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




A triumphant nationality--a regenerated constitution--a free Republic--
an unbroken country--untarnished credit--solvent finances--unparalleled
prosperity--all these are ours despite the policy and the efforts of
the Democratic party. Along with the amazing improvement in national
finances, we have amazing individual thrift on every side. In every
walk of life new activity is felt. Labor, agriculture, manufactures,
commerce, enterprises, and investments, all are flourishing, content
and hopeful. But in the midst of this harmony and encouragement comes a
harsh discord crying, "Give us a change--anything for a change." This
is not a bearing year for "a change." Every other crop is good, but not
the crop of "change"--that crop is good only when the rest are bad. The
country does not need nor wish the change proposed, and to the pressing
invitation of our Democratic friends a good-natured but firm "No, I
thank you," will be the response at the polls.

Upon its record and its candidates the Republican party asks the
country's approval, and stands ready to avow its purposes for the
future. It proposes to rebuild our commercial marine. It proposes to
foster labor, industry, and enterprise. It proposes to stand for
education, humanity, and progress. It proposes to administer the
government honestly, to preserve amity with all the world, observing
our own obligations with others and seeing that others observe theirs
with us, to protect every citizen in his rights and equality before the
law, to uphold the public credit and the sanctity of engagements; and
by doing these things the Republican party proposes to assure to
industry, humanity, and civilization in America the amplest welcome and
the safest home.


NOMINATING JOHN SHERMAN

From a speech nominating a candidate for President of the United States
at the Republican National Convention, 1880

BY JAMES A. GARFIELD

I have witnessed the extraordinary scenes of this Convention with deep
solicitude. Nothing touches my heart more quickly than a tribute of
honor to a great and noble character; but as I sat in my seat and
witnessed this demonstration, this assemblage seemed to me a human
ocean in tempest. I have seen the sea lashed into fury and tossed into
spray, and its grandeur moves the soul of the dullest man; but I
remember that it is not the billows, but the calm level of the sea,
from which all heights and depths are measured. When the storm has
passed and the hour of calm settles on the ocean, when the sunlight
bathes its peaceful surface, then the astronomer and surveyor take the
level from which they measure all terrestrial heights and depths.

Gentlemen of the Convention, your present temper may not mark the
healthful pulse of our people. Not here, in this brilliant circle,
where fifteen thousand men and women are gathered, is the destiny of
the Republic to be decreed for the next four years. Not here, where I
see the enthusiastic faces of seven hundred and fifty-six delegates,
waiting to cast their lots into the urn and determine the choice of the
Republic, but by four millions of Republican firesides, where the
thoughtful voters, with wives and children about them, with the calm
thoughts inspired by love of home and country, with the history of the
past, the hopes of the future, and reverence for the great men who have
adorned and blessed our nation in days gone by, burning in their
hearts,--there God prepares the verdict which will determine the wisdom
of our work to-night. Not in Chicago, in the heat of June, but at the
ballot boxes of the Republic, in the quiet of November, after the
silence of deliberate judgment, will this question be settled.

Now, gentlemen, I am about to present a name for your consideration,--
the name of one who was the comrade, associate, and friend of nearly
all the noble dead, whose faces look down upon us from these walls to-
night; a man who began his career of public service twenty-five years
ago.

You ask for his monument. I point you to twenty-five years of national
statutes. Not one great, beneficent law has been placed on our statute
books without his intelligent and powerful aid. He aided in formulating
the laws to raise the great armies and navies which carried us through
the war. His hand was seen in the workmanship of those statutes that
restored and brought back "the unity and married calm of States." His
hand was in all that great legislation that created the war currency,
and in all the still greater work that redeemed the promises of the
government and made the currency equal to gold.

When at last he passed from the halls of legislation into a high
executive office, he displayed that experience, intelligence, firmness,
and poise of character, which have carried us through a stormy period
of three years, with one half the public press crying "Crucify him!"
and a hostile Congress seeking to prevent success. In all this he
remained unmoved until victory crowned him. The great fiscal affairs of
the nation, and the vast business interests of the country, he guarded
and preserved while executing the law of resumption, and effected its
object without a jar and against the false prophecies of one half of
the press and of all the Democratic party.

He has shown himself able to meet with calmness the great emergencies
of the government. For twenty-five years he has trodden the perilous
heights of public duty, and against all the shafts of malice has borne
his breast unharmed. He has stood in the blaze of "that fierce light
that beats against the throne"; but its fiercest ray has found no flaw
in his armor, no stain upon his shield. I do not present him as a
better Republican or a better man than thousands of others that we
honor; but I present him for your deliberate and favorable
consideration. I nominate JOHN SHERMAN, OF OHIO.


THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

From "The Speeches and Addresses of William E. Russell." Copyrighted
1893, by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, publishers.

BY WILLIAM E. RUSSELL

As I stand here to-night, a Democrat, speaking to Democrats, and to men
whose conscience party could not bind,--men who carry their sovereignty
each under his own hat,--there comes vividly back to me the stirring
words with which the chairman opened a similar meeting on the eve of
the great battle of 1884, "This is a union meeting;" and, as he spoke,
the minds of his hearers went back to war days, when principle was
placed above party, and patriotism above partisanship.

Our union is not for the triumph of any man, but for the triumph of
ideas; for a living faith, a progressive spirit. It is of that to-night
I speak.

It has often been said that there was little difference between the two
parties. Perhaps that was the criticism of honest men, whose earnest
desire for honest candidates led them to look no farther. To-day every
intelligent man in Massachusetts knows that there is a wide difference
between the parties,--all the difference that there is between standing
still and moving forward. I do not believe that this difference is
accidental. It is the natural evolution of the history and purpose of
the parties. A political prophet of a generation ago, who knew this
history, who had studied the Democratic faith, had seen the birth of
the Republican party and its purpose, could have predicted the position
of the parties to-day. The Democratic party is old enough to have
outlived and defeated all other parties, young enough to represent the
progressive spirit of to-day. It must be founded on vital principles
and have a living faith. Its creed from its first to its thirty-ninth
article is an abiding trust in the people, a belief that men,
irrespective of the accident of birth or fortune, have a right to a
voice in the government that rules them. Its principles are the
equality and freedom of all men in affairs of State and before the
altar of their God,--that there should be allowed the greatest possible
personal liberty, that a government least felt is best, that it should
lightly and never unnecessarily impose its burdens of taxation and
restriction, that in its administration there should be simplicity,
purity, and economy, and in its form it should be closely within the
reach and control of the people.

Progress, merely as progress, is nothing; but progress that sees the
changes of a generation,--a blessed, lasting peace in place of the
horrors and burdens of civil war, a reunited, loyal country; progress
that hears the demand of the people for pure and economic
administration, for relief from restrictions and taxation; progress
that feels the discontent and suffering of great masses of the
people,--this progress, if willing and ready to shape into legislation
the new wishes and the new wants, rises to the height of statesmanship.


THE CALL TO DEMOCRATS

From a speech opening the National Democratic Convention, at Baltimore,
Maryland, June, 1912.

BY ALTON B. PARKER

It is not the wild and cruel methods of revolution and violence that
are needed to correct the abuses incident to our Government as to all
things human. Neither material nor moral progress lies that way. We
have made our Government and our complicated institutions by appeals to
reason, seeking to educate all our people that, day after day, year
after year, century after century, they may see more clearly, act more
justly, become more and more attached to the fundamental ideas that
underlie our society. If we are to preserve undiminished the heritage
bequeathed us, and add to it those accretions without which society
would perish, we shall need all the powers that the school, the church,
the court, the deliberative assembly, and the quiet thought of our
people can bring to bear.

We are called upon to do battle against the unfaithful guardians of our
Constitution and liberties and the hordes of ignorance which are
pushing forward only to the ruin of our social and governmental fabric.

Too long has the country endured the offenses of the leaders of a party
which once knew greatness. Too long have we been blind to the bacchanal
of corruption. Too long have we listlessly watched the assembling of
the forces that threaten our country and our firesides.

The time has come when the salvation of the country demands the
restoration to place and power of men of high ideals who will wage
unceasing war against corruption in politics, who will enforce the law
against both rich and poor, and who will treat guilt as personal and
punish it accordingly.

What is our duty? To think alike as to men and measures? Impossible!
Even for our great party! There is not a reactionary among us. All
Democrats are Progressives. But it is inevitably human that we shall
not all agree that in a single highway is found the only road to
progress, or each make the same man of all our worthy candidates his
first choice.

It is possible, however, and it is our duty to put aside all
selfishness, to consent cheerfully that the majority shall speak for
each of us, and to march out of this convention shoulder to shoulder,
intoning the praises of our chosen leader--and that will be his due,
whichever of the honorable and able men now claiming our attention
shall be chosen.


NOMINATING WOODROW WILSON

At the National Democratic Convention, Baltimore, Maryland, June, 1912.

BY JOHN W. WESCOTT

The New Jersey delegation is commissioned to represent the great cause
of Democracy and to offer you as its militant and triumphant leader a
scholar, not a charlatan; a statesman, not a doctrinaire; a profound
lawyer, not a splitter of legal hairs; a political economist, not an
egotistical theorist; a practical politician, who constructs, modifies,
restrains, without disturbance and destruction; a resistless debater
and consummate master of statement, not a mere sophist; a humanitarian,
not a defamer of characters and lives; a man whose mind is at once
cosmopolitan and composite of America; a gentleman of unpretentious
habits, with the fear of God in his heart and the love of mankind
exhibited in every act of his life; above all a public servant who has
been tried to the uttermost and never found wanting--matchless,
unconquerable, the ultimate Democrat, Woodrow Wilson.

New Jersey has reasons for her course. Let us not be deceived in our
premises. Campaigns of vilification, corruption and false pretence have
lost their usefulness. The evolution of national energy is towards a
more intelligent morality in politics and in all other relations. The
situation admits of no compromise. The temper and purpose of the
American public will tolerate no other view. The indifference of the
American people to politics has disappeared. Any platform and any
candidate not conforming to this vast social and commercial behest will
go down to ignominious defeat at the polls.

Men are known by what they say and do. They are known by those who hate
and oppose them. Many years ago Woodrow Wilson said, "No man is great
who thinks himself so, and no man is good who does not try to secure
the happiness and comfort of others." This is the secret of his life.
The deeds of this moral and intellectual giant are known to all men.
They accord, not with the shams and false pretences of politics, but
make national harmony with the millions of patriots determined to
correct the wrongs of plutocracy and reestablish the maxims of American
liberty in all their regnant beauty and practical effectiveness. New
Jersey loves Woodrow Wilson not for the enemies he has made. New Jersey
loves him for what he is. New Jersey argues that Woodrow Wilson is the
only candidate who can not only make Democratic success a certainty,
but secure the electoral vote of almost every State in the Union.

New Jersey will indorse his nomination by a majority of 100,000 of her
liberated citizens. We are not building for a day, or even a
generation, but for all time. New Jersey believes that there is an
omniscience in national instinct. That instinct centers in Woodrow
Wilson. He has been in political life less than two years. He has had
no organization; only a practical ideal--the reestablishment of equal
opportunity. Not his deeds alone, not his immortal words alone, not his
personality alone, not his matchless powers alone, but all combined
compel national faith and confidence in him. Every crisis evolves its
master. Time and circumstance have evolved Woodrow Wilson. The North,
the South, the East, and the West unite in him. New Jersey appeals to
this convention to give the nation Woodrow Wilson, that he may open the
gates of opportunity to every man, woman, and child under our flag, by
reforming abuses, and thereby teaching them, in his matchless words,
"to release their energies intelligently, that peace, justice and
prosperity may reign." New Jersey rejoices, through her freely chosen
representatives, to name for the presidency of the United States the
Princeton schoolmaster, Woodrow Wilson.


DEMOCRATIC FAITH

From "The Speeches and Addresses of William E. Russell." Copyrighted,
1894, by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Publishers

BY WILLIAM E. RUSSELL

For the honor and privilege of addressing this gathering of Young
Democracy I am deeply grateful. With earnestness and enthusiasm, with
devotion to the party and its principles, and with unflinching loyalty
to its glorious leaders, Young Democracy meets to-day for organization
and action. Gladly it volunteers in a campaign where its very faith is
at stake; impatiently it awaits the coming of the battle.

We fight for measures, not men; the principles of government, not men's
characters, are to be discussed; a nation's policy, not personal
ambition, is to be determined.

Thank God, we enter the fight with a living faith, founded upon
principles that are just, enduring, as old as the nation itself, yet
ever young, vigorous, and progressive, because there is ever work for
them to do. Our party was not founded for a single mission, which
accomplished, left it drifting with no fixed star of principle to guide
it. It was born and has lived to uphold great truths of government that
need always to be enforced. The influence of the past speaks to us in
the voice of the present. Jefferson and Jackson still lead us, not
because they are glorious reminiscences, but because the philosophy of
the one, the courage of the other, the Democracy of both, are potent
factors in determining Democracy to-day.

We believe that a government which controls the lives, liberties, and
property of a people in its administration should be honest,
economical, and efficient; and in its form a local self-government kept
near to the power that makes and obeys it. To safeguard the rights and
liberty of the individual, the Democratic party demands home rule.
Democracy stands beside the humblest citizen to protect him from
oppressive government; it is the bulwark of the silent people to resist
having the power and purpose of government warped by the clamorous
demands of selfish interests. Its greatest good, its highest glory, is
that it is, and is to be, the people's party. To it government is a
power to protect and encourage men to make the most of themselves, and
not something for men to make the most out of.

And, lastly, we believe in the success, the glory, and the splendid
destiny of this great Republic. It leaped into life from the hands of
Democrats. More than three-quarters of a century it has been nurtured
and strengthened by Democratic rule. Under Democratic administrations,
in its mighty sweep, it has stretched from ocean to ocean, not as a
North and South and East and West, but now as a glorious Union of
sovereign States, reunited in love and loyalty, a great nation of
millions of loyal subjects.

The faith we profess is distinctly an American faith; the principles we
proclaim are distinctly American principles, and have been from their
first utterance in the Declaration of Independence to their latest in
the platform of the St. Louis Convention; the policy they demand of us
as Democrats is emphatically an American policy.

Our great leader lives in the faith we profess. He speaks in the
principles we assert. He leads because we follow Democracy, its faith,
its principles, and its policy and hail him as the foremost Democrat of
the Nation. Thus comes victory. Thus victory means something. Thus
power and responsibility go together, and the only influence behind him
are the wishes, the rights, and the welfare of the great American
people. In such a cause, with such a leader, there is no room for
failure.

"To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin."


ENGLAND AND AMERICA

BY JOHN BRIGHT

What can be more monstrous than that we, as we call ourselves, to some
extent, an educated, a moral, and a Christian nation--at a moment when
an accident of this kind occurs, before we have made a representation
to the American government, before we have heard a word from it in
reply--should be all up in arms, every sword leaping from its scabbard,
and every man looking about for his pistols and his blunderbusses? I
think the conduct pursued--and I have no doubt just the same is pursued
by a certain class in America--is much more the conduct of savages than
of Christian and civilized men. No, let us be calm. You recollect how
we were dragged into the Russian war--how we "drifted" into it. You
know that I, at least, have not upon my head any of the guilt of that
fearful war. You know that it cost one hundred millions of money to
this country; that it cost at least the lives of forty thousand
Englishmen; that it disturbed your trade; that it nearly doubled the
armies of Europe; that it placed the relations of Europe on a much less
peaceful footing than before; and that it did not effect a single thing
of all those that it was promised to effect.

Now, then, before I sit down, let me ask you what is this people, about
which so many men in England at this moment are writing, and speaking,
and thinking, with harshness, I think with injustice, if not with great
bitterness? Two centuries ago, multitudes of the people of this country
found a refuge on the North American continent, escaping from the
tyranny of the Stuarts and from the bigotry of Laud. Many noble spirits
from our country made great experiments in favor of human freedom on
that continent. Bancroft, the great historian of his own country, has
said, in his own graphic and emphatic language, "The history of the
colonization of America is the history of the crimes of Europe."

At this very moment, then, there are millions in the United States who
personally, or whose immediate parents have at one time been citizens
of this country. They found a home in the Far West; they subdued the
wilderness; they met with plenty there, which was not afforded them in
their native country; and they have become a great people. There may be
persons in England who are jealous of those States. There may be men
who dislike democracy, and who hate a republic; there may be those
whose sympathies warm only toward an oligarchy or a monarchy. But of
this I am certain, that only misrepresentation the most gross, or
calumny the most wicked, can sever the tie which unites the great mass
of the people of this country with their friends and brethren beyond
the Atlantic.

Now, whether the Union will be restored or not, or the South achieve an
unhonored independence or not, I know not, and I predict not. But this
I think I know--that in a few years, a very few years, the twenty
millions of freemen in the North will be thirty millions, or even fifty
millions--a population equal to or exceeding that of this kingdom. When
that time comes, I pray that it may not be said among them, that in the
darkest hour of their country's trials, England, the land of their
fathers, looked on with icy coldness and saw unmoved the perils and
calamities of her children. As for me, I have but this to say: I am but
one in this audience, and but one in the citizenship of this country;
but if all other tongues are silent, mine shall speak for that policy
which tends, and which always shall tend, to generous thoughts, and
generous words, and generous deeds, between the two great nations who
speak the English language, and from their origin are alike entitled to
the English name.


ON HOME RULE IN IRELAND

BY WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE

There has been no great day of hope for Ireland, no day when you might
hope completely and definitely to end the controversy till now--more
than ninety years. The long periodic time has at last run out, and the
star has again mounted into the heavens. What Ireland was doing for
herself in 1795 we at length have done. The Roman Catholics have been
emancipated--emancipated after a woeful disregard of solemn promises
through twenty-nine years, emancipated slowly, sullenly, not from good
will, but from abject terror, with all the fruits and consequences
which will always follow that method of legislation. The second problem
has been also solved, and the representation of Ireland has been
thoroughly reformed; and I am thankful to say that the franchise was
given to Ireland on the readjustment of last year with a free heart,
with an open hand; and the gift of that franchise was the last act
required to make the success of Ireland in her final effort absolutely
sure. We have given Ireland a voice; we must all listen for a moment to
what she says. We must all listen, both sides, both parties--I mean as
they are divided on this question--divided, I am afraid, by an almost
immeasurable gap. We do not undervalue or despise the forces opposed to
us. I have described them as the forces of class and its dependents;
and that as a general description--as a slight and rude outline of a
description--is, I believe, perfectly true. You have power, you have
wealth, you have rank, you have station, you have organization. What
have we? We think that we have the people's heart; we believe and we
know we have the promise of the harvest of the future. As to the
people's heart, you may dispute it, and dispute it with perfect
sincerity. Let that matter make its own proof. As to the harvest of the
future, I doubt if you have so much confidence; and I believe that
there is in the breast of many a man who means to vote against us to-
night a profound misgiving, approaching even to a deep conviction, that
the end will be as we foresee, and not as you do--that the ebbing tide
is with you, and the flowing tide with us. Ireland stands at your bar,
expectant, hopeful, almost suppliant. Her words are the words of truth
and soberness. She asks a blessed oblivion of the past, and in that
oblivion our interest is deeper than even hers. My right honorable
friend, the member for East Edinburgh, asks us tonight to abide by the
traditions of which we are the heirs. What traditions? By the Irish
traditions? Go into the length and breadth of the world, ransack the
literature of all countries, find, if you can, a single voice, a single
book--find, I would almost say, as much as a single newspaper article,
unless the product of the day,--in which the conduct of England towards
Ireland is anywhere treated except with profound and bitter
condemnation. Are these the traditions by which we are exhorted to
stand? No; they are a sad exception to the glory of our country. They
are a broad and black blot upon the pages of its history; and what we
want to do is to stand by the traditions of which we are the heirs in
all matters except our relations with Ireland, and to make our
relations with Ireland to conform to the other traditions of our
country. So we treat our traditions, so we hail the demand of Ireland
for what I call a blessed oblivion of the past. She asks also a boon
for the future; and that boon for the future, unless we are much
mistaken, will be a boon to us in respect of honor, no less than a boon
to her in respect of happiness, prosperity, and peace. Such, sir, is
her prayer. Think, I beseech you, think well, think wisely, think, not
for the moment, but for the years that are to come, before you reject
this Bill.

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