school masters better than the officers of a standing army; and good books of instruction better weapons than bayonets and swords." The orator doubtless delivered this speech with great and increasing energy and power; and it need scarcely be added, that it should thus be declaimed. 62. THE RIGHT OF INSTRUCTING REPRESENTATIVES.-E. Burke. 1. Gentlemen:-My worthy colleague expresses himself, if I understand him rightly, in favor of a coercive authority of instructions from constituents. Certainly, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. 2. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and, above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interests to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. 3. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law or the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which, he is deeply answerable Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. 4. The gentleman says, his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion, are, perhaps, three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments? 5. To deliver an opinion is the right of all men; that of constituents, is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear, and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions, mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution. 6. Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole, where not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. 7. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament. If the local constituents should have an interest, or should form a hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place, ought to be as far as any other, from an endeavor to give it effect. 8. As for the trifling petulance which the rage of party stirs up in little minds, it has not made the slightest impression on The highest flight of such clamorous birds, is winged in an inferior region of the air. me. Mr. Burke's observations on the right of constituents to instruct representatives, are worthy the attention of the American people. He presents the subject to the electors of Bristol, in its true light. It is very desirable, that the representative should reflect, as a mirror, the will of his constituents; and yet, he should not be the mere pen with which they write. Mr. Burke's speech should be read or recited in an animated manner, and on a middle key. 63. HAMLET'S SOLILOQUY ON DEATH.-Shakspeare. 1. To be or not to be-that is the question! And, by opposing, end them.-To die ?-to sleep ; No more ;-and, by a sleep to say we end To sleep? perchance to dream;—aye, there's the rub ; 2. There's the respect 3. That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Who would fardels bear, 4. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all ; Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; Hamlet's Soliloquy is, as has been well observed, "one of the most difficult things to read in the English language." It requires nice discrimination, as well as great powers of elocution. It is one of Shakspeare's most admirable productions. It does not, however, teach us a useful moral lesson. Hamlet ought to have been deterred from self-destruction, by considerations of duty to himself, his fellow-citizens, and his God. The doctrine of expediency, by which he appears to have been governed, is a doctrine not of Christ; it is practical atheism. Hamlet ought to have been governed, not by expediency, but by principle by Christ an morality. The soliloquy can be read or recited well, only by those who both per fectly understand, and thoroughly feel, the sentiments which it contains. It should be commenced deliberately, on a middle key. The indignant feeling with which the prince enumerates particulars, "The oppressor's wrongs," &c. requires the voice gradually to rise on each. The concluding part of the soliloquy, requires quantity, and rather slow time. 64. SPEECH OF KING RICHARD III.-Shakspeare. 2. Is there a murderer here? No :-Yes; I am. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good 3. I am a villain! Yet I lie, I am not. Fool! of thyself speak well :-Fool, do not flatter. 4. I shall despair.-There is no creature loves me; Nay, wherefore should they? since that I myself Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd This speech of King Richard is, in the author's opinion, not merely one of the most difficult pieces to read or recite in our language, but the most difficult. It was made on Bosworth field, when Shakspeare's spectral illusions of King Richard's murdered victims, called ghosts, appeared to him, the shade of each of whom, pointed towards him, with a clay-cold, but unerring hand, and cried, in a voice which harrowed up his soul: "Thou art my murderer, despair and die." When the ghost vanished, he started out of his dream, and made the above speech, in which he acknowledges himself to have been a villain and a murderer. His name is, as Queen Anne predicted it would be, "a by-word for tyranny." His speech should be commenced abruptly, and on a high key. The voice should fall to a low note on the second line. The fifth line, "Cold, fearful drops," &c. requires slow time and quantity. The questions which he puts to himself, require rising inflections; the answers he makes, falling inflections. Those portions of his speech in which he speaks of his crimes, require a high key, and great energy. 65. THERE'S NOTHING TRUE BUT HEAVEN.-Thomas Moore. 1. This world is all a fleeting show, There's nothing true but Heaven. 2. And false the light on glory's plume, And love, and hope, and beauty's bloom 3. Poor wanderers of a stormy day, From wave to wave we're driven; There's nothing calm but Heaven. The writer has only to say to the reader in reference to these two pieces-65 and 66-"look first on this" beautiful poem, "and then on that," and read or recite them both on a low key, with quantity, and with rhetorical pauses after uttering each of the six italicised words. 14 |