A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W X Z

Public Speaking

I >> Irvah Lester Winter >> Public Speaking




There is universal agreement that the Philippines shall not be turned
back to Spain. No true American consents to that. Even if unwilling to
accept them ourselves, it would have been a weak evasion of manly duty
to require Spain to transfer them to some other power or powers, and
thus shirk our own responsibility. Even if we had had, as we did not
have, the power to compel such a transfer, it could not have been made
without the most serious international complications. Such a course
could not be thought of. And yet had we refused to accept the cession
of them, we should have had no power over them even for their own good.

We could not discharge the responsibilities upon us until these islands
became ours, either by conquest or treaty. There was but one
alternative, and that was either Spain or the United States in the
Philippines. The other suggestions--first, that they should be tossed
into the arena of contention for the strife of nations; or, second, be
left to the anarchy and chaos of no protectorate at all--were too
shameful to be considered.

The treaty gave them to the United States. Could we have required less
and done our duty? Could we, after freeing the Filipinos from the
domination of Spain, have left them without government and without
power to protect life or property or to perform the international
obligations essential to an independent state? Could we have left them
in a state of anarchy and justified ourselves in our own consciences or
before the tribunal of mankind? Could we have done that in the sight of
God or man?

No imperial designs lurk in the American mind. They are alien to
American sentiment, thought, and purpose. Our priceless principles
undergo no change under a tropical sun. They go with the flag. They are
wrought in every one of its sacred folds, and are indistinguishable as
its shining stars.

"Why read ye not the changeless truth,
The free can conquer but to save?"

If we can benefit these remote peoples, who will object? If in the
years of the future they are established in government under law and
liberty, who will regret our perils and sacrifices? Who will not
rejoice in our heroism and humanity? Always perils, and always after
them safety; always darkness and clouds, but always shining through
them the light and the sunshine; always cost and sacrifice, but always
after them the fruition of liberty, education, and civilization.

I have no light or knowledge not common to my countrymen. I do not
prophesy. The present is all-absorbing to me, but I cannot bound my
vision by the blood-stained trenches around Manila, where every red
drop, whether from the veins of an American soldier or a misguided
Filipino, is anguish to my heart; but by the broad range of future
years, when that group of islands, under the impulse of the year just
past, shall have become the gems and glories of those tropical seas; a
land of plenty and of increasing possibilities; a people redeemed from
savage indolence and habits, devoted to the arts of peace, in touch
with the commerce and trade of all nations, enjoying the blessings of
freedom, of civil and religious liberty, of education and of homes, and
whose children and children's children shall for ages hence bless the
American Republic because it emancipated and redeemed their fatherland
and set them in the pathway of the world's best civilization.


DEBATE ON THE TARIFF

SPEECH OF THOMAS B. REED

Whether the universal sentiment in favor of protection as applied to
every country is sound or not, I do not stop to discuss. Whether it is
best for the United States of America alone concerns me now, and the
first thing I have to say is, that after thirty years of protection,
undisturbed by any menace of free trade, up to the very year now last
past, this country was the greatest and most flourishing nation on the
face of this earth. Moreover, with the shadow of this unjustifiable
bill resting cold upon it, with mills closed, with hundreds of
thousands of men unemployed, industry at a standstill, and prospects
before it more gloomy than ever marked its history--except once--this
country is still the greatest and the richest that the sun shines on,
or ever did shine on.

According to the usual story that is told, England had been engaged
with a long and vain struggle with the demon of protection, and had
been year after year sinking farther into the depths until at a moment
when she was in her distress and saddest plight her manufacturing
system broke down, "protection, having destroyed home trade by
reducing," as Mr. Atkinson says, "the entire population to beggary,
destitution, and want." Mr. Cobden and his friends providentially
appeared, and after a hard struggle established a principle for all
time and for all the world, and straightway England enjoyed the sum of
human happiness. Hence all good nations should do as England has done
and be happy ever after.

Suppose England, instead of being a little island in the sea, had been
the half of a great continent full of raw material, capable of an
internal commerce which would rival the commerce of all the rest of the
world.

Suppose every year new millions were flocking to her shores, and every
one of those new millions in a few years, as soon as they tasted the
delights of a broader life, would become as great a consumer as any one
of her own people.

Suppose that these millions, and the 70,000,000 already gathered under
the folds of her flag, were every year demanding and receiving a higher
wage and therefore broadening her market as fast as her machinery could
furnish production. Suppose she had produced cheap food beyond all her
wants, and that her laborers spent so much money that whether wheat was
sixty cents a bushel or twice that sum hardly entered the thoughts of
one of them, except when some Democratic tariff bill was paralyzing his
business.

Suppose that she was not only but a cannon shot from France, but that
every country in Europe had been brought as near to her as Baltimore is
to Washington--for that is what cheap ocean freights mean between us
and European producers. Suppose all those countries had her machinery,
her skilled workmen, her industrial system, and labor forty per cent
cheaper. Suppose under that state of facts, with all her manufacturers
proclaiming against it, frantic in their disapproval, England had been
called upon by Cobden to make the plunge into free trade, would she
have done it? Not if Cobden had been backed by the angelic host.
History gives England credit for great sense.


SPEECH OF CHARLES F. CRISP

I assume that the cause of protection has no more able advocate than
the gentleman from Maine. I assume that the argument for protection can
be put in no more alluring form than that to which we have listened to-
day. So assuming, I shall ask you calmly and dispassionately to examine
with me that argument, to see upon what it is based, and then I shall
invoke the unprejudiced judgment of this House as to whether the cause
attempted to be sustained by the gentleman from Maine has been
sustained, or can be before any tribunal where the voice of reason is
heard or the sense of justice is felt.

The gentleman from Maine, with a facility that is unequaled, when he
encounters an argument which he is unable to answer passes it by with
some bright and witty saying and thereby invites and receives the
applause of those who believe as he does. But the gentleman does not
attempt, the gentleman has not to-day attempted, to reply to the real
arguments that are made in favor of freer trade and greater liberty of
commerce.

The gentleman points to the progress of the United States, he points to
the rate of wages in the United States, he points to the aggregated
wealth of the United States, and claims all this is due to protection.
But he does not explain how we owe these blessings to protection. He
says, we have protection in the United States, wages are high in the
United States; therefore protection makes high wages.

When we ask the gentleman from Maine to give us a reason why a high
protective tariff increases the rate of wages he points to the glory,
the prosperity, and the honor of our country. We on this side unite
with him in every sentiment, in every purpose, in every effort that has
for its object the advancement of the general welfare of the people of
the United States, but we differ from him as to the method of promoting
their welfare. The gentleman belongs to that school who believe that
scarcity is a blessing, and that abundance should be prohibited by law.
We belong to that school who believe that scarcity is a calamity to be
avoided, and that abundance should be, if possible, encouraged by law.

The gentleman belongs to that class who believe that by a system of
taxation we can make the country rich. He believes that it is possible
by tax laws to advance the prosperity of all the industries and all the
people in the United States.

Either, Mr. Speaker, that statement is an absurdity upon its face, or
it implies that in some way we have the power to make some persons not
resident of the United States pay the taxes that we impose. I insist
that you do not increase the taxable wealth of the United States when
you tax a gentleman in Illinois and give the benefit of that tax to a
gentleman in Maine. Such a course prevents the natural and honest
distribution of wealth, but it does not create or augment it.


SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS

Delivered in the United States Senate, January, 1830

BY ROBERT Y. HAYNE

The gentleman has made a great flourish about his fidelity to
Massachusetts. I shall make no profession of zeal for the interests and
honor of South Carolina; of that my constituents shall judge. If there
be one State in the Union, Mr. President (and I say it not in a
boastful spirit), that may challenge comparison with any other for a
uniform, zealous, ardent, and uncalculating devotion to the Union, that
State is South Carolina. Sir, from the very commencement of the
Revolution up to this hour there is no sacrifice, however great, she
has not cheerfully made, no service she has ever hesitated to perform.
She has adhered to you in your prosperity; but in your adversity she
has clung to you with more than filial affection. No matter what was
the condition of her domestic affairs, though deprived of her
resources, divided by parties, or surrounded with difficulties, the
call of the country has been to her as the voice of God. Domestic
discord ceased at the sound; every man became at once reconciled to his
brethren, and the sons of Carolina were all seen crowding together to
the temple, bringing their gifts to the altar of their common country.

What, sir, was the conduct of the South during the Revolution? Sir, I
honor New England for her conduct in that glorious struggle. But great
as is the praise which belongs to her, I think at least equal honor is
due to the South. They espoused the quarrel of their brethren with a
generous zeal, which did not suffer them to stop to calculate their
interest in the dispute. Favorites of the mother country, possessed of
neither ships nor seamen to create a commercial rivalship, they might
have found in their situation a guaranty that their trade would be
forever fostered and protected by Great Britain. But, trampling on all
considerations either of interest or of safety, they rushed into the
conflict, and, fighting for principle, periled all in the sacred cause
of freedom. Never were there exhibited in the history of the world
higher examples of noble daring, dreadful suffering, and heroic
endurance than by the Whigs of Carolina during the Revolution. The
whole State, from the mountains to the sea, was overrun by an
overwhelming force of the enemy. The fruits of industry perished on the
spot where they were produced, or were consumed by the foe. The "plains
of Carolina" drank up the most precious blood of her citizens. Black
and smoking ruins marked the places where had been the habitations of
her children. Driven from their homes into the gloomy and almost
impenetrable swamps, even there the spirit of liberty survived, and
South Carolina (sustained by the example of her Sumters and her
Marions) proved by her conduct that, though her soil might be overrun,
the spirit of her people was invincible.


REPLY BY DANIEL WEBSTER

The eulogium pronounced by the honorable gentleman on the character of
the State of South Carolina for her Revolutionary and other merits
meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge that the honorable
member goes before me in regard for whatever of distinguished talent,
or distinguished character, South Carolina has produced. I claim part
of the honor, I partake in the pride, of her great names. I claim them
for countrymen, one and all,--the Laurenses, the Rutledges, the
Pinckneys, the Sumters, the Marions, Americans all, whose fame is no
more to be hemmed in by State lines than their talents and patriotism
were capable of being circumscribed within the same narrow limits. In
their day and generation they served and honored the country, and the
whole country; and their renown is of the treasures of the whole
country. Him whose honored name the gentleman himself bears,--does he
esteem me less capable of gratitude for his patriotism, or sympathy for
his sufferings, than if his eyes had first opened upon the light of
Massachusetts instead of South Carolina? Sir, does he suppose it in his
power to exhibit a Carolina name so bright as to produce envy in my
bosom? No, sir, increased gratification and delight, rather. I thank
God that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which is able to
raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none, as I trust, of that other
spirit which would drag angels down. When I shall be found, sir, in my
place here in the Senate or elsewhere, to sneer at public merit because
it happens to spring up beyond the little limits of my own State or
neighborhood; when I refuse, for any such cause, or for any cause, the
homage due to American talent, to elevated patriotism, to sincere
devotion to liberty and the country; or, if I see an uncommon endowment
of Heaven, if I see extraordinary capacity and virtue in any son of the
South, and if, moved by local prejudice or gangrened by State jealousy,
I get up here to abate the tithe of a hair from his just character and
just fame,--may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!

Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in
refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you that, in early
times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and
feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that
harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through the
Revolution; hand in hand they stood round the administration of
Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support. Unkind
feeling, if it exist, alienation and distrust, are the growth,
unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are
weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.

Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she
needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There
is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is
secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill;
and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons, falling in
the great struggle for independence, now lie mingled with the soil of
every State from New England to Georgia; and there they will lie
forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first voice, and
where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it still lives in the
strength of its manhood and full of its original spirit. If discord and
party strife shall succeed in separating it from that Union by which
alone its existence is made sure,--it will stand in the end by the side
of that cradle in which its infancy was rocked, and it will fall at
last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments of its own glory
and on the very spot of its origin.


THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

BY JOHN HAY

Our platform is before the country. Perhaps it is lacking in novelty.
There is certainly nothing sensational about it. Its principles have
been tested by eight years of splendid success and have received the
approval of the country. It is in line with all our platforms of the
past, except where prophecy and promise in those days have become
history in these. We stand by the ancient ways which have proved good.
We come before the country in a position which cannot be successfully
attacked in front, or flank, or rear. What we have done, what we are
doing, and what we intend to do--on all three we confidently challenge
the verdict of the American people. The record of fifty years will show
whether as a party we are fit to govern; the state of our domestic and
foreign affairs will show whether as a party we have fallen off; and
both together will show whether we can be trusted for a while longer.

I want to say a word to the young men whose political life is
beginning. Any one entering business would be glad of the chance to
become one of an established firm with years of success behind it, with
a wide connection, with unblemished character, with credit founded on a
rock. How infinitely brighter the future when the present is so sure,
the past so glorious! Everything great done by this country in the last
fifty years has been done under the auspices of the Republican Party.
Is not this consciousness a great asset to have in your mind and
memory? As a mere item of personal comfort is it not worth having?
Lincoln and Grant, Hayes and Garfield, Harrison and McKinley--names
secure in the heaven of fame--they all are gone, leaving small estates
in worldly goods, but what vast possessions in principles, memories,
sacred associations! It is a start in life to share that wealth. Who
now boasts that he opposed Lincoln? who brags of his voting against
Grant? though both acts may have been from the best of motives. In our
form of government there must be two parties, and tradition,
circumstances, temperament, will always create a sufficient opposition.
But what young man would not rather belong to the party that does
things, instead of one that opposes them; to the party that looks up,
rather than down; to the party of the dawn, rather than of the sunset?
For fifty years the Republican Party has believed in the country and
labored for it in hope and joy; it has reverenced the flag and followed
it; it has carried it under strange skies and planted it on far-
receding horizons. It has seen the nation grow greater every year and
more respected; by just dealing, by intelligent labor, by a genius for
enterprise, it has seen the country extend its intercourse and its
influence to regions unknown to our fathers. Yet it has never abated
one jot or tittle of the ancient law imposed on us by our God-fearing
ancestors. We have fought a good fight, but also we have kept the
faith. The Constitution of our fathers has been the light to our feet;
our path is, and will ever remain, that of ordered progress, of liberty
under the law. The country has vastly increased, but the great-brained
statesmen who preceded us provided for infinite growth. The discoveries
of science have made miraculous additions to our knowledge. But we are
not daunted by progress; we are not afraid of the light. The fabric our
fathers builded on such sure foundations will stand all shocks of fate
or fortune. There will always be a proud pleasure in looking back on
the history they made; but, guided by their example, the coming
generation has the right to anticipate work not less important, days
equally memorable to mankind. We who are passing off the stage bid you,
as the children of Israel encamping by the sea were bidden, to Go
Forward; we whose hands can no longer hold the flaming torch pass it on
to you that its clear light may show the truth to the ages that are to
come.


NOMINATING ULYSSES S. GRANT

BY ROSCOE CONKLING

In obedience to instructions I should never dare to disregard--
expressing, also, my own firm convictions--I rise to propose a
nomination with which the country and the Republican party can grandly
win. The election before us is to be the Austerlitz of American
politics. It will decide, for many years, whether the country shall be
Republican or Cossack. The supreme need of the hour is not a candidate
who can carry Michigan. All Republican candidates can do that. The need
is not of a candidate who is popular in the Territories, because they
have no vote. The need is of a candidate who can carry doubtful States.
Not the doubtful States of the North alone, but doubtful States of the
South, which we have heard, if I understand it aright, ought to take
little or no part here, because the South has nothing to give, but
everything to receive. No, gentlemen, the need that presses upon the
conscience of this Convention is of a candidate who can carry doubtful
States both North and South. And believing that he, more surely than
any other man, can carry New York against any opponent, and can carry
not only the North, but several States of the South, New York is for
Ulysses S. Grant. Never defeated in peace or in war, his name is the
most illustrious borne by living man.

His services attest his greatness, and the country--nay, the world--
knows them by heart. His fame was earned not alone in things written
and said, but by the arduous greatness of things done. And perils and
emergencies will search in vain in the future, as they have searched in
vain in the past, for any other on whom the nation leans with such
confidence and trust. Never having had a policy to enforce against the
will of the people, he never betrayed a cause or a friend, and the
people will never desert nor betray him. Standing on the highest
eminence of human distinction, modest, firm, simple, and self-poised,
having filled all lands with his renown, he has seen not only the
highborn and the titled, but the poor and the lowly, in the uttermost
ends of the earth, rise and uncover before him. He has studied the
needs and the defects of many systems of government, and he has
returned a better American than ever.

His integrity, his common-sense, his courage, his unequaled experience,
are the qualities offered to his country. The only argument, the only
one that the wit of man or the stress of politics has devised is one
that would have dumbfounded Solomon, because he thought there was
nothing new under the sun. Having tried Grant twice and found him
faithful, we are told that we must not, even after an interval of
years, trust him again. My countrymen! my countrymen! what
stultification does not such a fallacy involve! Is this an
electioneering juggle, or is it hypocrisy's masquerade? There is no
field of human activity, responsibility, or reason, in which rational
beings object to an agent because he has been weighed in the balance
and not found wanting. There is, I say, no department of human reason
in which sane men reject an agent because he has had experience making
him exceptionally competent and fit.

This Convention is master of a supreme opportunity. It can name the
next President. It can make sure of his election. It can make sure not
only of his election, but of his certain and peaceful inauguration.

Gentlemen, we have only to listen above the din and look beyond the
dust of an hour to behold the Republican party advancing with its
ensigns resplendent with illustrious achievements, marching to certain
and lasting victory with its greatest Marshal at its head.


THE CHOICE OF A PARTY

From a speech delivered in New York, 1880. Depew's "Library of
Oratory," E. J. Bowen and Company, New York, publishers.

BY ROSCOE CONKLING

We are citizens of a republic. We govern ourselves. Here no pomp of
eager array in chambers of royalty awaits the birth of boy or girl to
wield an hereditary scepter. We know no scepter save a majority's
constitutional will. To wield that scepter in equal share is the duty
and the right, nay, the birthright, of every citizen. The supreme, the
final, the only peaceful arbiter here, is the ballot box; and in that
urn should be gathered and from it should be sacredly recorded the
conscience, the judgment, the intelligence of all. The right of free
self-government has been in all ages the bright dream of oppressed
humanity,--the sighed-for privilege to which thrones, dynasties, and
power have so long blocked the way. In the fullness of freedom the
Republic of America is alone in the earth; alone in its grandeur; alone
in its blessings; alone in its promises and possibilities, and
therefore alone in the devotion due from its citizens.

The time has come when law, duty, and interest require the nation to
determine for at least four years its policy in many things. Two
parties exist; parties should always exist in a government of
majorities, and to support and strengthen the party which most nearly
holds his views is among the most laudable, meritorious acts of an
American citizen; and this whether he be in official or in private
station. Two parties contend for the management of national affairs.
The question is, Which of the two is it safer and wiser to trust? It is
not a question of candidates. A candidate, if he be an honest, genuine
man, will not seek and accept a party nomination to the presidency,
vice presidency, or Congress, and after he is elected become a law unto
himself. The higher obligations among men are not set down in writing
and signed or sealed; they reside in honor and good faith. The fidelity
of a nominee belongs to this exalted class, and therefore the candidate
of a party is but the exponent of a party. The object of political
discussion and action is to settle principles, policies, and issues. It
is a paltry incident of an election affecting fifty million people that
it decides for an occasion the aspirations of individual men. The
Democratic party is the Democratic candidate, and I am against the
ticket and all its works.

Copyright (c) 2007. famouswriterz.com. All rights reserved.