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Uniform with British Orations


    AMERICAN ORATIONS, to illustrate American Political
      History, edited, with introductions, by ALEXANDER
      JOHNSTON, Professor of Jurisprudence and Political
      Economy in the College of New Jersey. 3 vols., 16 mo,
      $3.75.

    PROSE MASTERPIECES FROM MODERN ESSAYISTS, comprising
      single specimen essays from IRVING, LEIGH HUNT,
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    REPRESENTATIVE
    BRITISH ORATIONS

    WITH
    INTRODUCTIONS AND EXPLANATORY NOTES

    BY
    CHARLES KENDALL ADAMS

    _Videtisne quantum munus sit oratoris historia?_
                              —CICERO, _DeOratore_, ii, 15


                                   ✩✩


    NEW YORK & LONDON
    G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
    The Knickerbocker Press
    1884




    COPYRIGHT
    G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
    1884.


    Press of
    G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
    New York




CONTENTS.


                                                                    PAGE
    WILLIAM PITT                                                       1

    WILLIAM PITT                                                      19
        ON HIS REFUSAL TO NEGOTIATE WITH NAPOLEON BONAPARTE; HOUSE
          OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 3, 1800.

    CHARLES JAMES FOX                                                 99

    CHARLES JAMES FOX                                                108
        ON THE REJECTION OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE’S OVERTURES OF
          PEACE; HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 3, 1800.

    SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH                                             176

    SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH                                             185
        IN BEHALF OF FREE SPEECH. ON THE TRIAL OF JEAN PELTIER,
          ACCUSED OF LIBELLING NAPOLEON BONAPARTE; COURT OF
          KING’S BENCH, FEBRUARY 21, 1803.

    LORD ERSKINE                                                     262

    LORD ERSKINE                                                     273
        ON THE LIMITATIONS OF FREE SPEECH; DELIVERED IN 1797
          ON THE TRIAL OF WILLIAMS FOR PUBLICATION OF PAINE’S
          “AGE OF REASON.”




WILLIAM PITT.


The younger Pitt was the second son of Lord Chatham, and was seven
years of age when his father in 1766 was admitted to the peerage. The
boy’s earliest peculiarity was an absorbing ambition to become his
father’s successor as the first orator of the day. His health, however,
was so delicate as to cause the gravest apprehensions. Stanhope tells
us that before he was fourteen “half of his time was lost through ill
health,” and that his early life at Cambridge was “one long disease.”
There is still extant a remarkable letter that reveals better than any
thing else the fond hopes of the father and the physical discouragement
as well as the mental aspirations of the son. Chatham wrote: “Though
I indulge with inexpressible delight the thought of your returning
health, I cannot help being a little in pain lest you should make more
haste than good speed to be well. How happy the task, my noble, amiable
boy, to caution you only against pursuing too much all those liberal
and praiseworthy things, to which less happy natures are perpetually
to be spurred and driven. I will not tease you with too long a lecture
in favor of inaction and a competent stupidity, your two best tutors
and companions at present. You have time to spare; consider, there
is but the Encyclopædia, and when you have mastered that, what will
remain?” The intimations of precocity here given were fully justified
by the extraordinary progress made by the boy notwithstanding his
bodily ailments. He entered the University of Cambridge at fourteen,
and such was his scholarship at that time that his tutor wrote: “It is
no uncommon thing for him to read into English six or eight pages of
Thuc