Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/124

THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS necessary to the defense of Mr. Rowan, for which the habits of professional studies and technical adherence to established forms have rendered me unfit.

Gentlemen, you are sitting in a country that has a right to the British Constitution, and which is bound by an indissoluble union with the British nation. If you were now even at liberty to debate upon that subject—if you even were not by the most solemn compacts, founded upon the authority of your ancestors and of yourselves, bound to that alliance, and had an election now to make, in the present unhappy state of Europe—if you had heretofore been a stranger to Great Britain, you would now say, we will enter into society and union with you:

But to accomplish that union, let me tell you, you must learn to become like the English people: it is vain to say you will protect their freedom if you abandon your own. The pillar whose base has no foundation can give no support to the dome under which its head is placed; and if you profess to give England that assistance which you refuse to yourselves she will laugh at your folly and despise your meanness and insincerity.

I know you will interpret what I say with the candor in which it is spoken. England is marked by a natural avarice of freedom which she is 114