burned up and extinguished; of villages depopulated and in ruin; of temples unroofed and perishing; of reservoirs broken down and dry-this stranger should ask, 'What has thus laid waste this beautiful and opulent land'; what monstrous madness has ravaged it with wide-spread war'; what desolating foe'; what civil discords'; what disputed succession'; what religious zeal'; what fabled monster has stalked abroad, and, with malice and mortal enmity to man, withered by the grasp of death every growth of nature and humanity, all means of delight, and each original, simple principle of bare existence'?' the answer would have been, not one of these causes.

7. “No wars have ravaged these lands and depopulated these villages! No desolating foreign foe! No domestic broils! No disputed succession! No religious zeal! No poisonous monster! No affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged us, cut off the sources of resuscitation! No! this damp of death is the mere effusion of British amity! We sink under the pressure of its support! We writhe under its perfidious gripe! It has embraced us with its protecting arms, and lo! these are the fruits of the alliance!"

8. The great success of Sheridan, in the part which he took in this famous trial, was celebrated by Byron in the following beautiful lines, the first verse of which, however, is quite as applicable to Burke as to Sheridan.

IV. FROM BYRON'S MONODY ON THE DEATH OF SHERIDAN.
9. When the loud cry of trampled Hindostan
Arose to Heaven, in her appeal to man,

His was the thunder-his the avenging rod--
The wrath-the delegated voice of God,

Which shook the nations through his lips, and blazed
Till vanquished senates trembled as they praised.

10. While Eloquence-Wit-Poesy-and Mirth,
That humble harmonist of care on earth,
Survive within our souls-while lives our sense
Of pride in Merit's proud pre-eminence,

Long shall we seek his likeness-long in vain,
And turn to all of him which may remain,
Sighing that Nature formed but one such man,
And broke the die-in moulding Sheridan.

A fine example of climax.

This glowing picture was probably suggested by Sir Gilbert Elliot's noble defense of the Rock of Gibraltar a few years before-in 1781.

A monody, among the Greeks, was a mournful funeral song, sung by a single person. The above monody was spoken at Drury-Lane Theatre, London, soon after the death of Sheridan.

LESSON CXII.

RESULT OF THE TRIAL.

1. Soon after the commencement of the trial, the Lords resolved that they would be guided by the rules of evidence which are received in inferior courts of the realm. A great amount of testimony, which the managers had expected to bring forward, was thereby excluded; and from that moment the acquittal of Hastings was assured. Added to this, "all the members of the House of Lords," as Macaulay says, “are politicians; and there is hardly one among them whose vote, on an impeachment, may not be confidently predicted before a witness has been examined." When the final vote was taken, out of twenty-nine peers who voted, only six declared him guilty.

2. But if Mr. Burke failed in the impeachment, he succeeded in the main object which he had in view, that of laying open to the indignant gaze of the public the enormities. practiced under the British government in India; and his "long, long labors" in this cause became the means, though not so directly as he intended, of great and lasting benefits to a hundred and fifty millions of people. Of the true character of Hastings, we have the following summing up in the language of Macaulay:

3. "Those who look on his character without favor or malevolence will pronounce that, in the two great elements of all social virtue-in respect for the rights of others, and in sympathy for their sufferings-he was deficient. His

principles were somewhat lax. His heart was somewhat hard. But while we can not with truth describe him either as a righteous or as a merciful ruler, we can not regard without admiration the amplitude and fertility of his intellect-his rare talents for command, for administration, and for controversy-his dauntless courage-his honorable poverty-his fervent zeal for the interests of the state-his noble equanimity, tried by both extremes of fortune, and never disturbed by either."

LESSON CXIII.

THE GREAT FORENSIC CONTEST BETWEEN MR. WEBSTER, OF MASS., AND MR. HAYNE, OF S. CAROLINA,

IN THE AMERICAN SENATE, JANUARY, 1830.

1. On the 19th of January, 1830, Mr. Robert Y. Hayne, of South Carolina, in a speech delivered in the United States Senate on the subject of the Public Lands, which had been for some time under discussion, denounced the policy of the government in holding the public lands for sale, instead of giving them away to emigrants: he wished the government to have no source of permanent revenue,-regarding a full treasury as tending to consolidate the government and corrupt the people.

2. In the course of his remarks he charged the Eastern States and especially New England-with a narrow and selfish policy;-with endeavoring to restrain emigration to the West, and with a steady opposition to Western measures and Western interests; and this selfish New England policy he attributed to the "accursed tariff" on imported manufactures.

3. Mr. Webster, on the following day, replied to the speech of Mr. Hayne, taking exception to his views generally, and especially to those which deprecated the strengthening of the powers of the general government. Alluding to this part of the speech of the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Webster remarked:

4. "I wish to see no new powers drawn to the general government; but I confess I rejoice in whatever tends to strengthen the bond that unites us, and encourages the hope that our Union may be perpetual. And, therefore, I can not but feel regret at the expression of such opinions as the gentleman has avowed, because I think their obvious tendency is to weaken the bond of our Union.

5. "I know there are some persons in the part of the country from which the honorable member comes, who habitually speak of the Union in terms of indifference, or even of disparagement. The honorable member himself is not, I trust, and can never be, one of these. They significantly declare that it is time to calculate the value of the Union; and their aim seems to be to enumerate and to magnify all the evils, real and imaginary, which the government, under the Union, produces.'

6. After deprecating and deploring the tone of thinking and acting indulged in by some Southern men, he continues: "I am a Unionist, and, in this sense, a National Republican. I would strengthen the ties that hold us together. Far, indeed, in my wishes-very far distant, be the day, when our associated and fraternal stripes shall be severed asunder, and when that happy constellation under which we have risen to so much renown shall be broken up, and be seen sinking, star after star, into obscurity and night."

7. On the subject of the tariff, Mr. Webster showed that it had been, from the beginning, more a Southern than an Eastern measure; that the renowned ordinance of 1787, which lies at the foundation of the prosperity of the Northwestern States, and which excluded slavery from that vast region, was drawn up by a citizen of Massachusetts, and was a Northern measure, carried by the North, and by the North alone.

8. To these remarks of Mr. Webster, Mr. Hayne replied in a speech of considerable power, occupying two days in the delivery-a speech ranging through national and party politics, sectional jealousies, and the slavery question, in which the speaker took occasion to make a general assault on the opinions, politics, and parties of New England, but without

even a remote allusion to the public lands-the subject, nominally, under discussion.

He also took occasion to advance what he denominated "the South Carolina doctrine" the doctrine of State Rights, popularly known as the doctrine of "nullification" -the right of the State Legislatures to interfere, whenever, in their judgment, the general government transcends its constitutional limits, and to arrest the operation of its laws.

We give, in the next Lesson, sufficient extracts from the speech of Mr. Hayne to illustrate the bearings of Mr. Webster's great argument in reply. The constitutional questions here discussed were at this time, as will be seen, already threatening the most serious dangers to our country; and thirty years later they culminated in what the South called "Civil War," and the North "The Great Rebellion."

LESSON CXIV.

FROM THE SECOND SPEECH OF MR. HAYNE,
JANUARY 25, 1830.

1. THE honorable gentleman from Massachusetts, while he exonorates me personally from the charge, intimates that there is a party in the country who are looking to disunion. Sir, if the gentleman had stopped there, the accusation would "have passed by me as the idle wind which I regard not." But when he goes on to give to his accusation a local habitation and a name, by quoting the expression of a distinguished citizen of South Carolina (Dr. Cooper), "that it was time for the South to calculate the value of the Union," and, in the language of the bitterest sarcasm, adds, "surely then the Union can not last longer than July, 1831"-it is impossible to mistake either the allusion or the object of the gentleman.

2. Now, Mr. President, I call upon every one who hears me to bear witness that this controversy is not of my seeking. The Senate will do me the justice to remember, that at the time this unprovoked and uncalled-for attack was