting at Plymouth Church.)

Belhaven, Lord (Scotland, 1656-1708.)

Parricide and Patricide - None can destroy Scotland, save Scotland itself; hold your hands from the pen, you are secure. Some Judah or other will say: "Let not our hands be upon the lad, he is our brother." There will be a Jehovah-Jireh, and some ram will be caught in the thicket, when the bloody knife is at our mother's throat. Let us up then, my lord, and let our noble patriots behave themselves like men, and we know not how soon a blessing may

come.

My lord chancellor, the greatest honor that was done unto a Roman was to allow him the glory of a triumph; the greatest and most dishonorable punishment was that of parricide. He that was guilty of parricide was beaten with rods upon his naked body till the blood gushed out of all the veins of his body; then he was sewed up in a leathern sack, called a culeus, with a cock, a viper, and an ape, and thrown headlong into the sea.

My lord, patricide is a greater crime than parricide, all the world over.- (Delivered in the Scottish Parliament in 1706, protesting against union with England.)

Bell, John (American, 1797-1869.)

Joining the East and West - A grand idea it is. A continent of three thousand miles in extent from east to west, reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is to be connected by a railway! Honorable senators will remember, that over one thousand miles-one-third of this whole expanse of the continent-the work is already accomplished, and that chiefly by private enterprise. I may, as a safe estimate,

say, that a thousand miles of this railroad leading from the Atlantic to the West, upon the line of the lakes, and nearly as much upon a line further south, are either completed, or nearly so. We have two thousand miles yet to compass, in the execution of a work which it is said has no parallel in the history of the world. No, sir; it has no parallel in the history of the world, ancient or modern, either as to its extent and magnitude, or to its consequences, beneficent and benignant in all its bearings on the interests of all mankind. It is in these aspects, and in the contemplation of these consequences, that it has no parallel in the history of the worldchanging the course of the commerce of the world-bringing the West almost in contact, by reversing the ancient line of communication, with the gorgeous East, and all its riches, the stories of which, in our earlier days we regarded as fabulous; but now, sir, what was held to be merely fictions of the brain in former times, in regard to the riches of Eastern Asia, is almost realized on our own western shores.- (From a speech in favor of the Transcontinental Railroad Bill of 1858. "World's Best Orations.")

Benjamin, Judah P. (American, 1811-1884.)

Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase-Sir, it has been urged, on more than one occasion, in the discussions here and elsewhere, that Louisiana stands on an exceptional footing. It has been said that whatever may be the rights of the States that were original parties to the Constitution, even granting their right to resume, for sufficient cause, those restricted powers which they delegated to the general government in trust for their own use and benefit,- still Louisiana can have no such right, because she was acquired by purchase. I deny that the

province of Louisiana, or the people of Louisiana, were ever conveyed to the United States for a price as property that could be bought or sold at will. Without entering into the details of the negotiation, the archives of our State Department show the fact to be, that although the domain, the public lands, and other property of France in the ceded province were conveyed by absolute title to the United States, the sovereignty was not conveyed otherwise than in trust. . . . I have said that the government assumed to act as trustee or guardian of the people of the ceded province, and covenanted to transfer to them the sovereignty thus held in trust for their use and benefit, as soon as they were capable of exercising it. What is the express language of the treaty ? —

«The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyments of all rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess."

And, sir, as if to mark the true nature of the cession in a manner too significant to admit of

misconstruction, the treaty stipulates no price; and the sole consideration for the conveyance, as stated on its face, is the desire to afford a strong proof of the friendship of France for the United States. By the terms of a separate convention stipulating the payment of a sum of money the precaution is again observed of stating that the payment is to be made, not as a consideration or a price or a condition precedent of the cession, but it is carefully distinguished as being a consequence of the cession. It was by words thus studiously chosen, sir, that James Monroe and Thomas Jefferson marked their understanding of a contract now misconstrued as being a bargain and sale of sovereignty over freemen. With what indignant scorn would those stanch advocates of the inherent right of self-government have repudiated the slavish doctrine now deduced from their action.-(From the speech on leaving the U. S. Senate in 1861.) Bennet, Nathaniel (American, nineteenth century.)

"No South, No North, No East, No West » -But a few years can elapse before the commerce of Asia and the islands of the Pacific, instead of pursuing the ocean track, by way of Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope, or even taking the shorter route of the Isthmus of Darien or the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, will enter the Golden Gate of California, and deposit its riches in the lap of our own city. Hence, on bars of iron, and propelled by steam, it will ascend the mountains and traverse the desert; and, having again reached the confines of civilization, will be distributed, through a thousand channels, to every portion of the Union and of Europe. New York will then become what London now is, the great central point of exchange, the heart of trade, the force of whose contraction and expansion will be felt throughout every artery of the commercial world; and San Francisco will then stand the second city of America. Is this visionary? Twenty years will determine.

The world is interested in our success; for a fresh field is opened to its commerce, and a new avenue to the civilization and progress of the human race. Let us, then, endeavor to realize the hopes of Americans, and the expectations of the world. Let us not only be united amongst ourselves, for our own local welfare, but let us strive to cement the common bonds of brotherhood of the whole Union. In our relations to the Federal Government, let us know no South, no North, no East, no West. Wherever American liberty flourishes, let that be our common country! Wherever the American banner waves, let that be our home!-(1850.) Benton, Thomas H. (American, 1782-1858.)

"There Is East: There Is India - We live in extraordinary times and are called upon to elevate ourselves to the grandeur of the occasion. Three and a half centuries ago the great Columbus, the man who afterwards was carried home in chains from the New World which he discovered, this great Columbus, in the year 1492,

departed from Europe to arrive in the east by going to the west. It was a sublime conception, he was in the line of success, when the intervention of two continents, not dreamed of before, stopped his progress. Now in the nineteenth century mechanical genius enables his great design to be fulfilled. In the beginning and in barbarous ages, the sea was a barrier to the intercourse of nations. It separated nations. Mechanical genius invented the ship, which converted the barrier into a facility. Then land and continents became an obstruction. The two Americas intervening have prevented Europe and Asia from communicating on a straight line. For three centuries and a half this obstacle has frustrated the grand design of Columbus. Now in our day, mechanical genius has again triumphed over the obstacles of nature and converted into a facility what had so long been an impassable obstacle. The steam car has worked upon the land among enlightened nations to a degree far transcending the miracle which the ship in barbarous ages worked upon the ocean. The land has now become a facility for the most distant communication. A conveyance being invented which annihilated both time and space, we hold the intervening land; we hold the obstacle which stopped Columbus; we are in the line between Europe and Asia; we have it in our power to remove that obstacle; to convert it into a facility to carry him on to this land of promise and of hope with a rapidity and precision and a safety unknown to all ocean navigation. A king and queen started him upon this grand enterprise. It lies in the hands of a republic to complete it. It is in our hands, in the hands of us, the people of the United States, of the first half of the nineteenth century. Let us raise ourselves up. Let us rise to the grandeur of the occasion. Let us complete the grand design of Columbus by putting Europe and Asia into communication and that to our advantage, through the heart of our country. Let us give to his ships a continued course unknown to all former times. Let us make an iron road, and make it from sea to sea, States and individuals making it east of the Mississippi and the nation making it west. Let us now, in this convention rise above everything sectional, personal, local. Let us beseech the national legislature to build a great road upon the great national line which unites Europe and Asia-the line which will find on our continent the Bay of San Francisco on one end, St. Louis in the middle, and the great national metropolis and emporium at the other, and which shall be adorned with its crowning honor, the colossal statue of the great Columbus, whose design it accomplishes, hewn from a granite mass of a peak of the Rocky Mountains, the mountain itself the pedestal, and the statue a part of the mountain, pointing with outstretched arm to the western horizon, and saying to the flying passengers, "There is East: there is India!"-(Text from the "World's Best Orations.")

America and Asia-Sir, the apparition of the van of the Caucasian race, rising upon the Ori

ental nations in the east, after having left them on the west, and after having completed the cir cumnavigation of the globe, must wake up and animate the torpid body of old Asia. Our position and policy will commend us to their hospitable reception; political considerations will aid the action of social and commercial influences. Pressed upon by the great powers of Europe,the same that press upon us, they must in our approach see the advent of friends, not of foes; of benefactors, not of invaders.-( On the settlement of Oregon.)

Bernard of Clairvaux (France, 1091-1153.)

Advice to Young Men-Do not put forward the empty excuse of your rawness or want of experience; for barren modesty is not pleasing, nor is that humility praiseworthy that passes the bounds of moderation. Attend to your work; drive out bashfulness by a sense of duty, and act as like master. You are young, yet you are a debtor; you must know that you were a debtor from the day you were born. Will youth be an excuse to a creditor for the loss of his profits? Does the usurer expect no interest at the beginning of his loan? "But," you say, "I am not sufficient for these things." As if your offering were not accepted from what you have, and not from what you have not! Be prepared to answer for the single talent committed to your charge, and take no thought for the rest. "If thou hast much, give plenteously; if thou hast little, do thy diligence gladly to give of that little." (From a sermon in the "World's Best Orations.")

Effect of the Mexican Conquest-I have united, heretofore,- at some personal hazard of popularity and station,-I have united with my friends of the free States: foreseeing the consequences of the measures which were then in operation-foreseeing the evils which they would bring upon us, I have joined with them at some such hazard in the effort to prevent it. We failed. The evil is upon us. The territory which we have acquired by an expenditure of blood and treasure, is about to subject us-unless, under the mercy of Providence, we are guided by wiser counsels than those we have exhibited to an expenditure, in comparison with which the blood and treasure expended upon the Mexican conquest will sink into insignificance.-(U. S. Senate, February 11th,

1850.)

Berryer, Pierre Antoine (France, 1790-1868.)

Corporate Combinations - All public existence created by great public interests and all variations of these interests create a responsibility, and this responsibility is moral as well as material There is no gainsaying this, and all public functionaries admit they are responsible for their personal actions. But in opposition to them we find a body of men occupying an anomalous position. Immense establishments have been founded, which have attained such exaggerated proportions in their influence on

public and private life that the men responsible for their direction are more powerful than even public characters. I speak particularly of the directors of the great corporate companies and financial institutions who are irresponsible, or at least their acts are impersonal and official and free from direct responsibility.- (From a speech of 1868.)

Bethune, George W. (American, nineteenth century.) Americans-Not

Anglo-Saxons-God is bringing hither the most vigorous scions from all the European stocks, to make of them all one new man; not the Saxon, not the German, not the Gaul, not the Helvetian, but the American. Here they will unite as one brotherhood, will have one law, will share one interest. Spread over the vast region from the frigid to the torrid, from the Eastern to the Western Ocean, every variety of climate giving them choice of pursuit and modification of temperament, the ballot-box fusing together all rivalries, they shall have one national will. What is wanting in one race will be supplied by the characteristic energies of the others; and what is excessive in either, checked by the counter action of the rest.

Bingham, John A. (America, 1815-.)

The Assassination of President LincolnBooth proceeded to the theatre about nine o'clock in the evening, at the same time that Atzerodt, Payne, and Herold were riding the streets, while Surratt, having parted with his mother at the brief interview in her parlor, from which his retreating steps were heard, was walking the avenue, booted and spurred, and doubtless consulting with O'Laughlin. When Booth reached the rear of the theatre, he called Spangler to him (whose denial of that fact, when charged with it, as proven by three witnesses, is very significant), and received from Spangler his pledge to help him all he could, when with Booth he entered the theatre by the stage door, doubtless to see that the way was clear from the box to the rear door of the theatre, and look upon their victim, whose exact position they could study from the stage. After this view Booth passes to the street in front of the theatre, where, on the pavement, with other conspirators yet unknown, among them one described as a low-browed villain, he awaits the appointed moment. himself, impatient, enters the vestibule of the theatre from the front and asks the time. He is referred to the clock and returns. Presently, as the hour of ten approached, one of his guilty associates called the time; they wait; again, as the moments elapsed, this conspirator upon watch called the time; again, as the appointed hour draws nigh, he calls the time; and, finally, when the fatal moment arrives, he repeats in a louder tone, "Ten minutes past ten o'clock." Ten minutes past ten o'clock! The hour has come when the red right hand of these murderous conspirators should strike, and the dreadful deed of assassination be done.

Booth

Booth, at the appointed moment, entered the theatre, ascended to the dress circle, passed to the right, paused a moment, looking down, doubtless to see if Spangler is at his post, and approached the outer door of the close passage leading to the box occupied by the President, pressed it open, passed in, and closed the passage door behind him. Spangler's bar was in its place, and was readily adjusted by Booth in the mortise, and pressed against the inner side of the door, so that he was secure from interruption from without. He passes on to the next door, immediately behind the President, and there, stopping, looks through the aperture in the door into the President's box and deliberately observes the precise position of his victim, seated in the chair which had been prepared by the conspirators as the altar for the sacrifice, looking calmly and quietly down upon the glad and grateful people whom, by his fidelity, he had saved from the peril which had threatened the destruction of their government, and all they held dear this side of the grave-whom he had come upon invitation to greet with his presence with the words still lingering upon his lips which, he had uttered with uncovered head and uplifted hand before God and his country, when on the fourth of last March he took again the oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, declaring that he entered upon the duties of his great office "with malice toward none, with charity for all." In a moment more, strengthened by the knowledge that his co-conspirators were all at their posts, seven at least of them present in the city, two of them, Mudd and Arnold, at their appointed places watching for his coming, this hired assassin moves stealthily through the door, the fastenings of which had been removed to facilitate his entrance, fires upon his victim, and the martyr spirit of Abraham Lincoln ascends to God.

•Treason has done his worst; nor steel nor poison, Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing Can touch him further."

-(From the speech delivered at the trial of President Lincoln's assassins, 1865.) Binney, Horace (4 (American, 1780-1875.)

The Supreme Court-What, sir, is the Supreme Court of the United States? It is the august representative of the wisdom and justice and conscience of this whole people, in the exposition of their Constitution and laws. It is the peaceful and venerable arbitrator between the citizens in all questions touching the extent and sway of constitutional power. It is the great moral substitute for force in controversies between the people, the States, and the Union.

War War is a tremendous evil. Come when it will, unless it shall come in the necessary defense of our national security, or of that honor under whose protection national security reposes, it will come too soon;-too soon for our national prosperity; too soon for our individual happiness; too soon for the frugal, industrious, and virtuous habits of our citizens; too

soon, perhaps, for our most precious institutions. The man who, for any cause, save the sacred cause of public security, which makes all wars defensive, the man who, for any cause but this, shall promote or compel this final and terrible resort, assumes a responsibility second to none, nay, transcendently deeper and higher than any-which man can assume before his fellow-men, or in the presence of God his Creator.

Bismarck, Prince Otto von (Germany, 18151898.)

The Furor Teutonicus-A war which was not decreed by the popular will could be carried on if once the constituted authorities had finally decided on it as a necessity; it would be carried on vigorously, and perhaps successfully, after the first fire and the sight of blood. But it would not be a finish fight in its spirit with such fire and elan behind it as we would have in a war in which we were attacked. Then all Germany from Memel to Lake Constance would flame out like a powder mine; the country would bristle with arms, and no enemy would be rash enough to join issues with the juror Teutonicus (Berserker madness) thus roused by attack. (From the speech

in the Reichstag, February 6th, 1888, in favor of the Army Bill.)

Corporations as Parts of Civil Government I aver that a man or corporation appointed to do a public duty must perform it with an eye single to the public interest. If he perverts his authority to purposes of private gain he is guilty of corruption, and all who aid and abet him are his accomplices in crime. He defiles himself if he mingles his own business with that intrusted to him by the government and uses one to promote the other. If a judge excuse himself for a false decision by saying that he sold his judgment for the highest price he could get, you cover his character with infamy. A ministerial officer, like a sheriff, for instance, who extorts from a defendant, or even from a convict in his custody, what the law does not allow him to collect, and puts the surplus in his pocket, is a knave upon whom you have no mercy. You send county commissioners to the penitentiary for consulting their own financial advantage to the injury of the general weal. When the officers of a city corporation make a business of running it to enrich themselves, at the expense of the public, you can see at a glance that they are the basest of criminals. Why, then, can you not see that the officers of a railway corporation are equally guilty when they pervert the authority with which they are clothed to purposes purely selfish? A railroad corporation is a part of the civil government as much as a city corporation. The officers of the former, as much as the latter, are agents and trustees of the public, and the public has an interest precisely similar in the fidelity of both.

Why, then, should partiality or extortion be condemned as criminal in one if it be tolerated as fair business when practiced by the other?

― (1883.)

Blaine, James G. (American 1830-1893.)

The Death of Garfield-Great in life, he was surpassingly great in death. For no cause, in the very frenzy of wantonness and wickedness by the red hand of murder, he was thrust from the full tide of this world's interest, from its hopes, its aspirations, its victories, into the visible presence of death, and he did not quail. Not alone for one short moment in which, stunned and dazed, he could give up life, hardly aware of its relinquishment, but through days of deadly languor, through weeks of agony, that was not less agony because silently borne, with clear sight and calm courage he looked into his open grave. What blight and ruin met his anguished eyes, whose lips may tell,-what brilliant broken plans, what baffled, high ambitions, what sundering of strong, warm, manhood's friendship, what bitter rending of sweet household ties! Behind him a proud, expectant nation, a great host of sustaining friends, a cherished and happy mother, wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair, young daughter; the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day, and every day rewarding a father's love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demands. And his soul was not shaken. His countrymen were thrilled with instant, profound, and universal sympathy. Masterful in his mortal weakness, he became the centre of a nation's love, enshrined in the prayers of a world. But all the love and all the sympathy could not share with him his suffering. He trod the wine press alone. With unfaltering front he faced death. With unfailing tenderness he took leave of life. Above the demoniac hiss of the assassin's bullet he heard the voice of God. With simple resignation he bowed to the Divine decree.

As the end drew near his early craving for the sea returned. The stately mansion of power had been to him the wearisome hospital of pain, and he begged to be taken from his prison walls, from its oppressive, stifling air, from its homelessness and its hopelessness. Gently, silently, the love of a great people bore the pale sufferer to the longed-for healing of the sea, to live or to die, as God should will, within sight of the heaving billows, within sound of its manifold voices. With a wan, fevered face, tenderly lifted to the cooling breeze, he looked out wistfully upon the ocean's changing wonders; on its far sails; on its restless waves, rolling shoreward to break and die beneath the noonday sun; on the red clouds of evening, arching low to the horizon; on the serene and shining pathway of the stars. Let us think that his dying eyes read a mystic meaning which only the rapt and parting soul may know. Let us believe that in the silence of

the receding world he heard the great waves breaking on a farther shore and felt already upon his wasted brow the breath of the eternal morning. (1882.)

Conkling's "Turkey-Gobbler Strut»- As to the gentleman's cruel sarcasm, I hope he will not be too severe. The contempt of that largeminded gentleman is so wilting; his haughty disdain, his grandiloquent swell, his majestic, supereminent, overpowering, turkey-gobbler strut has been so crushing to myself and all the members of this House, that I know it was an act of the greatest temerity for me to venture upon a controversy with him. But, sir, I know who is responsible for all this. I know that within the last five weeks, as members of the House will recollect, an extra strut has characterized the gentleman's bearing. It is not his fault. It is the fault of another. That gifted and satirical writer, Theodore Tilton, of the New York Independent, spent some weeks recently in this city. His letters published in that paper embraced, with many serious statements, a little jocose satire, a part of which was the statement that the mantle of the late Winter Davis had fallen upon the member from New York. The gentleman took it seriously, and it has given his strut additional pomposity. It is striking. Hyperion to a satyr, Thersites to Hercules, mud to marble, dunghill to diamond, a singed cat to a Bengal tiger, a whining puppy to a roaring lion. Shade of the mighty Davis, forgive the almost profanation of that jocose satire. (From the debate of April 30th, 1866, in the U. S. Senate.)

Blair, Austin (American, 1818-1894.)

Military Government-The habits of military government are not easily laid aside. The soldier naturally has much greater faith in the efficiency of his sword to maintain public order and due respect for law than in the slower process of the court and the sheriff. He is apt to feel a certain contempt for the arrest that cannot be made without a demand based on affidavit, and for the imprisonment that may rapidly be terminated by an action of habeas corpus and the technicalities of the civil law. The arguments of the lawyer are to him little better than jargon,-at the best, cunning devices to defeat justice. Tell him that the great reliance of good government must be upon the good judgment and patriotism of the people, and if he does not contradict you, he will still believe that it would be better if his sword could somehow be thrown into the scale.- (1872.)

Blair, Francis Preston

1875.)

(American, 1821

The Deathbed of Benton - When Colonel Benton was on his deathbed, my father and mother both hastened from the country to be by his side. When they arrived his articulation was almost lost; but his mind was clear and his features gave it expression. After some motion of his lips, he drew my father's face close to his and said "Kiss me," and spoke of their long