BELHAVEN, LORD 1656-1708
A Plea for the National Life of Scotland
BELL, JOHN 1797-1869
Against Extremists, North and South
Transcontinental Railroads
BENJAMIN, JUDAH P. 1811-1884
Farewell to the Union
Slavery as Established by Law
PREFACE
Oratory is the masterful art. Poetry, painting, music, sculpture, architecture please, thrill, inspire; but oratory rules. The orator dominates those who hear him, convinces their reason, controls their judgment, compels their action. For the time being he is master. Through the clearness of his logic, the keenness of his wit, the power of his appeal, or that magnetic something which is felt and yet cannot be defined, or through all together, he sways his audience as the storm bends the branches of the forest. Hence it is that in all times this wonderful power has been something longed for and striven for. Demosthenes, on the beach, struggling with the pebbles in his mouth to perfect his articulation, has been the great example. Yet it is often true of the orator, as of the poet; nascitur non fit. Patrick Henry seemed to be inspired as "Give me liberty or give me death" rolled from his lips. The untutored savage has shown himself an orator.
Who does not delight in oratory? How we gather to hear even an ordinary speaker! How often is a jury swayed and controlled by the appeals of counsel! Do we not all feel the magic of the power, and when occasionally we are permitted to listen to a great orator how completely we lose ourselves and yield in willing submission to the imperious and impetuous flow of his speech! It is said that after Webster's great reply to Hayne every Massachusetts man walking down Pennsylvania Avenue seemed a foot taller.
This marvelous power is incapable of complete preservation on the printed page. The presence, the eye, the voice, the magnetic touch, are beyond record. The phonograph and kinetoscope may some day seize and perpetuate all save the magnetic touch, but that weird, illusive, indefinable yet wonderfully real power by which the orator subdues may never be caught by science or preserved for the cruel dissecting knife of the critic. It is the marvelous light flashing out in the intellectual heavens which no Franklin has yet or may ever draw and tie to earth by string of kite.
But while there is a living something which no human art has yet been able to grasp and preserve, there is a wonderful joy and comfort in the record of that which the orator said. As we read we see the very picture, though inarticulate, of the living orator. We may never know all the marvelous power of Demosthenes, yet Proton, meg, o andres Athenaioi, suggests something of it. Cicero's silver speech may never reach our ears, and yet who does not love to read Quousque tandem abutere, O Catilina, patientia nostra? So if on the printed page we may not see the living orator, we may look upon his picture—the photograph of his power. And it is this which it is the thought and purpose of this work to present. We mean to photograph the orators of the world, reproducing the words which they spake, and trusting to the vivid imagination of the thoughtful reader to put behind the recorded words the living force and power. In this we shall fill a vacant place in literature. There are countless books of poetry in which the gems of the great poets of the world have been preserved, but oratory has not been thus favored. We have many volumes which record the speeches of different orators, sometimes connected with a biography of their lives and sometimes as independent gatherings of speeches. We have also single books, like Goodrich's 'British Eloquence,' which give us partial selections of the great orations. But this is intended to be universal in its reach, a complete encyclopedia of oratory. The purpose is to present the best efforts of the world's greatest orators in all ages; and with this purpose kept in view as the matter of primary importance, to supplement the great orations with others that are representative and historically important—especially with those having a fundamental connection with the most important events in the development of Anglo-Saxon civilization. The greatest attention has been given to the representative orators of England and America, so that the work includes all that is most famous or most necessary to be known in the oratory of the Anglo-Saxon race. Wherever possible, addresses have been published in extenso. This has been the rule followed in giving the great orations. In dealing with minor orators, the selections made are considerable enough to show the style, method, and spirit. Where it has been necessary to choose between two orations of equal merit, the one having the greater historical significance has been selected. Of course it would not be possible, keeping within reasonable limits, to give every speech of every one worthy to be called an orator. Indeed, the greatest of orators sometimes failed. So we have carefully selected only those speeches which manifest the power of eloquence; and this selection, we take pleasure in assuring our readers, has been made by the most competent critics of the country.
We have not confined ourselves to any one profession or field of eloquence. The pulpit, the bar, the halls of legislation, and the popular assembly have each and all been called upon for their best contributions. The single test has been, is it oratory? the single question, is there eloquence? The reader and student of every class will therefore find within these pages that which will satisfy his particular taste and desire in the matter of oratory.
As this work is designed especially for the American reader, we have deemed it proper to give prominence to Anglo-Saxon orators; and yet this prominence has not been carried so far as to make the work a one-sided collection. It is not a mere presentation of American or even of English-speaking orators. We submit the work to the American public in the belief that all will find pleasure, interest, and instruction in its pages, and in the hope that it will prove an Inspiration to the growing generation to see to it that oratory be not classed among the "lost arts," but that it shall remain an ever-present and increasing power and blessing to the world.