Our liberty was not born in a day. It is not the work of one generation. It is the fruit of a hundred struggles. Many have been the efforts to destroy it after the English constitution was trampled upon. Often traitors sought to substitute arbitrary will for well-established law; and often have the people for a time been misled. But thus far they have always waked up and called the traitors and factionists to account.

Charles I. trampled on the constitution. He had judges who decided that his will was law and all who resisted that will and defended the constitution were punished as disloyal. And it did seem as if his power was irresistible. No doubt if you weak-kneed radicals of the South had lived in that day you would have said: "The constitution is dead and we must consent to what we can not resist." But John Hampden would not consent. He resisted. He was tried as a criminal for resisting and was condemned. But what was the sequel? The people finally arose in power. Charles and his ministers perished. The very judges that condemned Hampden were themselves tried and condemned as criminals; and the very officers, the sheriffs who executed the orders of Charles and his courts, were sued by the citizens for damages and made to pay nearly a million of dollars for executing the processes of an unconstitutional law. So Cromwell and his parliament violated the constitution and, though they also flourished for a season, they, too, were overthrown. So James II. trampled on the constitution and had to fly his kingdom a fugitive for life.

In all these struggles good men for a time suffered and bad men for a time ruled, but the English race have never failed to rescue their chartered liberties from the power

both of traitors and fanatics. I tell you the American people will not always be deceived. They will rise in defense of the constitution and traitors will tremble. They who rallied three million strong to defeat what they considered an armed assault on the constitution and union will not sleep until a few hundred traitors from behind the masked battery of congressional oaths and deceptive pretensions of loyalty shall utterly batter down the constitution and union forever. I warn you, by the history of your own fathers, by every instinct of manhood, by every right of liberty, by every impulse of justice, that the day is coming when you will feel the power of an outraged and betrayed people. Go on confiscating! Arrest without warrant or probable cause; destroy habeas corpus; deny trial by jury; abrogate State governments; defile your own race and flippantly say the constitution is dead! On, on with your work of ruin, ye hell-born rioters in sacred things, but remember that for all these things the people will bring you into judgment!-Benjamin H. Hill.

[Extract from the Davis Hall speech delivered in Atlanta on July 16, 1867, in the presence of armed Federal troops, against the measures of reconstruction.]

THE MAN OF THE HOUR.

There are trials severer than war and calamities worse than the defeat of arms. The South was to pass through such trials and be threatened with such calamities by the events of that period. Now and then it seems that all the latent and pent-up forces of the natural world are turned loose for terrible destruction. The foundations of the

earth, laid in the depths of the ages, are shaken by mighty upheavals; the heavens, whose blackness is unrelieved by a single star, roll their portentous thunderings "and nature, through all her works, gives signs of woe." The fruits of years of industry are swept away in an hour; the landmarks of ages are obliterated without a vestige; the sturdiest oak that has struck deep its roots in the bosom of the earth is the plaything of the maddened winds; the rocks that mark the formation of whole geological periods are rent and deep gorges in the mountain side, like ugly scars in the face of the earth, tell of the force and fury of the storm. Such was that period to our social, domestic and political institutions. Law no longer held benign sway, but gave place to the mandate of petty dictators, enforced by the bayonet. What little of property remained was held by no tenure but the capricious will of the plunderer; liberty and life were at the mercy of the conqueror; the sanctity of home was invaded; vice triumphed over virtue; ignorance ruled in lordly and haughty dominion over intelligence; the weak were oppressed, the unoffending insulted, the fallen warred on; truth was silenced; falsehood, unblushing and brazon, stalked abroad unchallenged; anxiety filled every heart; apprehension clouded every prospect; despair shadowed every hearthstone; society was disorganized; Legislatures dispersed; judges torn from their benches by the strong arm of military power; States subverted, arrests made, trials held and sentences pronounced without evidence; madness, lust, hate and crime of every hue, defiant, wicked and diabolical, ruled the hour, until the very air was rent with the cry and heaven's deep concave echoed the wail: "Alas!

She

Our country sinks beneath the yoke. She weeps. bleeds, and each new day a gash is added to her wounds."

Among all the true sons of Georgia and of the South in that day one form stands conspicuous. No fear blanched his cheek, no danger daunted his courageous soul. Unawed by power, unbribed by honor, he stood in the midst of the perils that environed him, brave as Paul before the Sanhedrin, ready for bonds or death, true as the men at Runnymede and as eloquent as Henry kindling the fires of the revolution. His crested helmet waves high where the battle is fiercest. The pure rays of the sun reflected from his glittering shield are not purer than the fires that burn in the breast it covers. His clarion voice rang out louder than the din of battle, like the bugle blast of the Highland chief, resounding over hill and mountain and glen, summoning his clans to the defense of home and liberty. It was the form and voice of Hill.

They tell us to let the dead past be buried. Well, be it so. We are willing to forget; we this day proclaim and bind it by the highest sanction—the sacred obligation of Southern honor-that we have forgotten all of the past that should not be cherished. But there is a past that is not dead-that can not die. It moves upon us, it speaks to us. Every instinct of noble manhood, every impulse of gratitude, every obligation of honor demands that we cherish it. We are bound to it by ties stronger than the cable that binds the continent and laid as deep in human nature. We can not cease to honor it until we lose the sentiment that has moved all ages and countries. We find the expression of that sentiment in

every memorial we erect to commemorate those we love. In the unpretentious slab of the country churchyard, in the painted windows of the cathedral, in the unpolished headstone and the costliest mausoleum of our cities of the dead. It dedicated the Roman Pantheon. It has filled Trafalgar Square and Westminster Abbey with memorials of those who for centuries have made the poetry, the literature, the science, the statesmanship, the oratory, the military and naval glory, the civilization of England. It has adorned the squares of our own Washington City and filled every rotunda, corridor and niche of the Capitol with statues and monuments and busts until we have assembled a congress of the dead to instruct, inspire and guide the congress of the living, while, higher than all surrounding objects, towering above the lofty dome of the Capitol, stands the obelisk to Washington!

The great and good do not die. Eighteen centuries ago the head of the great apostle fell before the sword of the bloody executioner, but through long ages of oppression his example animated the persecuted church, and to-day stimulates the missionary spirit to press on through the rigors of every clime and the darkness of every heathen superstition to the final and universal triumph of that cross for which he died. Four centuries ago the body of John Wycliff was exhumed and burnt to ashes and these cast into the water, but "the Avon to the Severn runs the Severn to the sea," and the doctrines for which he died cover and bless the world. Half a century ago the living voice of O'Connell was hushed, but that voice to-day stirs the high-born passions of every true Irish heart through