said to be the most completely English of all the orators in the language, plain and practical in his understanding, definite in his aims, strong and honest in his common sense. Dealing with facts in a positive way he was the practical representative of a practical people. Underneath all was a great heart full of tenderness and sympathy, expressing its emotions with sincerity and artlessness. This was one of the secrets of his power with his hearers. He was an honest, straightforward, emotional man, speaking to a nation whose character partakes largely of these qualities. He answered well to his own definition of the character of an orator, "One who can give immediate, instantaneous utterance to his thoughts." He mastered the subject and accumulated facts. How he should use these depended upon the mood of the assembly he rose to address. Such a method was much more likely to fall into a colloquial style than that of a stately rhetoric, which, it must be admitted, was largely prevalent in that day.

In his determination to convince his hearers he sometimes used language that was strong, to say the least. The king's reign he called "the most infamous that ever disgraced a nation;" the American war was "accursed, diabolical, and cruel;" the king, "that infernal spirit who really ruled, and had nearly ruined the country;" the ministers holding their office "not at the option of the sovereign but of the reptiles who burrow under the Throne;" and if the Commons took a particular course they would be "the most despicable set of drivelers that ever insulted society under the appellation of lawmakers."

He acknowledged that his language was

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sometimes vehement and intemperate, "but I speak as I feel and no man can feel more strongly than I do the present situation of this country," was his apology. Practical as he was, he was not without that imagination which illumines a subject by the discovery of likenesses between things well known and things hard to understand. His illustrations were largely taken from literature, biography, and anecdote. In the use of the last he was particularly happy, and the effect of some of his little stories must have outweighed many ponderous arguments of an opponent. When he spoke of Pitt as "in the gorgeous attire of a barbarous Prince of Morocco who always put on his gayest garments as a prelude to the slaughter of many of his subjects," it must have taken somewhat from the effectiveness of that orator's speech. The panic caused by the principles of the French was said to have caused Russia and Prussia to seize Poland. This reminded Fox of a pickpocket who said that in a crowd he had been struck with a panic and grasped the first thing that came in his way, which happened to be a gentleman's watch. Such felicitous use of incident was peculiarly valuable to a debater, and as such he outranked all other speakers of his day. He had not every oratorical excellence and was given to faults of repetition of argument and tautology of diction, and he did not always select the best words and appropriate terms. His method was often careless, but all these things seemed to make his hearers believe that he was above artifice, and that he spoke from conviction, with clearness and force if not always with elegance. His strong point was to state the position of an adversary better than the op

ponent himself had done, and then seize it and tear it all in pieces. Sometimes his arguments were personal in their nature and were brought to bear upon his adversary with telling severity.

The most finished of his speeches is that on the Westminister Scrutiny, and the ablest, according to contemporary testimony, is that on The Rejection of Bonaparte's Overtures. It is in the close of this last speech that the famous peroration occurs, full of mingled argument, irony, and invective, giving a faint idea of Fox in his most effective mood:

“When, then, sir, is this war to stop? One campaign is successful to you, another to them; and in this way, animated by the vindictive passions of revenge, hatred, and rancor, you may go on forever. And all this without an intelligible motive, because you may gain a better peace a year or two hence. We must keep Bonaparte at war as a state of probation. Is war a state of probation? Is peace a rash system? Is it dangerous for nations to live in amity with each other? 'But we must pause.' What! must the best blood of Great Britain be spilled and her treasure wasted that you may make an experiment? Put yourselves in the field of battle and learn to judge of the horrors you excite. In former wars a man might have some feeling or interest that would balance in his mind the impressions a sense of carnage would inflict. 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 writhing with agony? What means this im

placable fury? You are wrong, sir; that man is not expiring in agony, this man is not dead, he is only pausing. There is no cause of quarrel, but their country thinks there should be a pause—a political pause to see whether Bonaparte will not behave himself better And this is the way, sir, that you show yourselves the advocates of order. You take up a system calculated to uncivilize the world, to destroy order, to trample on religion, to stifle in the heart the affections of social nature, and in the prosecution of this system you spread terror and devastation all around you."

It should be said that Fox's diatribe had a powerful effect on the House, and, though his opponents outvoted him, in about a year and a half he saw his principles triumph in the treaty of Amiens.

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XXIV.

COLONIAL ORATORS.

MERICAN oratory of the colonial period may prop

erly be regarded as a part of the movement and development which was taking place in the Parliament of Great Britain in the last half of the eighteenth century. So closely connected were the colonies with the mother-country in business interests and education, in its larger sense, that the influence of leaders of thought in England was as great here as at home. If the progress of colonial sentiment toward emancipation from British domination be carefully traced, it will be found that there was a great reluctance until the very beginning of the war to separate from the home govSamuel Adams, the most radical partisan and patriot, confessed as late as 1768 that "there is an English affection in the colonists toward the mother-country which will forever keep them connected with her unless it shall be erased by repeated unkind usage on her part." Severed from English ancestral homes by weeks of voyage there was nevertheless on the part of the colonists a constant sense of the home feeling and a continual reference in their thoughts and their speech to England as their home country. The language, the traditions, the religion of the colonists were those of the

ernment.