Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/126

THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS govern the Irish nation by the agency of such a faction as long as this country shall be found willing to let her connection with Great Britain be preserved only by her own degradation. In such a precarious and wretched state of things, if it shall ever be found to exist, the true friend of Irish liberty and British connection will see that the only means of saving both must be, as Lord Chatham expressed it, "the infusion of new health and blood into the Constitution."

He will see how deep a stake each country has in the liberty of the other; he will see what a bulwark he adds to the common cause by giving England a coordinate and cointerested ally instead of an oppressed, enfeebled, and suspected dependent; he will see how grossly the credulity of Britain is abused by those who make her believe that her solid interest is promoted by our depression; he will see the desperate precipice to which she approaches by such a conduct, and with an animated and generous piety he will labor to avert her danger.

But, gentlemen of the jury, what is likely to be his fate? The interest of the sovereign must be for ever the interest of his people, because his interest lives beyond his life; it must live in his fame—it must live in the tenderness of his solicitude for an unborn posterity—it must live in that heart-attaching bond by which millions of men have united the destinies of themselves and their children with his, and call him by the endearing appellation of king and father of his people. 116