Though the battle was lost and Byrhtnoth slain, the spirit of the man is an English inheritance. It is the same spirit that refused ship-money to Charles I., and tea-money to George III.
The encroachments of tyranny and the stealthier step of royal prerogative have shrunk before this spirit which through the centuries has inspired the noblest oratory of England and America. It not only inspired the great orators of the mother country, it served at the same time as a bond of sympathy with the American colonies in their struggle for freedom. Burke, throughout his great speech on Conciliation, never lost sight of this idea:—
"This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in the English colonies probably than in any other people of the earth. The people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen. England, sir, is a nation which still, I hope, respects, and formerly adored, her freedom. The colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant; and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your bands. They are therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas and our English principles. … The temper and character which prevail in our colonies are, I am afraid, unalterable by any human art. We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people, and persuade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circulates. The language in which they would hear you tell them this tale would detect the imposition; your speech would betray you. … In order to prove that Americans have no right to their liberties, we are every day endeavoring to subvert the maxims which preserve the whole spirit of our own. To prove that the Americans ought not to be free, we are obliged to depreciate the value of freedom itself; and we never gain a paltry advantage over them in debate without attacking some of those principles, or deriding some of those feelings, for which our ancestors have shed their blood. . . . As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom they will turn their faces towards you. The more ardently they love liberty the more perfect will be their obedience. Slavery they can have anywhere—it is a weed that grows in every soil. They can have it from Spain; they may have it from Prussia. But until you become lost to all feeling of your true interest and your natural dignity, freedom they can have from none but you."
So, too, in the speeches of Chatham, the great Commoner, whose eloquence has never been surpassed, an intense spirit of liberty, the animating principle of his life, shines out above all things else. Though opposed to the independence of the colonies, he could not restrain his admiration for the spirit they manifested:—
"The Americans contending for their rights against arbitrary exactions I love and admire. It is the struggle of free and virtuous patriots. … My Lords, you cannot conquer America. You may swell every expense and every effort still more extravagantly; pile and accumulate every assistance you can buy or borrow; traffic and barter with every pitiful little German prince that sells and sends his subjects to the shambles of a foreign prince; your efforts are forever vain and impotent If I were an American as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country I would never lay down my arms—never—never—never!"
Wherever the principle of Anglo-Saxon freedom and the rights of man have been at stake, the all-animating voice of the orator has kept alive the sacred flame. In the witenagemote of the earlier tongs, in the parliament of the later kings, in the Massachusetts town-meeting and in the Virginia House of Burgesses, in the legislature of every State, and in the Congress of the United States, wherever in Anglo-Saxon countries the torch of liberty seemed to burn low, the breath of the orator has fanned it into flame. It fired the eloquence of Sheridan pleading against Warren Hastings for the down-trodden natives of India in words that have not lost their magnetic charm:—
"My Lords, do you, the judges of this land and the expounders of its rightful laws, do you approve of this mockery and call that the character of Justice which takes the form of right to execute wrong? No. my Lords, justice is not this halt and miserable object; it is not the ineffective bauble of an Indian pagoda; it is not the portentous phantom of despair; it is not like any fabled monster, formed in the eclipse of reason and found in some unhallowed grove of superstitious darkness and political dismay. No, my Lords! In the happy reverse of all this I turn from the disgusting caricature to the real image. Justice I have now before me, august and pure, the abstract ideal of all that would be perfect in the spirits and aspirings of men—where the mind rises; where the heart expands; where the countenance is ever placid and benign; where the favorite attitude is to stoop to the unfortunate, to hear their cry, and help them; to rescue and relieve, to succor and save; majestic from its mercy, venerable from its utility, uplifted without pride, firm without obduracy, beneficent in each preference, lovely though in her frown."
This same spirit fired the enthusiasm of Samuel Adams and James Otis to such a pitch of eloquence that "every man who heard them went away ready to take up arms." It inspired Patrick Henry to hurl his defiant alternative of "liberty or death" in the face of unyielding despotism. It inspired that great-hearted patriot and orator, Henry Clay, in the first quarter of this century, to plead, single-handed and alone, in the Congress of the United States, session after session before the final victory was won, for the recognition of the provinces of South America in their struggle for independence.
"I may be accused of an imprudent utterance of my feelings on this occasion. I care not: when the independence, the happiness, the liberty of a whole people is at stake, and that people our neighbors, our brethren, occupying a portion of the same continent, imitating our example, and participating in the same sympathies with ourselves. I will boldly avow my feelings and my wishes in their behalf, even at the hazard of such an imputation. I maintain that an oppressed people are authorized, whenever they can, to rise and break their fetters. This was the great principle of the English revolution. It was the great principle of our own. Spanish-America has been doomed for centuries to the practical effects of an odious tyranny. If we were justified, she is more than justified. I am no propagandist. I would not seek to force upon other nations our principles and our liberty, if they do not want them. But if an abused and oppressed people will their freedom; if they seek to establish it; if, in truth, they have established it, we have a right, as a sovereign power, to notice the fact, and to act as circumstances and our interest require. I will say in the language of the venerated father of my country, 'born in a land of liberty, my anxious recollections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes, are irresistibly excited, whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom.'"
This same spirit loosed the tongue of Wendell Phillips to plead the cause of the enslaved African in words that burned into the hearts of his countrymen. It emboldened George William Curtis to assert the right to break the shackles of party politics and follow the dictates of conscience:—