The American Union Speaker

by John D. Philbrick

It will be the duty of the historian and the sage, in all ages, to let no occasion pass of commemorating this illustrious man; and, until time shall be no more, will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington! Lord Brougham.

LXXII.

WASHINGTON, A MAN OF GENIUS.

How many times have we been told that Washington was not a man of genius, but a person of excellent common sense, of admirable judgement, of rare virtues! He had no genius, it seems. O no! genius, we must suppose, is the peculiar and shining attribute of some orator, whose tongue can spout patriotic speeches; or some versifier, whose muse can hail Columbia; but not of the man who supported States on his arm, and carried America in his brain. What is genius? Is it worth anything? Is splendid folly the measure of its inspiration? Is wisdom its base and summit?—that which it recedes from, or tends toward? And by what definition do you award the name to the creator of an epic, and deny it to the creator of a country? On what principle is it to be lavished on him who sculptures in perishing marble the image of possible excellence, and withheld from him who built up in himself a transcendent character, indestructible as the obligations of duty, and beautiful as her rewards?

Indeed, if by genius of action, you mean will enlightened by intelligence, and intelligence energized by will,—if force and insight be its characteristics, and influence its test, and if great effects suppose a cause proportionally great, a vital, causative mind,—then was Washington most assuredly a man of genius, and one whom no other American has equalled in the power of working morally and mentally on other minds. His genius was of a peculiar kind, the genius of character, of thought and the objects of thought solidified and concentrated into active faculty. He belongs to that rare class of men,—rare as Homers and Miltons, rare as Platos and Newtons,—who have impressed their characters upon nations without pampering national vices. Such men have natures broad enough to include all the facts of a people's practical life, and deep enough to discern the spiritual laws which underlie, animate, and govern those facts. E. P. Whipple.

LXXIII.

IRISH ALIENS AND ENGLISH VICTORIES.

I should be surprised, indeed, if; while you are doing us wrong, you did not profess your solicitude to do us justice. From the day on which Strongbow set his foot upon the shore of Ireland, Englishmen were never wanting in protestations of their deep anxiety to do us justice;—even Strafford, the deserter of the people's cause,—the renegade Wentworth who gave evidence in Ireland of the spirit of instinctive tyranny which predominated in his character,—even Strafford, while he trampled upon our rights, and trod upon the heart of the country, protested his solicitude to do justice to Ireland! What marvel is it, then, that gentlemen opposite should deal in such vehement protestations? There is, however, one man, of great abilities,—not a member of this House, but whose talents and whose boldness have placed him in the topmost place in his party,—who, disdaining all imposture, and thinking it the best course to appeal directly to the religious and national antipathies of the people of this country,—abandoning all reserve, and flinging off the slender veil by which his political associates affect to cover, although they cannot hide, their motives,—distinctly and audaciously tells the Irish people that they are not entitled to the same privileges as Englishmen; and pronounces them, in any particular which could enter his minute enumeration of the circumstances by which fellow-citizenship is created, in race, identity, and religion to be aliens—to be aliens in race—to be aliens in country—to be aliens in religion! Aliens! Good God! was Arthur, Duke of Wellington, in the House of Lords,—and did he not start up and exclaim, "Hold! I have seen the aliens do their duty!"

The Duke of Wellington is not a man of an excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I cannot help thinking that, when he heard his Roman Catholic countrymen (for we are his countrymen) designated by a phrase as offensive as the abundant vocabulary of his eloquent confederate could supply,—I cannot help thinking that he ought to have recollected the many fields of fight in which we have been contributors to his renown. "The battles, sieges, fortunes, that he has passed," to have come back upon him. He ought to have remembered that, from the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down to that last and surpassing combat which has made his name imperishable,—from Assaye to Waterloo,—the Irish soldiers, with whom your armies are filled, were the inseparable auxiliaries to the glory with which his unparalleled successes have been crowned. Whose were the arms that drove your bayonets at Vimiera through the phalanxes that never reeled to the shock of war before? What desperate valor climbed the steeps and filled the moats at Badajos? All his victories should have rushed and crowded back upon his memory,—Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Albuera, Toulouse, and, last of all, the greatest—

Tell me—for you were there,—I appeal to the gallant soldier before me, from whose opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an intrepid breast;—tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance,—while death fell in showers when the artillery of France was levelled with a precision of the most deadly science, when her legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the onset,—tell me if, for an instant, when to hesitate for an instant was to be lost, the "aliens" blenched? And when, at length, the moment for the last and decided movement had arrived, and the valor which had so long been wisely checked was, at last, let loose,—when, with words familiar but immortal, the great captain commanded the great assault,—tell me if Catholic Ireland with less heroic valor than the natives of this your own glorious country precipitated herself upon the foe? The blood of England, Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in the same stream, and drenched the same field. When the chill morning dawned, their dead lay cold and stark together;—in the same deep pit their bodies were deposited; the green corn of spring is now breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls from heaven upon their union in the grave. Partakers in every peril, in the glory shall we not be permitted to participate; and shall we be told as a requital, that we are estranged from the noble country for whose salvation our life-blood was poured out? R. L. Sheil.