try to vindicate the national
character. I invoke the genius of the Constitution. From the
tapestry that adorns these walls the immortal ancestor of this
noble lord [Lord Suffolk] frowns with indignation at the
disgrace of his country. In vain he led your victorious fleet:
against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended
and established the honour, the liberties, the religion--the
_Protestant religion_--of this country, against the arbitrary
cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition, if these more than
Popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are let loose
among us--to turn forth into our settlements, among our
ancient connexions, friends, and relations, the merciless
cannibal, thirsting for the blood of man, woman, and child!
to send forth the infidel savage---against whom? against your
Protestant brethren; to lay waste their country, to desolate
their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, with these
horrible hell-hounds of savage war!--hell-hounds, I say, of
savage war! Spain armed herself with blood-hounds to extirpate
the wretched natives of America, and we improve on the inhuman
example even of Spanish cruelty; we turn loose these savage
hell-hounds against our brethren and countrymen in America, of
the same language, laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to
us by every tie that should sanctify humanity....

My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more;
but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said
less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed
my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal
abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles.

That was Chatham. For Wolfe--he, as you know, was ever reading
the classics even on campaign: as Burke again carried always a
Virgil in his pocket. _Abeunt studia in mores._ Moreover can we
separate Chatham's Roman morality from Chatham's language in the
passage I have just read? No: we cannot. No one, being evil, can
speak good things with that weight; _'for out of the abundance of
the heart the mouth speaketh.'_ We English (says Wordsworth)

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake....

You may criticise Chatham's style as too consciously Ciceronian.
But has ever a Parliamentary style been invented which conveys a
nobler gravity of emotion? `Buskined'?--yes: but the style of a
man. 'Mannered'