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a bill in Congress relating to military affairs, and in pressing the bill criticised quite freely the military career of General Harrison. In the course of his remarks he, Crary, alluded to his own experience as a general of militia. Mr. Corwin saw the situation immediately; a general of militia, whose sole knowledge of the military art was derived from the country muster in time of peace, taking upon himself the task of teaching a well-trained soldier, who had won laurels in actual warfare! The result is well shown in the speech here given.

Sarcasm has for its object the holding up to contempt and scorn the actions of men in their conduct of public or private affairs. It was the weapon employed very freely by William Pitt in that most trying period of the British nation in dealing with the actions of the French during the time when their government was under the control of Napoleon. Here is a very fair example, taken from the speech of that orator on refusing to negotiate with that ruler :

"Such, sir, was the nature of that system. Let us examine a little farther, whether it was from the beginning intended to be acted upon in the extent I have stated. At the very moment when their threats appeared to many little else than the ravings of madmen, they were digesting and methodizing the means of execution, as accurately as if they had actually foreseen the extent to which they have since been able to realize their criminal projects. They sat down coolly to devise

the most regular and effectual mode of making the application of this system the current business of the day, and incorporating it with the general orders of their army; for (will the House believe it) this confirmation of the decrees of November 19 was accompanied by an exposition and commentary addressed to the general of every army of France, containing a schedule as coolly conceived and as methodically reduced as any by which the most quiet business of a justice of the peace or the most regular routine of any department of State in this country could be conducted. Each commander was furnished with one general blank formula of a letter, for all the nations in the world: The people of France to the people of, greeting. We are come to expel your 'tyrants.' Even this was not all; one of the articles of the decree of the 15th of December was expressly that those who should show themselves so brutish and so enamored of their chains as to refuse the restoration of their rights, to renounce liberty and equality, or to preserve, recall or treat with their prince or privileged orders, were not entitled to the distinction which France in other cases had justly established between government and people, and that such a people ought to be treated according to the rigor of war and of conquest.' Here is their love of peace; here is their aversion to conquest; here is their respect for the independence of other nations!"

In the reply to this speech by the celebrated Charles James Fox we find some very fine passages of a similar character, one of which is here given:

“If a man had been present at the battle of Blenheim, for instance, and had inquired the motive of the

battle, there was not a soldier engaged who could not have satisfied his curiosity, and even, perhaps, allayed his feelings. They were fighting, they knew, to repress the uncontrolled ambition of the Grand Monarch.

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"But if a man were present now at a field of slaughter, and were to inquire for what they were fighting-'Fighting!' would be the answer; 'they are not fighting; they are pausing.' 'Why is that man expiring? Why is that other writhing with agony? What means this implacable fury?' The answer must be, You are quite wrong, sir, you deceive yourself-they are not fighting, do not disturb them, they are merely pausing! This man is not expiring with agony—that man is not dead, he is only pausing! Lord keep you sir! they are not angry with one another; they have cause of quarrel; but their country thinks there should be a pause. All that you see, sir, is nothing like fighting-there is no harm, nor cruelty, nor bloodshed in it whatever; it is nothing more than a political pause; it is merely to try an experiment-to see whether Bonaparte will not behave himself better than heretofore, and, in the meantime, we have agreed to a pause in pure friendship!' And is this the way, sir, that you are to show yourselves the advocates of order, to trample on religion, to stifle in the heart not merely the generosity of noble sentiment, but the affections of social nature, and in the prosecution of this system you spread terror and devastation around you?"

Irony consists in pretending to favor, uphold or advocate that which you yourself do not believe. A very beautiful example is presented in the ex

tract from Mr. Fox' speech just given. The picture where the orator describes the field of battle where the wounded and dying fill the air with their groans, and the dead lie scattered in piles around, as not a fight but a pause is a striking and effective example of bitter irony.

Invective is strong and rapid denunciation of men or measures. It is notably exhibited in Cicero's orations against Catiline, as well as these against Marc Antony. It is well employed in those speeches which have for their object the exciting of strong feelings of hatred against an unworthy object. The following extract from a speech of Henry Grattan, the eminent Irish orator, affords an excellent illustration of withering invective:

"You, sir [referring to Mr. Flood, his opponent], who delight to utter execrations against the American commissioners of 1778, on account of their hostility to America-you, sir, who manufacture stage thunder against Mr. Eden for his anti-American principles— you, sir, whom it pleases to chant a hymn to the immortal Hampden-you, sir, approved of the tyrannies exercised against America; and you, sir, voted four thousand Irish troops, to cut the throats of the Americans, fighting for their freedom, fighting for your freedom, fighting for the great principle, LIBERTY. But you found at last (and this should be an eternal lesson to men of your craft and cunning) that the king had only dishonored you; the court had bought but would not trust you; and, having voted for the worst measures, you remained, for seven years, the creature of salary without

the confidence of government. Mortified at the discovery, and stung by disappointment, you betake yourself to the sad expedients of duplicity. You try the sorry game of a trimmer in your progress to the acts of an incendiary. You give no honest support either to the government or to the people. You, at the most critical period of their existence, take no part; you sign no nonconsumption agreement; you are no volunteer; you oppose no Perpetual Mutiny bill, no altered Sugar bill; you declare that the Declaration of Right should have been brought forward; and observing, with regard to both prince and people, the most impartial treachery and desertion, you justify the suspicion of your sovereign by betraying the government, as you had told the people, until, at last, by this hollow conduct, and for some other steps, the result of mortified ambition, being dismissed, and another person put in your place, you fly to the ranks of the volunteers and canvass for mutiny; you announce that the country was ruined by other men during that period in which she had been sold by you. Your logic is that the repeal of a declaratory law is not the repeal of a law at all, and the effect of that logic is an Englishact affecting to emancipate Ireland by exercising over her the legislative authority of the British Parliament. Such has been your conduct; and at such conduct every order of your fellow-subjects have a right to exclaim. The merchant may say to you—the constitutionalist may say to you-the American may say to you and I, I now say, and say to your beard, sir,- You are not an honest man."

The qualities of wit, humor, ridicule, sarcasm, irony, and invective which we have just been con

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