Page:Criticism on the Declaration of independence, as a literary document (IA criticismondecla00seld).pdf/34

 On reading the Declaration, my interest continues unabated from the beginning of the recital of facts, through all that part of it which was evidently the production of a northern mind. At the last paragraph but one, that interest rises to excitement. I venture the opinion, that a specimen of more touching pathos than is there set forth, is not to be found in any State paper, of this country or of any other. That, is the way in which a strong-minded man speaks, when he feels himself wronged, and his purpose has become fixed to redress that wrong.

We see no more of the soft latitude in this production until we come to the concluding clause of the last sentence: there it bursts forth again with its "peculiar" rhetoric and unmistakable characteristics.

As the passage is often quoted—as it is more frequently in the mouths of the mock orators and quack patriots than any other, we will subject it to the same considerate and fair criticism, we have applied to its cognate and fellow passages in the first part of the document. I will quote so much of it here as I purpose to inspect."—We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."!! If this is not bathos, what is? If here is not a specimen of anti-climax, in the place of a supposed sublime asserveration—laughable but from our respect to the circumstances, where can we find one? If after a man had pledged his fortune, he should propose to increase the security by pledging bis movable estate, we should hardly think him sane enough to make any pledge at all. "All that a man hath will he give for his life" saith a far wiser writer than the one we are reviewing. Life is by so much the most valuable of all our possessions, that in its common meaning, it is used as comprehending every thing else that belongs to us. Life, in the sense in which it is used in the passage before us, is not confined to mere animal vitality; it comprehends all that goes to make up the man. It includes his qualities of soul, as much as it does the blood in his veins. But if we take the passage as it stands, we must conclude that when they pledged their lives, they made a reservation of honor; as if that attribute was something which did not necessarily belong to their lives: for afterwards, as if upon second thought, they pledge that too.