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in this prayer. It is the aspiration of every soul that goes forth in the spirit of Reform. For what is the significance of this prayer? It is a petition that all holy influences would penetrate, and subdue, and dwell in the heart of man, until he shall think, and speak, and do good, from the very necessity of his being. So would the institutions of error and wrong crumble and pass away. So would sin die out from the earth; and the human soul living in harmony with the Divine Will, this earth would become like Heaven. It is too late for the Reformers to sneer at Christianity,-it is foolishness for them to reject it. In it are enshrined our faith in human progress,-our confidence in Reform. It is indissolubly connected with all that is hopeful, spiritual, capable, in man. That men have misunderstood it, and perverted it, is true. But it is also true, that the noblest efforts for human melioration have come out of it, have been based upon it. Is it not so? Come, ye remembered ones, who sleep the sleep of the just,— who took your conduct from the line of Christian Philosophy, come from your tombs, and answer!

Come, Howard, from the gloom of the prison and the taint of the lazar-house, and show us what Philanthrophy can do when imbued with the spirit of Jesus. Come, Eliot, from the thick forest where the red man listens to the Word of Life ;-come, Penn, from thy sweet counsel and weaponless victory,-and show us what Christian Zeal and Christian Love can accomplish with the rudest barbarians or the fiercest hearts. Come, Raikes, from thy labors with the ignorant and the poor,

and show us with what an eye this Faith regards the lowest and the least of our race; and how diligently it labors, not for the body, not for the rank, but for the plastic soul that is to course the ages of immortality. And ye, who are a great number,-ye nameless ones,who have done good in your narrow spheres, content to forego renown on earth, and seeking your reward in the Record on High,-come and tell us how kindly a spirit, how lofty a purpose, or how strong a courage, the Religion ye professed can breathe into the poor, the humble, and the weak. Go forth, then, Spirit of Christianity, to thy great work of REFORM! The Past bears witness to thee in the blood of thy martyrs, and the ashes of thy saints and heroes: the Present is hopeful because of thee; the Future shall acknowledge thy omnipo

tence.

LESSON XLII.

1. ENTERPRISE OF AMERICAN COLONISTS.-Edmund Burke, 1775.

For some time past, Mr. Speaker, has the Old World been fed from the New. The scarcity which you have felt would have been a desolating famine, if this child of your old age,--if America,—with a true filial piety, with a Roman charity, had not put the full breast of youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent. Turning from the agricultural resource of the Colonies, consider the wealth which they have drawn from the sea by their fisheries. The spirit

in which that enterprising employment has been exercised ought to raise your esteem and admiration. Pray, sir, what in the world is equal to it? Pass by the other, and look at the manner in which the People of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery. While we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson Bay, and Davis's Straits, while we are looking for them beneath the Arctic Circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of Polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen serpent of the South. Falkland Island, which seemed too remote and romantic an object for the grasp of national ambition, is but a stage and resting-place in the progress of their victorious industry. Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the accumulated winter of both the Poles. We know that whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa, others run the longitude, and pursue their gigantic game, along the coast of Brazil. No sea but that is vexed by their fisheries. No climate that is not witness to their toils. Neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise, ever carried this most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent People; a People who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

When I contemplate these things,-when I know that the Colonies in general owe little or nothing to

any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of a watchful and suspicious Government, but that, through a wise and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection,—when I reflect upon these efforts, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink, and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt, and die away within me. My rigor relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

2. FROM LORD CHATHAM'S SPEECH, January 20th, 1775.

"I attended," says Josiah Quincy, Jun. "the debates in the House of Lords. Good fortune gave me one of the best places for hearing, and taking minutes. Lord Chatham rose like Marcellus. His language, voice and gesture, were more pathetic than I ever saw or heard before, at the Bar or the Senate. He seemed like an old Roman Senator, rising with the dignity of age, yet speaking with the fire of youth." Dr. Franklin, who was also present at the debate, said of it, "I had seen, in the course of my life, sometimes eloquence without wisdom, and often wisdom without eloquence; in the present instance, I have seen both united, and both as I think, in the highest degree possible."

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America, my Lords, cannot be reconciled to this country-they ought not to be reconciled-till the troops of Britain are withdrawn. How can America trust you, with the bayonet at her breast? How can she suppose that you mean less than bondage or death? I therefore move that an address be presented to his

Majesty, advising that immediate orders be despatched to General Gage, for removing his Majesty's forces from the town of Boston. The way must be immediately opened for reconciliation. It will soon be too late. An hour now lost in allaying ferments in America may produce years of calamity. Never will I desert, for a moment, the conduct of this weighty business. Unless nailed to my bed by the extremity of sickness, I will pursue it to the end. I will knock at the door of this sleeping and confounded Ministry, and will, if it be possible, rouse them to a sense of their danger.

"I contend not for indulgence, but for justice, to America. What is our right to persist in such cruel and vindictive acts against a loyal, respectable people? They say you have no right to tax them without their consent. They say truly."

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3. THE SAME-continued.

Representation and taxation must go together; they are inseparable. I therefore urge and conjure your Lordships to adopt the conciliating measure. If illegal violence has been, as it is said, committed in America, prepare the way-open the door of possibility -for acknowledgment and satisfaction; but proceed not to such coercion-such proscription: cease your indiscriminate inflictions; amerce not thirty thousand; oppress not three millions; irritate them not to unappeasable rancor, for the fault of forty or fifty. Such severity of injustice must for ever render incurable the wounds you have inflicted. have inflicted. What though you march from town to town, from province to province? What

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