en which he acknowledges his acquiescence in the | ests, we took care to give no just cause of ofpassages of the address echoing the satisfaction fense to other powers.

felt at the success of the liberal commercial prin

ARY 15, 1825.

In the next place, are we prepared to say that these and other acts of the Catholic Association have no tendency to excite and inflame animosities? I affirm, without hesitation, that they have directly that tendency; and in support of this affirmation I must beg leave to recur, however solemnly warned against the recurrence, to an expression which an expression which I was the first to bring to the notice of the House, but which has been since the subject of repeated animadversion ; I mean the adjuration "by the hate you bear to Orangemen," which was used by the association in their address to the Catholics of Ireland.

ciples adopted by this country, and at the steps ON UNLAWFUL SOCIETIes in Ireland. FEBRU taken for recognizing the new states of America. It does happen, however, that the honorable and learned gentleman being not unfrequently a speaker in this House, nor very concise in his speeches, and touching occasionally, as he proceeds, on almost every subject within the range of his imagination, as well as making some observations on the matter in hand--and having at different periods proposed and supported every innovation of which the law or Constitution of the country is susceptible-it is impossible to innovate, without appearing to borrow from him. Either, therefore, we must remain forever absolutely locked up as in a northern winter, or we must break our way out by some mode already suggested by the honorable and learned gentleman, and then he cries out, "Ah, I was there before you! That is what I told you to do; but as you would not do it then, you have no right to do it now." In Queen Anne's reign there lived a very sage and able critic, named Dennis, who, in his old age, was the prey of a strange fancy, that he had himself written all the good things in all the good plays that were acted. Every good passage he met with in any author he insisted was his own. "It is none of his," Dennis would always say; "no, it's mine!" He went one day to see a new tragedy. Nothing particularly good to his taste occurred, till a scene in which a great storm was represented. As soon as he heard the thunder rolling over head, he exclaimed,

Various and not unamusing have been the attempts of gentlemen who take the part of the association, to get rid of this most unlucky phrase, or at least to dilute and attenuate its obvious and undeniable meaning. It is said to be unfair to select one insulated expression as indicating the general spirit of the proceedings of any public body. Granted; if the expression had escaped in the heat of debate, if it had been struck out by the collision of argument, if it had been thrown forth in haste, and had been, upon reflection, recalled. But if the words are found in a document which was prepared with care and considered with deliberation-if it is notorious that they were pointed out as objectionable when they were first proposed by the framers of the address, but were, nevertheless, upon argument retained—– surely we are not only justified in receiving them as an indication, at least, of the animus of those who used them; but we should be rejecting the best evidence of that animus, if we passed over so well-weighed a manifestation of it.

Were not this felt by honorable gentlemen on the other side to be true, we should not have seen them so anxious to put forced and fanciful con

That's my thunder!" So it is with the honorable and learned gentleman; it's all his thunder. It will henceforth be impossible to confer any boon, or make any innovation, but he will claim it as his thunder. But it is due to him to acknowledge that he does not claim every thing; he will be content with the exclusive merit of the liberal measures relating to trade and commerce. Not desirous of violating his own principles, by claiming a monopoly of fore-structions on a phrase which is as plain in its sight and wisdom, he kindly throws overboard to meaning as any which the hand of man ever my honorable and learned friend [Sir J. Mackin- wrote or the eye of man ever saw. The first tosh] near him, the praise of South America. I defense of this phrase was by an honorable memshould like to know whether, in some degree, ber from Ireland, who told us that the words do this also is not his thunder. He thinks it right not convey the same meaning in the Irish lanitself; but lest we should be too proud if he ap- guage which we in England naturally attach to proved our conduct in toto, he thinks it wrong in them. I do not pretend to be conversant with point of time. I differ from him essentially; for the Irish language; and must, therefore, leave if I pique myself on any thing in this affair, it is that apology to stand for what it may be worth, the time. That, at some time or other, states on the learned gentleman's erudition and authorwhich had separated themselves from the mother ity. I will not follow every other gentleman country should or should not be admitted to the who has strained his faculties to explain away rank of independent nations, is a proposition to this unfortunate expression; but will come at which no possible dissent could be given. The once to my honorable and learned friend [Sir whole question was one of time and mode. There James Mackintosh], the member for Knaresborwere two modes: one a reckless and headlong ough, to whom the palm in this contest of ingecourse, by which we might have reached our ob- nuity must be conceded by all his competitors. ject at once, but at the expense of drawing upon My honorable friend has expended abundant reus consequences not highly to be estimated; the search and subtilty upon this inquiry, and having other was more strictly guarded in point of prin- resolved the phrase into its elements in the cruciple; so that, while we pursued our own inter-cible of his philosophical mind, has produced it

to us purified and refined to a degree that must and learned friend; it might be the poor man's command the admiration of all who take delight only fault, and therefore clearly incorrigible. But in metaphysical alchemy. My honorable and if I had the good fortune to find out that he was learned friend began by telling us that, after all, also addicted to stealing, might I not, with a safe hatred is no bad thing in itself. "I hate a conscience, send him to my learned friend with a Tory," says my honorable friend-" and another very strong recommendation, saying, I send you man hates a cat; but it does not follow that he a man whom I know to be a drunkard; but I am would hunt down the cat, or I the Tory." Nay, happy to assure you he is also a thief: you can so far from it-hatred, if it be properly managed, not do better than employ him; you will make is, according to my honorable friend's theory, no his drunkenness counteract his thievery, and no bad preface to a rational esteem and affection. doubt you will bring him out of the conflict a It prepares its votaries for a reconciliation of dif- very moral personage. My honorable and learnferences-for lying down with their most invet-ed friend, however, not content with laying down erate enemies, like the leopard and the kid, in these new rules for reformation, thought it right the vision of the prophet.

to exemplify them in his own person, and, like Pope's Longinus, to be "himself the great sublime he drew." My learned friend tells us that Dr. Johnson was what he [Dr. Johnson himself] called a good hater; and that among the qualities which he hated most were two which my honorable friend unites in his own person-that

This dogma is a little startling, but it is not altogether without precedent. It is borrowed from a character in a play which is, I dare say, as great a favorite with my learned friend as it is with me--I mean the comedy of The Rivals; in which Mrs. Malaprop, giving a lecture on the subject of marriage to her niece (who is unrea-of Whig and that of Scotchman. "So that," says sonable enough to talk of liking as a necessary my honorable friend, "if Dr. Johnson were alive, preliminary to such a union), says, "What have and were to meet me at the club, of which he you to do with your likings and your preferences, was a founder, and of which I am now an unchild? depend upon it, it is safest to begin with worthy member, he would probably break up the a little aversion. I am sure I hated your poor meeting rather than sit it out in such society." dear uncle like a blackamoor before we were No, sir, not so. My honorable and learned friend | married; and yet you know, my dear, what a forgets his own theory. If he had been only a good wife I made him." Such is my learned Whig, or only a Scotchman, Dr. Johnson might friend's argument to a hair. have treated him as he apprehends; but being both, the great moralist would have said to my honorable friend, "Sir, you are too much of a Whig to be a good Scotchman; and, sir, you are too much of a Scotchman to be a good Whig.” It is no doubt from the collision of these two vices in my learned friend's person, that he has become what I, and all who have the happiness of meeting him at the club, find him—an entirely faultless character.

But finding that this doctrine did not appear to go down with the House so glibly as he had expected, my honorable and learned friend presently changed his tack, and put forward a theory, which, whether for novelty or for beauty, I pronounce to be incomparable; and, in short, as wanting nothing to recommend it but a slight foundation in truth. "True philosophy," says my honorable friend, "will always contrive to lead men to virtue by the instrumentality of their conflicting vices. The virtues, where more than one exist, may live harmoniously together; but the vices bear mortal antipathy to one another, and therefore furnish to the moral engineer the power by which he can make each keep the other under control." Admirable !-but, upon this doctrine, the poor man who has but one single vice must be in a very bad way. No fulcrum, no moral power for effecting his cure.

For my own part, however, I must say, that I can not see any hope of obtaining the great moral victory which my learned friend has anticipated--of winning men to the practice of virtue by adjurations addressed to their peculiar vices. I believe, after all these ratiocinations and refinements, we must come back to the plain truth, which is felt even while it is denied that the phrase "by the hate you bear to Orangemen,' is an indefensible phrase; that it is at least― as his more fortunate neighbor, who has two or what alone I am contending that it is-inconmore vices in his composition, is in a fair way of testable evidence of the allegation that the Cathbecoming a very virtuous member of society. I olic Association does excite animosities in Irewonder how my learned friend would like to have land. It is an expression calculated to offend, this doctrine introduced into his domestic estab-provoke, and exasperate the Orangemen, howlishment. For instance, suppose that I discharge ever palatable to those whose hatred of Orangea servant because he is addicted to liquor, I could men it predicates, and, to say the least, does not not venture to recommend him to my honorable disapprove.

Where

LORD BROUGHAM.

HENRY BROUGHAM is the last among the orators embraced in this collection; and as he is still living, only a brief notice will be given of his life and character.

The family was one of the most ancient in Westmoreland, England. Brougham Castle is older than the days of King John; and the manor connected with it, after passing out of the family for a time, was regained by purchase and entailed on the oldest descendant in the male line. Toward the close of the last century, it fell to a young man who was studying in the University of Edinburgh, and who married, while there, a niece of the celebrated historian, Dr. Robertson. The first-fruit of this union was a son named HENRY, who was born at Edinburgh in 1779.

The family appear to have resided chiefly or wholly in the Scottish capital; the boy received the rudiments of his education at the High School of Edinburgh, under the celebrated Dr. Adam, and was even then distinguished for his almost intuitive perception of whatever he undertook to learn. "He was wild, fond of pleasure, taking to study by starts, and always reading with more effect than others (when he did read), because it was for some specific object, the knowledge of which was to be acquired in the shortest possible time." We have here a perfect picture of Lord Brougham's mode of reading for life. Eager, restless, grasping after information of every kind, he has brought into his speeches a wider range of collateral thought than any of our orators, except Burke; and he has done it in just the way that might be expected from such a man, with inimitable freshness and power, but with those hasty judgments, that want of a profound knowledge of principles, and that frequent inaccuracy in details, which we always see in one who reads "for some specific object," instead of taking in the whole range of a science, and who is so much in a hurry, that he is constantly aiming to accomplish his task in "the shortest possible time.” He entered the University of Edinburgh in the sixteenth year of his age, and soon gained the highest distinction by his extraordinary mathematical attainments. He gave in solutions of some very difficult theorems, which awakened the admiration of his instructors; and before he was seventeen, produced an essay on the "Flection and Reflection of Light," which was estimated so highly as to be inserted in the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions. His supposed discoveries, so far as they were correct, proved, indeed, to have been anticipated by earlier writers; but they were undoubtedly the result of his own investigation; and they showed so remarkable a talent for mathematical research, that he was rewarded, at a somewhat later period (1803), with an election as member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. It is a curious fact that Lord Brougham has again taken up his favorite pursuits in optics at the age of seventy, and made recent communications to the French Institute, from his chateau at Cannes, in the south of France, on the same branch of science which called forth his early efforts in the University of Edinburgh.

Having completed his college course, Mr. Brougham entered with indefatigable zeal upon the study of the law, in conjunction with Jeffery, Horner, and several other young men, who, only a few years after, stood foremost among the leading advocates of the country. He had commenced the practice of extemporaneous speaking some years before in the Speculative Society, that great theater of debate for the University of Edinburgh. He now carried it to a still greater height in the immediate prospect of his professional duties, and "exercised the same superiority over his

youthful competitors (though some of them were then and afterward remarkable for their ability) which he held at a later period as Chancellor over the House of Lords." He was called in due course to the Scottish bar, and commenced business in Edinburgh with the most encouraging prospects of success. In 1803, he published his first work, in two octavo volumes, entitled "The Colonial Policy of the European Powers," containing an immense amount of information, and distinguished by the daring spirit of philosophical inquiry which he carried into this vast and complicated subject. He now removed to London, and, in addition to his practice at the bar, entered warmly into politics; producing a volume on the "State of the Nation," which awakened the liveliest interest by its eloquent assertion of Whig principles, and ultimately procured him a seat in Parliament by means of the Russell family.

Before his removal to London, he united with the companions mentioned above in establishing the Edinburgh Review. He was for nearly twenty years one of its most regular contributors; and to him more than any other man was the work indebted for its searching analysis, its contemptuous and defiant spirit, its broad views of political subjects, and its eloquent exposition of Whig principles. Its motto,1 whether selected by him or not, was designed to justify that condemnatory spirit which is so striking a trait in his character. A great part of his life has been spent in beating down; in detecting false pretensions whether in literature or politics; in searching out the abuses of long established institutions; in laying open the perversions of public charities; in exposing the cruelties of the criminal code; or in rousing public attention to a world of evils resulting from the irregularities in the administration of municipal law. The reader will be amused to trace this tendency of his mind, in turning over the four octavo volumes of his speeches as edited by himself, and observing their titles. We have "Military Flogging," with an exposure of its atrocities"Queen Caroline," defended at the expense of her husband-"The Durham Clergy," lashed unmercifully for their insulting treatment of the Queen-"The Orders in Council," with the folly of abusing the Americans because they had suffered from the abuse of France-" Agricultural Distress" and "Manufacturing Distress," as resulting from the rashness and incompetency of ministers-" Army Estimates," under which millions were lavished for mere military show in time of peace-"The Holy Alliance," with its atrocious attack on the constitutional government of Spain through the instrumentality of France-"The Slave Trade”—“The Missionary Smith," murdered in Demerara under a false charge of having excited insurrection" Negro Apprenticeship," its inadequacy and folly-"The Eastern Slave Trade," or the cruelty and guilt of transporting coolies from Hindostan to be made laborers in the West India Islands-" Law Reform". "Parliamentary Reform". "Education," and the abuse of Educational Charities-"Scotch Parliamentary and Burgh Reform”—“ Scotch Marriage and Divorce Bill," showing that the existing laws are "the worst possible" "The Poor Laws," with "the deplorably corrupting effects of this abominable system". "Neutral Rights," exposing their invasion by Great Britain-" Administration of Law in Ireland," showing that " she had received penal statutes from England almost as plentifully as she had received blessings from the hands of Providence"-"Change of Ministry in 1834," with the gross, glaring, and almost incredible inconsistencies of Lord Wellington-" Business of Parliament," or "the abuses which prevail in the mode of conducting its business"-"Maltreatment of the North American Colonies"-"The Civil List," or men's voting an allowance to the Queen “under the influence of excited feelings, and without giving themselves time to reflect." No orator certainly, since the days of Pym and Charles I., could furnish such another list.

1 "Judex damnatur dum nocens absolvitur," the judge is condemned when the guilty is suffered

to escape.

The character of his eloquence corresponds to the subjects he has chosen. "For fierce, vengeful, and irresistible assault," says John Foster, " Brougham stands the foremost man in all this world." His attack is usually carried on under the forms of logic. For the materials of his argument he sometimes goes off to topics the most remote and apparently alien from his subject, but he never fails to come down upon it at last with overwhelming force. He has wit in abundance, but it is usually dashed with scorn or contempt. His irony and sarcasm are terrible. None of our orators have ever equaled him in bitterness.

His style has a hearty freshness about it, which springs from the robust constitution of his mind and the energy of his feelings. He sometimes disgusts by his use of Latinized English, and seems never to have studied our language in the true sources of its strength-Shakspeare, Milton, and the English Bible. His greatest fault lies in the structure of his sentences. He rarely puts forward a simple, distinct proposition. New ideas cluster around the original frame-work of his thoughts; and instead of throwing them into separate sentences, he blends them all in one; enlarging, modifying, interlacing them together, accumulating image upon image, and argument upon argument, till the whole becomes perplexed and cumbersome, in the attempt to crowd an entire system of thought into a single statement. Notwithstanding these faults, however, we dwell upon his speeches with breathless interest. They are a continual strain of impassioned argument, intermingled with fearful sarcasm, withering invective, lofty declamation, and the earnest majesty of a mind which has lost every other thought in the magnitude of its theme.

Lord Brougham has been in opposition during the greater part of his political life. He came in as Lord Chancellor with Earl Grey at the close of 1830, and retained his office about four years. Of late he has withdrawn, to a great extent, from public affairs, and spent a considerable part of his time on an estate which he owns in the south of France.

The following comparison between the subject of this sketch and his great parliamentary rival will interest the reader, as presenting the characteristic qualities of each in bolder relief from their juxtaposition. It is from the pen of one who had watched them both with the keenest scrutiny during their conflicts in the House of Commons. The scene described in the conclusion arose out of a memorable attack of Mr. Canning on Lord Folkestone for intimating, that he had "truckled to France.” The Lacedæmonians," said Mr. C., "were in the habit of deterring their children from the vice of intoxication by occasionally exhibiting their slaves in a state of disgusting inebriety. But, sir, there is a moral as well as a physical intoxication. Never before did I behold so perfect a personification of the character which I have somewhere seen described, as exhibiting the contortions of the Sibyl without her inspiration.' Such was the nature of the noble Lord's speech." Mr. Brougham took occasion, a few evenings after, to retort on Mr. Canning and repeat the charge, in the manner here described: but first we have a sketch of their characteristics as orators.

Canning was airy, open, and prepossessing; Brougham seemed stern, hard, lowering, and almost repulsive. Canning's features were handsome, and his eye, though deeply ensconced under his eyebrows, was full of sparkle and gayety; the features of Brougham were harsh in the extreme: while his forehead shot up to a great elevation, his chin was long and square; his mouth, nose, and eyes seemed huddled together in the center of his face, the eyes absolutely lost amid folds and corrugations ; and while he sat listening, they seemed to retire inward or to be vailed by a filmy curtain, which not only concealed the appalling glare which shot from them when he was aroused, but rendered his mind and his purpose a sealed book to the keenest sérutiny of man. Canning's passions appeared upon the open champaign of his face, drawn up in ready array, and moved to and fro at every turn of his own oration and