clime. She has not a son who did not suckle inherited valor from his mother's breast. No nation can afford lightly to challenge her purposes or arouse her stubborn pride. But does this furnish any reason why Americans should abandon any settled policy of the United States, or retire from any position which the honor of this Republic and the welfare of America require that we should assume ?

Ours They

Mr. President, our people have been represented as eager for war, and the Senator from Colorado seems to believe that it is necessary to cool their ardor by disparagement of the Monroe doctrine and eulogium of British grandeur. is a mighty nation, but its people are slow to wrath. believe in the divine doctrine taught by the lowly Nazarene on the shores of Galilee. The fear of God, the love of peace is in their hearts and in their homes. Nothing that can be said, nothing that can be done, will move or incite them to any act of injustice or to any premature preparations for war. But there is no other land in which the honor of the nation is so dear; there is no other land in which the love of country, of liberty, and of justice is so strong; there is no other land whose citizens would sacrifice so much to maintain its institutions or defend its soil.

Mr. President, I share with the Senator from Colorado in the heritage of English blood. I glory with him in the mighty achievements of the English-speaking race; but I have not forgotten that England, as a nation, compelled my ancestors in 1637 to cross the stormy ocean and take up habitation upon the rocky and inhospitable shores of the New England wilderness, in order that they might enjoy freedom of conscience and the worship of God according to their own beliefs. I have not forgotten that the persecution of Great Britain followed them across the sea; I have not forgotten that she heaped indignities and injustice upon the colonists until they could no longer be borne; I have not forgotten that my grandsires carried muskets, and gave their American blood, that British dominion over American

colonies should be forever at an end. I have not forgotten that our sailors and marines were forced to drive England's navy from the main to make the deck of an American ship American soil. . . .

Standing upon the floor of the American Senate and knowing whereof I speak, I say to the people of Great Britain that the grave issues which have been settled by brave men upon American battlefields can never be reopened. Sir, there is no division of sentiment in the United States. Let but a single drumbeat be heard upon our coast, announcing the approach of a foreign foe, and there will spring to arms in North and South the grandest army the world has ever known, animated by a deathless loyalty to their country's flag and marching on to the mingled and inspiring strains of our two national airs, Dixie and Yankee Doodle.

Mr. President, the press of Great Britain has already seized upon the utterances of the Senator from Colorado as an indication that the people of this country are ready to abandon whatever place we now hold of duty and responsibility toward the republics and the affairs of the New World. But when the pending resolution comes on for final passage, I predict that it will be adopted by such a decisive vote as will advise all Christendom of the stand which the people of this country are prepared to make for the maintenance and enforcement of the Monroe doctrine.

Sir, believing that the honor of my country is involved, that the hour calls for the highest expression of loyalty and patriotism, calmly confident of the verdict of posterity, reverently calling God to witness the sincerity of my purpose, I shall vote for the resolution reported by the Committee on Foreign Affairs. I shall vote for it not as an affront to any other nation, but to uphold the dignity of my own. I shall vote for it in this time of profound tranquillity, convinced that peace with honor can be preserved. But, sir, I would vote for it just as surely were we already standing in the

awful shadow of declared war. I would vote for it were the navies of all Europe thundering at our harbors. I would vote for it were the shells of British battle-ships bursting above the dome of the nation's Capitol. I would vote for it and would maintain it at all hazards and at any cost, with the last dollar, with the last man; yea, though it might presage the coming of a mighty conflict whose conclusion should leave me without a son, as the last great contest left me without a sire.

THE DEATH PENALTY

By VICTOR MARIE HUGO, Poet, Author.

Born at Besançon, France, 1802; died at Paris, 1885.

Gentlemen oF THE JURY, if there is a culprit here, it is not my son,-it is myself,-it is II, who for these twenty-five years have opposed capital punishment,—have contended for the inviolability of human life,--have committed this crime for which my son is now arraigned. Here I denounce myself, Mr. Advocate General! I have committed it under all aggravated circumstances; deliberately, repeatedly, tenaciously. Yes, this old and absurd lex talionis-this law of blood for blood-I have combated all my life-all my life, Gentlemen of the Jury! And, while I have breath, I will continue to combat it, by all my efforts as a writer, by all my words and all my votes as a legislator! I declare it before the crucifix; before that victim of the penalty of death, who sees and hears us; before that gibbet, to which, two thousand years ago, for the eternal instruction of the generations, the human law nailed the Divine!

In all that my son has written on the subject of capital punishment and for writing and publishing which he is now on trial,—in all that he has written, he has merely proclaimed the sentiments with which, from his infancy, I have inspired him. Gentlemen Jurors, the right to criticise a law, and to criticise it severely-especially a penal law-is

placed beside the duty of amelioration, like the torch beside the work under the artisan's hand. The right of the journalist is as sacred, as necessary, as imprescriptible, as the right of the legislator.

What are the circumstances? A man, a convict, a sentenced wretch, is dragged, on a certain morning, to one of our public squares. There he finds the scaffold! He shudders, he struggles, he refuses to die. He is young yet -only twenty-nine. Ah! I know what you will say,—“ He is a murderer! But hear me. Two officers seize him. His hands, his feet, are tied. He throws off the two officers. A frightful struggle ensues. His feet, bound as they are, become entangled in the ladder. He uses the scaffold against the scaffold! The struggle is prolonged. seizes on the crowd. The officers, sweat and shame on their brows, pale, panting, terrified, despairing,—despairing with I know not what horrible despair,—shrinking under that public reprobation which ought to have visited the penalty, and spared the passive instrument, the executioner, -the officers strive savagely. The victim clings to the

Horror

His clothes are torn,—his

scaffold, and shrieks for pardon. shoulders bloody,-still he resists. At length, after threequarters of an hour of this monstrous effort, of this spectacle without a name, of this agony,—agony for all, be it understood,―agony for the assembled spectators as well as for the condemned man, -after this age of anguish, Gentlemen of the Jury, they take back the poor wretch to his prison.

The People breathe again. The People, naturally merciful, hope that the man will be spared. But no, -the guillotine, though vanquished, remains standing. There it frowns all day, in the midst of a sickened population. And at night, the officers, reinforced, drag forth the wretch again, so bound that he is but an inert weight,—they drag him forth, haggard, bloody, weeping, pleading, howling for life, -calling upon God, calling upon his father and mother,for like a very child had this man become in the prospect of

death, they drag him forth to execution. He is hoisted on the scaffold, and his head falls!—And then through every conscience runs a shudder. Never had legal murder appeared with an aspect so indecent, sɔ abominable. All

feel jointly implicated in the deed. It is at this very

moment that from a young man's breast escapes a cry, wrung from his very heart,- -a cry of pity and of anguish,— a cry of horror,-a cry of humanity. And this cry you would punish! And in the face of the appalling facts which I have narrated, you would say to the guillotine, “Thou art right!" and to Pity, saintly Pity, Thou art wrong! Gentlemen of the Jury, it cannot be! finished.

Gentlemen, I have

AMERICAN BATTLE-FLAGS

By CARL SCHURZ, Statesman, Journalist, Lecturer, Major-General, Senator from Missouri, 1869-75; Secretary of the Interior, 1877-81. Born near Cologne, Prussia, 1829.

Reprinted, by permission of the publishers, from a "Eulogy on Charles Sumner," delivered in Boston, Mass., April 29, 1874, published by Lee and Shepard, Boston.

FROM Europe Mr. Sumner returned late in the fall of 1872, much strengthened, but far from being well. At the opening of the session he reintroduced two measures, which, as he thought, should complete the record of his political life. One was his civil-rights bill, which had failed in the last Congress; and the other, a resolution providing that the names of the battles won over fellow-citizens in the War of the Rebellion should be removed from the regimental colors of the army, and from the army register.

It was in substance only a repetition of a resolution which he had introduced ten years before, in 1862, during the war, when the first names of victories were put on American battle-flags. This resolution called forth a new storm against him. It was denounced as an insult to the heroic soldiers of the Union, and a degradation of their victories