And are we to speak and act like men who have sustained no wrong? We! Six millions of—what shall I say?—citizens?
Among the exploits of marvelous and almost legendary valor performed by that great English chieftain—who has been laid aside uncoroneted, and almost unhonored because he would promote and distinguish the men of work in preference to the men of idleness—among his achievements not the least wondrous was the subjugation of the robber tribes of the Cutchee Hills in the north of Scinde.
But if there is one man here—I am speaking not of shapes and forms, but of feelings—if there is one here that feels as men were wont to feel, he will draw the sword.
And you—you, who are eight millions strong—you, who boast at every meeting that this island is the finest which the sun looks down upon—you, who have no threatening sea to stem, no avalanche to dread—you, who say that you could shield along your coast a thousand sail, and be the princes of a mighty commerce—you, who by the magic of an honest hand, beneath each summer sky, might cull a plenteous harvest from your soil, and with the sickle strike away the scythe of death—you, who have no vulgar history to read—you, who can trace, from field to field, the evidences of civilization older than the Conquest—the relics of a religion far more ancient than the Gospel—you, who have thus been blessed, thus been gifted, thus been prompted to what is wise and generous and great—you will make no effort—you will perish by the thousand, and the finest island that the sun looks down upon, amid the jeers and hooting of the world, will blacken into a plague spot, a wilderness, a sepulcher.
In his early manhood, at the bidding of conscience, against the advice of his dearest friends, in opposition to stern paternal commands, against every dictate of worldly wisdom and human prudence, in spite of all the dazzling temptations of ambition so alluring to the heart of a young man, he turned away from the broad fair highway to wealth, position, and distinction, that the hands of a king opened before him, and, casting his lot with the sect weakest and most unpopular in England, through paths that were tangled with trouble, and lined with pitiless thorns of persecution, he walked into honor and fame, and the reverence of the world, such as royalty could not promise and could not give him.
No one venerates the Peerage more than I do; but, my Lords, I must say that the Peerage solicited me,—not I the Peerage. Nay, more,—I can say, and will say, that, as a Peer of Parliament, as Speaker of this right honorable House, as keeper of the great seal, as guardian of his Majesty’s conscience, as Lord High Chancellor of England,—nay, even in that character alone in which the noble Duke would think it an affront to be considered, but which character none can deny me, as a MAN,—I am at this moment as respectable—I beg leave to add—I am as much respected,—as the proudest Peer I now look down upon.
Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth
He sang, his genius “glinted” forth,
Rose like a star that touching earth,
For so it seems,