play and of which a writer has no need. While readiness, promptitude, and clearness are always valuable, they assume very different proportions in spoken and written material. No one expects in a speech the sort of allusiveness which is appropriate and agreeable in an essay. Indeed they would be out of place. A simple directness is needed in speaking, much as it may sometimes be concealed by rhetorical artifice. And yet an element of the unexpected is necessary to avoid fatiguing an audience. Gladstone was an adept in varying the monotony of exposition by sudden turns of thought which relieved the mind without distracting the attention. Even in his financial statements he remembered the value of form, and was constantly on the watch to find opportunities of departing from the level flatness of disquisition. He often gives the reason for mentioning a fact in the sentence after it, not in the sentence before it. Of course this is a feeble and inadequate example of a delicate art, which has many and various ramifications. The main point is that the hearers of a speech should be as little conscious as possible of the machinery by which they are guided from the premises to the conclusion.

The most eloquent speeches, however, have not always been the most successful, and there is an interest in observing the other qualities which convince either representative assemblies or public meetings. Walpole, for example, and Peel, though they could hardly be called eloquent, possessed the art of convincing the House of Commons in a far higher degree than most eloquent men.

Fox is said to have fused reason with passion, and thus reached the highest point of oratorical power. The same encomium might be passed upon Gladstone. But there are other forms in which the effect of great speaking may be displayed. Sometimes sheer argumentative power carries everything before it. Sometimes a speech succeeds because it exactly embodies the prevailing public sentiment of the

time. There have been instances where the intense conviction of the speaker produced a corresponding belief in his hearers. On the whole, however, it may be said with as near an approach to certainty as the subject admits, that the most successful speeches have been those which combined logic with rhetoric so as to convince the mind while delighting the ear. It is in accordance with that principle that these selections have been made.

LIBRARY

OF THE

UNIVERSITY
OF

CALIFORNIA

FAMOUS SPEECHES

CROMWELL

THE fragments of Cromwell's speeches which remain have been industriously collected by Carlyle. Cromwell was no rhetorician. His meaning has to be gathered from the impressive utterances which every now and then illuminate the dark passages of his harangues. In this way Carlyle has interpreted sayings which had a clear significance at the time, and which. have their place in the history of the period. In part Cromwell spoke the current language of Puritanism. In part he expressed his own deepest convictions as they came from his mind, feeling that those who heard him would understand him. He could not have convinced other men as he did unless he had been himself assured of the truth that he felt called to proclaim. The obvious sincerity which pervades his speeches explains why it was that they required no interpreter. They were adapted to their audience. They simply set forth the message he had to deliver in the terms which came naturally to his lips, the Puritan style of the day. When he said that he saw the hand of God, he meant that in his mind's eye he did see it. He felt himself to be under the constant direction of Providence, from which he always sought guidance in every difficulty and danger. He did not weigh objections against duties, and then take the easiest line of action. He followed what was to him the clear path of conduct in the light which came to him from the religion of his heart. He thought of Englishmen and Scotsmen as the chosen people, selected to uphold the cause of simple and scriptural faith. Whether, or how far, he deceived himself is not the question. We cannot understand his speeches, or even

1-(2170)

1

his career, unless we realise that his Biblical phraseology was not cant, but the form which his thoughts naturally assumed. If he found it impossible to govern with the Parliament after having fought and conquered for it, we must remember that he had to deal with an absolutely irresponsible House of Commons, which could not be legally dissolved without its own consent. When the Long Parliament had been forcibly dispersed, he had to try constitutional experiments without adequate time or means. The foresight he showed was, in the circumstances, marvellous. In giving representation to the great towns he anticipated the Reform Act of 1832. But though his army was a citizen force, as exemplary in its behaviour at home as it had been splendid in its achievements abroad, he had no popular support behind him. The tyranny of the Stuarts was forgotten under the severe rule of the Saints, and the real principles of freedom were understood by neither side. Interference with national customs and personal habits was equally disagreeable whether it were exercised in the name of a Protector, a Parliament, or a King. Cromwell made England a great power, and raised her military reputation higher than it had ever stood before. He did not claim, like Charles the First, the right to tax without a Parliament, nor did he ever break his word. But he was as little of a Constitutionalist as Charles himself, and he believed in the divine right of a Puritan Council as firmly as any cavalier believed in the divine right of kings. His idea of a Parliament was a consultative rather than a legislative body, to give advice, and to assist the executive government, not to control the force that was guiding the people for their good. The original opposition to Charles, of which Pym may be taken as the embodiment, had been constitutional and parliamentary. The Civil War turned it into a military despotism, mitigated and subdued by the personal influence of Cromwell, but always in the background as the ultimate sanction of the Commonwealth. Cromwell did not wish for despotic authority. He would have preferred a union of sober and pious men, agreeing

in public aims as in private character. But he was for dictatorship against anarchy.

Speech delivered Sept. 17th, 16561

GENTLEMEN, When I came hither I did think that a duty was incumbent upon me a little to pity myself; because, this being a very extraordinary occasion, I thought I had very many things to say unto you, " and was somewhat burdened and straitened thereby." But truly now, seeing you in such a condition as you are, I think I must turn off "my pity" in this, as I hope I shall in everything else—and consider you as certainly not being able long to bear that condition and heat that you are now in. "So far as possible, on this large subject, let us be brief; not studying the Art of Rhetoricians." Rhetoricians whom I do not pretend to "much concern with"; neither with them, nor with what they used to deal in: words!

Truly, our business is to speak Things! The Dispensation of God that are upon us do require it; and that subject upon which we shall make our discourse is somewhat of very great interest and concernment, both for the glory of God, and with reference to His Interest in the world. I mean this peculiar, His most peculiar Interest, "His Church, the Communion of the faithful Followers of Christ "; -and that will not leave any of us to exclude His general Interest which is the concernment of the Living People," not as Christians but as human creatures," within these three Nations, and all the Dependencies there upon. I have told you I should speak to things; things that concern these Interests: The Glory of God, and His Peculiar Interest in the world-which "latter" is more extensive, I say more extensive, than the People of all three Nations with the appurtenances, or the countries and places, belonging unto. them.

The first thing, therefore, that I shall speak to is That, that is the first lesson of Nature; Being and Preservation. As to that of Being, I do think I do not ill style it the first consideration which Nature teacheth the Sons of Adam; and then

1 The occasion was the meeting of his second Parliament which he had just summoned. The words between inverted commas were put in by Carlyle to bring out the sense. This is the best and most thoroughly reported of Cromwell's speeches. It gives by far the fullest idea of his style.