pit is false to its trust. I call on the fair merchant, who has reaped his harvest upon the seas, that he assist in scourging from those seas the worst pirates which ever infested them. That ocean, which seems to wave with 50 a gentle magnificence to waft the burdens of an honest commerce, and to roll along its treasures with a conscious pride; that ocean, which hardy industry regards, even when the winds have ruffled its surface, as a field of grateful toil; what is it to the victim of this oppres55 sion, when he is brought to its shores, and looks forth upon it, for the first time, from beneath chains, and bleeding with stripes? What is it to him, but a wide spread prospect of suffering, anguish and death? Nor do the skies smile longer, nor is the air longer fragrant 60 to him. The sun is cast down from heaven. An in human and accursed traffic has cut him off in his manhood, or in his youth, from every enjoyment belonging to his being, and every blessing which his Creator intended for him. Webster. O, I have passed a miserable night, Methought I had broken from the Tower, Upon the hatches; thence we looked toward England, During the wars of York and Lancaster, 15 Upon the giddy footing of the hatches, Methought, that Gloster stumbled; and, in falling, O, then methought, what pain it was to drown! 20 What dreadful noise of waters in my ears! All scattered in the bottom of the sea. Some lay in dead men's sculls; and, in those holes To yield the ghost; but still the envious flood The first that there did greet my stranger-soul! Dabbled in blood! and he shrieked out aloud50" Clarence is come-false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, -That stabbed me in the field by Tewksbury ;Seize on him, furies, take him to your torments !"– With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends Environed me, and howled in mine ears 55 Such hideous cries, that with the very noise, I trembling waked; and, for a season after, Could not believe but that I was in hell; Such terrible impression made my dream. Shakspeare. With virtue? which of nature's regions vast Which envy's self contemplates, and is turned Glittering on some smooth sea, is aught so fair 25 A rival's life to rescue ? as the young Aloft extending, like eternal Jove When guilt brings down the thunder, called aloud Akenside. Ask any one man of morals, whether he approves of assassination; he will answer, No. Would you kill your friend and benefactor? No. The question is a horrible insult. Would you practise hypocrisy, and 5 smile in his face, while your conspiracy is ripening, to gain his confidence and to lull him into security, in order to take away his life? Every honest man, on the bare suggestion, feels his blood thicken and stagnate at his heart. Yet in this picture we see Brutus. It would 10 perhaps, be scarcely just to hold him up to abhorrence; it is, certainly, monstrous and absurd to exhibit his conduct to admiration. He did not strike the tyrant from hatred or ambition ; his motives were admitted to be good; but was not the 15 action, nevertheless, bad? To kill a tyrant is as much murder, as to kill any other man. Besides, Brutus, to extenuate the crime, could have had no rational hope of putting an end to the tyranny; he had foreseen and provided nothing to 20 realize it. The conspirators relied, foolishly enough, on the love of the multitude for liberty-they loved their safety, their ease, their sports, and their demagogue favourites a great deal better. They quietly looked on, as spectators, and left it to the legions of Antony, and 25 Octavius, and those of Syria, Macedonia, and Greece to decide, in the field of Philippi, whether there should be a republic or not. It was, accordingly, decided in favour of an emperor; and the people sincerely rejoiced in the political claim, that restored the games of the cir 30 cus, and the plenty of bread. Those who cannot bring their judgments to condemn the killing of a tyrant must nevertheless agree that the blood of Cæsar was unprofitably shed. Liberty gained nothing by it, and humanity lost much; for it cost eigh35 teen years of agitation and civil war, before the ambition of the military and popular chieftains had expended its means, and the power was concentrated in oneman's hands. Shall we be told, the example of Brutus is a good one, 40 because it will never cease to animate the race of tyrant-killers-But will the fancied usefulness of assassination overcome our instinctive sense of its horror? Is it to become a part of our political morals, that the chief of a state is to be stabbed or poisoned, whenever a fa45 natic, a malecontent, or a reformer shall rise up and call him a tyrant? Then there would be as little calm in despotism as in liberty. But when has it happened, that the death of an usurper has restored to the public liberty its departed life? 50 Every successful usurpation creates many competitors for power, and they successively fall in the struggles. In all this agitation, liberty is without friends, without resources, and without hope. Blood enough, and the blood of tyrants too, was shed between the time of the 55 wars of Marius and death of Antony, a period of about sixty years, to turn a common grist-mill; yet the cause of the public liberty continually grew more and more desperate. It is not by destroying tyrants, that we are to extinguish tyranny: nature is not thus to be exhaust60 ed of her power to produce them. The soil of a republic sprouts with the rankest fertility; it has been sown with dragon's teeth. To lessen the hopes of usurping demagogues, we must enlighten, animate, and combine the spirit of freemen; we must fortify and guard the 65 constitutional ramparts about liberty. When its friends become insolent or disheartened, it is no longer of any importance how long-lived are its enemies: they will prove immortal. Ames. |