FOOTNOTE:
[53] By Edward Everett, an American statesman and orator (1794-1865).
Expression: This selection and also the selections on pages [202], [209], and [231] are fine examples of American oratory, such as was practiced by the statesmen and public speakers of the earlier years of our republic. Learn all that you can about Patrick Henry, Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Theodore Parker, and other eminent orators. Before attempting to read this selection aloud, read it silently and try to understand every statement or allusion contained in it. Call to mind all that you have learned in your histories or elsewhere concerning the Indians and their treatment by the American colonists. Now read with energy and feeling each paragraph of this extract from Mr. Everett's oration. Try to make your hearers understand and appreciate the feelings which are expressed.
NATIONAL RETRIBUTION[54]
Do you know how empires find their end?
Yes. The great states eat up the little. As with fish, so with nations.
Come with me! Let us bring up the awful shadows of empires buried long ago, and learn a lesson from the tomb.
Come, old Assyria, with the Ninevitish dove upon thy emerald crown! What laid thee low?
Assyria answers: "I fell by my own injustice. Thereby Nineveh and Babylon came with me to the ground."
O queenly Persia, flame of the nations! Wherefore art thou so fallen? thou who trod the people under thee, bridged the Hellespont with ships, and poured thy temple-wasting millions on the western world?
Persia answers: "Because I trod the people under me, because I bridged the Hellespont with ships, and poured my temple-wasting millions on the western world, I fell by my own misdeeds!"
And thou, muselike Grecian queen, fairest of all thy classic sisterhood of states, enchanting yet the world with thy sweet witchery, speaking in art, and most seductive in song, why liest thou there with thy beauteous yet dishonored brow reposing on thy broken harp?
Greece answers: "I loved the loveliness of flesh, embalmed in Parian stone. I loved the loveliness of thought, and treasured that more than Parian speech. But the beauty of justice, the loveliness of love, I trod down to earth. Lo! therefore have I become as those barbarian states, and one of them."
O manly, majestic Rome, with thy sevenfold mural crown all broken at thy feet, why art thou here? 'Twas not injustice brought thee low, for thy great Book of Law is prefaced with these words, "Justice is the unchanging, everlasting will to give each man his right." It was not the saint's ideal. It was the hypocrite's pretense.
And Rome says: "I made iniquity my law! I trod the nations under me! Their wealth gilded my palaces, where now thou mayst see the fox and hear the owl. Wicked men were my cabinet counselors. The flatterer breathed his poison in my ear. Millions of bondmen wet the soil with tears and blood! Do you not hear it crying yet to God? Lo here have I my recompense, tormented with such downfalls as you see.
"Go back and tell the newborn child who sitteth on the Alleghanies, laying his either hand upon a tributary sea,—tell him there are rights which States must keep, or they shall suffer punishment. Tell him there is a God who hurls to earth the loftiest realm that breaks his just, eternal law. Warn the young empire, that he come not down, dim and dishonored, to my shameful tomb. Tell him that Justice is the unchanging, everlasting will, to give each man his right. I knew this law. I broke it. Bid him keep it, and be forever safe."