No. IV.

REMARKS OF INCREASE D. O'PHACE, ESQUIRE, AT AN EXTRUMPERY CAUCUS IN STATE STREET, REPORTED BY MR. H. BIGLOW.

[THE ingenious reader will at once understand that no such speech as the following was ever totidem verbis pronounced. But there are simpler and less guarded wits, for the satisfying of which such an explanation may be needful. For there are certain invisible lines, which as Truth successively overpasses, she becomes Untruth to one and another of us, as a large river, flowing from one kingdom into another, sometimes takes a new name, albeit the waters undergo no change, how small soever. There is, moreover, a truth of fiction more veracious than the truth of fact, as that of the Poet, which represents to us things and events as they ought to be, rather than servilely copies them as they are imperfectly imaged in the crooked and smoky glass of our mundane affairs. It is this which makes the speech of Antonius, though originally spoken in no wider a forum than the brain of Shakspeare, more historically valuable than that other which Appian has reported, by as much as the understanding of the Englishman was more comprehensive than that of the Alexandrian. Mr. Biglow, in the

present instance has only made use of a license assumed by all the historians of antiquity, who (put into the mouths of various characters such words as seem to them most fitting to the occasion and to the speaker. If it be objected that no such oration could ever have been delivered, I answer, that there are few assemblages for speech-making which do not better deserve the title of Parliamentum Indoctorum than did the sixth Parliament of Henry the Fourth, and that men still continue to have as much faith in the Oracle of Fools as ever Pantagruel had. Howell, in his letters, recounts a merry tale of a certain ambassador of Queen Elizabeth, who, having written two letters, one to her Majesty and the other to his wife, directed them at cross-purposes, so that the Queen was beducked and bedeared and requested to send a change of hose, and the wife was beprincessed and otherwise unwontedly besuperlatived, till the one feared for the wits of her ambassador, the other for those of her husband. In like manner it may be presumed that our speaker has misdirected some of his thoughts, and given to the whole theatre what he would have wished to confide only to a select auditory at the back of the curtain. For it is seldom that we can get any frank utterance from men, who address, for the most part, a Buncombe either in this world or the next. As for their audiences, it may be truly said of our people, that they enjoy one political institution in common with the ancient

Athenians: I mean a certain profitless kind of ostracism, wherewith, nevertheless, they seem hitherto well enough content. For in Presidential elections, and other affairs of the sort, whereas I observe that the oysters fall to the lot of comparatively few, the shells (such as the privilges of voting as they are told to do by the ostrivori aforesaid, and of huzzaing at public meetings) are very liberally distributed among the people, as being their prescriptive and quite sufficient portion.

The occasion of the speech is supposed to be Mr. Palfrey's refusal to vote for the Whig candidate for the Speakership.-H. W.]

No? Hez he? He haint, though? Wut! Voted agin him?

Ef the bird of our country could ketch him, she'd skin him;

It seem's though I see her, with wrath in each quill,

Lake a chancery lawyer, afilin' her bill,

Το

An' grindin' her talents ez sharp ez all nater, pounce like a writ on the back o' the traiter. Forgive me, my friends, ef I seem to be het, But a crisis like this must with vigor be met; Wen an Arnold the star-spangled banner bestains,

Holl Fourth o' Julys seem to bile in my veins.

Who ever'd ha' thought sech a pisonous rig Would be run by a chap thet wuz chose fer a Wig?

"We knowed wut his principles wuz 'fore we sent him"?

Wut wuz ther in them from this vote to pervent him?

A marciful Providunce fashioned us holler
O' purpose thet we might our principles swaller;
It can hold any quantity on 'em, the belly can,
An' bring 'em up ready fer use like the pelican,
Or more like the kangaroo, who (wich is
stranger)

Puts her family into her pouch wen there's dan

ger.

Aint principle precious? then, who's goin' to use it

Wen there's risk o' some chap's gittin' up to abuse it?

I can't tell the wy on 't, but nothin' is so sure Ez thet principle kind o' gits spiled by expos

*The speaker is of a different mind from Tully, who, in his recently discovered tractate De Republicâ, tells us,-Nec vero haberc vietutem satis est, quasi artem aliqam, nisi utare, and from our Milton, who says, "I cannot praise a fugitive and

A man thet lets all sorts o' folks git a sight on 't Ough' to hev it all took right away, every mite on 't;

Ef he can't keep it to himself wen it's wise to, He aint one it's fit to trust nothin' so nice to.

Besides, ther's a wonderful power in latitude
To shift a man's morril relations an' attitude;
Some flossifers think thet a fakkilty's granted
The minnit it's proved to be thoroughly wanted,
Thet a change o' demand makes a change o' con-
dition,

An' thet everythin' 's nothin' except by position;

Ez, for instance, thet rubber-trees fust begun bearin'

Wen p'litickle conshunces come into wearin',Thet the fears of a monkey, whose holt chanced to fail,

Drawed the vertibry out to a prehensile tail;

cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and seeks her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.”—Arèop. He had taken the words out of the Roman's mouth, without knowing it, and might well exclaim with Austin (if a saint's name may stand sponsor for a curse), Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerint !— H. W.