Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History (37 page)

Close, perhaps, but not wholly authentic. A century after that, the famed English historian Thomas Carlyle pored over three contemporary sources to get as close as he could to what Cromwell actually said. “Combining these originals,” he wrote in 1845, “we have, after various perusals and collations and considerations, obtained the following authentic, moderately conceivable account.”

Here is Carlyle’s reconstruction in the form of narrative studded with direct quotation. The Lord General was Cromwell; he had not yet promoted himself to Lord Protector. Note the report of Cromwell’s “clapping on his hat,” the angry general’s calculated insult to parliamentary rule. With his company of armed soldiers outside the hall at the ready, the general takes his seat.

***

WHEREUPON THE LORD
General sat still, for about a quarter of an hour longer. But now the question being put, That this Bill do now pass, he beckons again to Harrison, says, “This is the time; I must do it!”—and so rose up, put off his hat, and spake. At the first, and for a good while, he spake to the commendation of the Parliament for their pains and care of the public good; but afterwards he changed his style, told them of their injustice, delays of justice, self-interest, and other faults—rising higher and higher, into a very aggravated style indeed. An honorable Member, Sir Peter Wentworth by name, not known to my readers, and by me better known than trusted, rises to order, as we phrase it; says, “It is a strange language this; unusual within the walls of Parliament this! And from a trusted servant too; and one whom we have so highly honored; and one”—“Come, come!” exclaims my Lord General in a very high key, “we have had enough of this,”—and in fact my Lord General now blazing all up into clear conflagration, exclaims, “I will put an end to your prating,” and steps forth into the floor of the House, and clapping on his hat, and occasionally stamping the floor with his feet, begins a discourse:…

“It is not fit that you should sit here any longer! You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing lately. You shall now give place to better men!—Call them in!” adds he briefly, to Harrison, in word of command: and some twenty or thirty grim musketeers enter, with bullets and their snaphances; grimly prompt for orders….

“You call yourselves a Parliament,” continues my Lord General in clear blaze of conflagration: “You are no Parliament: I say you are no Parliament! Some of you are drunkards,” and his eye flashes on poor Mr. Chaloner, an official man of some value, addicted to the bottle; “some of you are—” and he glares into Harry Marten, and the poor Sir Peter who rose to order, lewd livers both; “living in open contempt of God’s Commandments. Following your own greedy appetites, and the Devil’s Commandments.”

“Corrupt unjust persons; scandalous to the profession of the Gospel; how can you be a Parliament for God’s People? Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God—go!”

In 1741, a limit of thirty-five shillings a month was proposed for the wages of sailors, and the discussion of this proposition led the elder William Pitt to demonstrate his eloquence in debate. Born in 1708, Pitt eventually served as prime minister and was known as the Great Commoner. The year that he turned thirty-three, however, his reputation as a debater was secured with his response to the accusation of what he called “the atrocious crime of being a young man.”

The speech to which Pitt was replying has been variously attributed to Sir Robert Walpole, prime minister of England from 1721 to 1742, and to his third son, Horace (originally Horatio), statesman and writer. Samuel Johnson’s original edition of
Parliamentary Debates
, the source of the debate’s text, credits Horatio Walpole, although he was born in 1717, almost ten years after the elder Pitt.

William Pitt’s impassioned answer weighs first the difference between age and experience and then the proper language for debate. Through the repeated use of the correlative conjunctions “neither” and “nor,” he balances his ideas in parallel structure and turns the attack from “youth” to “age, which always brings one privilege, that of being insolent and supercilious without punishment.”

***

SIR, I WAS
unwilling to interrupt the course of this debate while it was carried on with calmness and decency, by men who do not suffer the ardor of opposition to cloud their reason, or transport them to such expressions as the dignity of this assembly does not admit.

I have hitherto deferred to answer the gentleman who declaimed against the bill with such fluency of rhetoric and such vehemence of gesture, who charged the advocates for the expedients now proposed with
having no regard to any interest but their own, and with making laws only to consume paper, and threatened them with the defection of their adherents and the loss of their influence upon this new discovery of their folly and their ignorance. Nor, sir, do I now answer him for any other purpose than to remind him how little the clamors of rage and petulancy of invectives contribute to the purposes for which this assembly is called together; how little the discovery of truth is promoted and the security of the nation established by pompous diction and theatrical emotions.

Formidable sounds and furious declamations, confident assertions and lofty periods, may affect the young and inexperienced, and, perhaps, the gentleman may have contracted his habits of oratory by conversing more with those of his own age than with such as have had more opportunities of acquiring knowledge and more successful methods of communicating their sentiments. If the heat of his temper, sir, would suffer him to attend to those whose age and long acquaintance with business give them an indisputable right to deference and superiority, he would learn, in time, to reason rather than declaim and to prefer justness of argument, and an accurate knowledge of facts, to sounding epithets and splendid superlatives, which may disturb the imagination for a moment, but leave no lasting impression on the mind.

He will learn, sir, that to accuse and prove are very different, and that reproaches unsupported by evidence affect only the character of him that utters them. Excursions of fancy and flights of oratory are, indeed, pardonable in young men, but in no other; and it would surely contribute more, even to the purpose for which some gentlemen appear to speak, that of depreciating the conduct of the administration, to prove the inconveniences and injustice of this bill, than barely to assert them, with whatever magnificence of language or appearance of zeal, honesty, or compassion.

[
PITT
:] Sir, the atrocious crime of being a young man, which the honorable gentleman has with such spirit and decency charged upon me, I shall neither attempt to palliate nor deny, but content myself with wishing that I may be one of those whose follies may cease with their youth, and not of that number who are ignorant in spite of experience. Whether youth can be imputed to any man as a reproach, I will not, sir, assume the province of determining; but surely age may become justly contemptible, if the opportunities which it brings have passed away without improvement, and vice appears to prevail when the passions have subsided. The wretch that, after having seen the consequences of a thousand errors, continues still to blunder, and whose age has only added obstinacy to stupidity, is surely the object of either abhorrence or contempt,
and deserves not that his gray head should secure him from insults. Much more, sir, is he to be abhorred who, as he has advanced in age, has receded from virtue, and becomes more wicked with less temptation; who prostitutes himself for money which he cannot enjoy, and spends the remains of his life in the ruin of his country. But youth, sir, is not my only crime; I have been accused of acting a theatrical part. A theatrical part may either imply some peculiarities of gesture or a dissimulation of my real sentiments and an adoption of the opinions and language of another man.

In the first sense, sir, the charge is too trifling to be confuted, and deserves only to be mentioned that it may be despised. I am at liberty, like every other man, to use my own language; and though I may, perhaps, have some ambition to please this gentleman, I shall not lay myself under any restraint, nor very solicitously copy his diction or his mien, however matured by age or modeled by experience. If any man shall by charging me with theatrical behavior imply that I utter any sentiments but my own, I shall treat him as a calumniator and a villain; nor shall any protection shelter from the treatment which he deserves. I shall, on such an occasion, without scruple, trample upon all those forms with which wealth and dignity entrench themselves, nor shall anything but age restrain my resentment; age, which always brings one privilege, that of being insolent and supercilious without punishment. But with regard, sir, to those whom I have offended, I am of the opinion that if I had acted a borrowed part, I should have avoided their censure; the heat that offended them is the ardor of conviction, and that zeal for the service of my country which neither hope nor fear shall influence me to suppress. I will not sit unconcerned while my liberty is invaded, nor look in silence upon public robbery….

Napoleon Bonaparte, whose oratorical salutation was unsurpassed (“Soldiers!”), ruled France from the overthrow of the French Directory in 1799 until the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814. As ruler, he posed a strong military threat to England, already debilitated by failures in Continental warfare and a rising debt. In late 1799, however, Napoleon proposed peace to George III of England, an offer that swiftly became a topic of parliamentary debate.

On February 3, 1800, William Pitt the Younger, then prime minister, presented an eloquent appeal in the House of Commons for refusing Napoleon’s offer. His arguments make extensive use of parallel structure (“I never thought it, I never hoped it, I never wished it”), and that parallelism is particularly forceful in a series of “if” clauses that speculate on a stabilization of the French government.

Immediately following Pitt’s rejection of Napoleon’s proposal came the response by Charles James Fox, British orator and statesman. A proponent of liberal reform and an enthusiastic supporter of the French Revolution, Fox was known for his genial temperament and his ability in debating. His extemporaneous reply to Pitt in the House of Commons ranks among the best of debate rhetoric, particularly in its point-by-point refutation of the opposing view.

Fox’s response, though measured and insightful, failed to sway the House of Commons, which voted almost four to one against accepting Napoleon’s offer. Pitt’s position was victorious in the debate, but within two years England had signed the 1802 Treaty of Amiens, accepting less favorable terms for its peace with France.

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…THROUGH ALL THE
stages of the Revolution military force has governed; public opinion has scarcely been heard. But still I consider this as only an exception from a general truth; I still believe that in every civilized country (not enslaved by a Jacobin faction) public opinion is the only sure support of any government: I believe this with the more satisfaction from a conviction that if this contest is happily terminated, the established governments of Europe will stand upon that rock firmer than ever; and whatever may be the defects of any particular constitution, those who live under it will prefer its continuance to the experiment of changes which may plunge them into the unfathomable abyss of revolution, or extricate them from it, only to expose them to the terrors of military despotism. And to apply this to France, I see no reason to believe that the present usurpation will be more permanent than any other despotism, which has been established by the same means, and with the same defiance of public opinion.

What, then, is the inference I draw from all that I have now stated? Is it that we will in no case treat with Bonaparte? I say no such thing. But I say, as has been said in the answer returned to the French note, that we ought to wait for
experience, and the evidence of facts
, before we are convinced that such a treaty is admissible. The circumstances I have stated would well justify us if we should be slow in being convinced; but on a question of peace and war, everything depends upon degree and upon comparison.

If, on the one hand, there should be an appearance that the policy of France is at length guided by different maxims from those which have hitherto prevailed; if we should hereafter see signs of stability in the government, which are not now to be traced; if the progress of the allied army should not call forth such a spirit in France as to make it probable that the act of the country itself will destroy the system now prevailing; if the danger, the difficulty, the risk of continuing the contest, should increase, while the hope of complete ultimate success should be diminished; all these, in their due place, are considerations which, with myself and (I can answer for it) with every one of my colleagues, will have their just weight. But at present these considerations all operate one way; at present there is nothing from which we can presage a favorable disposition to change in the French councils: there is the greatest reason to rely on powerful cooperation from our allies; there are the strongest marks of a disposition in the interior of France to active resistance against this new tyranny; and there is every ground to believe, on reviewing our situation and that of the enemy, that if we are ultimately disappointed of that complete success which we are at present entitled to hope, the
continuance of the contest, instead of making our situation comparatively worse, will have made it comparatively better.

If, then, I am asked how long are we to persevere in the war, I can only say that no period can be accurately assigned beforehand. Considering the importance of obtaining complete security for the objects for which we contend, we ought not to be discouraged too soon: but on the other hand, considering the importance of not impairing and exhausting the radical strength of the country, there are limits beyond which we ought not to persist, and which we can determine only by estimating and comparing fairly, from time to time, the degree of security to be obtained by treaty, and the risk and disadvantage of continuing the contest.