be rather Grecian than Asiatic. In a despotism, popular eloquence can have no place. Where the affairs of a nation are controlled by the will of one, the ears of power are approached by other language than that of popular eloquence. The soft whispers of flattery are the only species of eloquence ever heard in the courts of princes, and nothing can be more diverse than they from the stern and awful voice of truth, without which eloquence can never exist.

But as mankind have journeyed westward from their cradle in the east, the relative position of government and people has gradually become reversed. The doctrine has been gaining ground, that the government exists for the people, instead of the people for the government, in short, that the government are the servants of the people, instead of the people being servants of the government, that public affairs are to be conducted according to the judgment of the whole, legitimately expressed, rather than according to the arbitrary will of one, or a few. When this change takes place, power changes hands, and the orator becomes the most influential man in the state.

About the middle of the seventeenth century, Louis the fourteenth of France declared, "I am the state," and it was most sadly true; and in the spirit of that declaration, he reigned

without the formality of a prime minister, for fifty-four years, the autocrat of France. At the age of seventeen, he entered the hall of parliament, booted and spurred, whip in hand, and commanded a national edict to be registered. Near the close of the eighteenth century, in the reign of Louis the sixteenth, the people took the government into their own hands, and, at the same moment, eloquence ascended the throne. Mirabeau, by the mere force of oratory, could depose his sovereign, and, by a single word, overthrow a monarchy, which had been consolidating for ages. The king sent his usher to dissolve the national assembly. But Mirabeau, the orator, arose. "The commons of France have resolved to deliberate," said he. "We have listened to the king's exposition of those views which have been suggested to him; and you, who have no claim to be his organ in this assembly, you, who have here no place, nor vote, nor right of speaking, you are not the person to remind us of his discourse. Go, tell your master that we are here by the order of the people, and that nothing shall drive us hence but the bayonet." From that moment till his death, by the mere force of popular eloquence, Mirabeau ruled almost as absolute in France, as Louis the fourteenth had done, one hundred and forty years before. Such, to a greater or less degree,

is the sway which is always given to popular eloquence by the establishment of the government of the people. The power which was thus acquired by the people, has been, in a great measure, retained in that country to the present hour, and France is now governed by public opinion as well as royal prerogative. That public opinion expresses itself in the debates of parliament, and eloquence, by this means, exercises an extensive influence over the course of public affairs, though there are few who venture themselves into the tribunal without a written speech.

In England, power was much earlier and more gradually transferred from the crown to the people. At the commencement of the reformation England was nearly as absolute a monarchy as France. Henry the Henry the eighth, on the hesitation of parliament to pass one of his favorite measures, sent for the speaker, reprimanded him severely, and, drawing his hand across his neck, told him, "If my bill does not pass, this must come off." In a little more than a century, a parliament actually treated the head of Charles the first as Henry the eighth had threatened to treat that of the speaker, and England was, for seven years, a republic.

When monarchy was restored, it was with such restrictions as rendered it an entirely dif

ferent species of government from what it was before. The reformation took early and full effect in England. The art of printing, lately invented, soon diffused such a degree of intelligence over the whole kingdom, that the house of commons, heretofore the mere vassals of the king and aristocracy, began to embrace a large share of the learning and the talent of the realm. At first, they had been summoned as the instruments of the king in levying taxes and raising supplies. But it was found that the power of levying taxes, at first so convenient to the monarch, was one of those rules which would work both ways. If it could be made subservient to the monarch, it might likewise be used against him. The hand that could give, could withhold, and the commons might, at any moment, stop the whole machinery of government; and thus the third estate, or the representatives of the people, became a coordinate branch of the government.

In the meantime, the relations of England had become vastly more complicated and extensive. Her navy, from a few ships, had increased to the mightiest maratime force that circumnavigated the globe. It had planted colonies on almost every shore, and established commerce with almost every people under heaven. England herself became a mere point on the earth's surface, compared

with her foreign dominions. North America had become peopled by her boldest enterprise, and her best blood. The power of these vast dominions centred in the parliament of England. To the cares involved in the government of so wide an empire, royalty became altogether inadequate. Kings are ever prone to prefer pleasure to business, and to devolve the labors of government on those who are willing to submit to the toil. Not only, then, the legislative, but the executive power, slid out of the hands of the monarchs of England, into the hands of the greatest statesmen of the time. The successors of Henry the eighth, and of his no less arbitrary daughter, Elizabeth, subsided into the mere organs of carrying into execution the will of the people of England. Their sign manual became the mere public seal, by which the prime minister authenticated the doings of the supreme legislative and executive powers. That minister became the actual sovereign of England, for the time being, and he could reign no longer than he could maintain a majority in the house of commons, or, in other words, represent the will of the English people.

When, then, since the beginning of time, has there ever been presented such a field for the sway of eloquence? The votes which were passed in the British house of commons