Stakes

“ How shall I communicate a resolution fatal, as thy tenderness will deem it, to thy peace, yet a resolution suggested by a heart which has, at length, permitted all selfish regards to be swallowed up by a disinterested consideration of thy good? ”

“ Every countenance recalls the cares, the intrigues, the labours employed in the advancement of fortunes—in the overthrow of rivals: the relations, the coldness, the hatreds, the evil offices done, the baseness of all; hope, despair, rage, satisfaction, express themselves in the features. See how all eyes wander to and fro examining what passes around—how some are astonished to find others more mean, or less mean than was expected! ”

“ Shall we see our authority brought into contempt, and the craft by which we get our living ruined, and not bestir ourselves? What have we been doing all this while? And what are we now thinking of? Shall we be always talking, and bring nothing to pass? ”

“ I found also that all the wisest and best of the species, or what is much the same thing, the most responsible, uniformly maintain that he who has the largest stake in society is, in the nature of things, the most qualified to administer its affairs. By a stake in society is meant, agreeable to universal convention, a multiplication of those interests which occupy us in our daily concerns—or what is vulgarly called property. ”

“ Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that the mere will to separate were in this case, or in any case, a sufficient ground for separation, I beg to be informed whose will? The will of any knot of men who, by fair means or foul, by usurpation, terrorism, or fraud, have got the reins of government into their hands? ”

“ And in such a society people tend to lay stress on the reasonable or visible chains of causation. But in a country suffering from earthquakes or pestilences, in a court governed by the whim of a despot, in a district which is habitually the seat of a war between alien armies, the ordinary virtues of diligence, honesty, and kindliness seem to be of little avail. ”

“ When I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. ”

“ But when concession is made, when tears of penitence are wept, and when, in moments of returning confidence, that luckless tendency of temper is candidly confessed, and sincerely bewailed; when all the different acts committed under its influence, are acknowledged to have been wrong, how complete ought to be the reconciliation thus begun, and how zealous our endeavours for the future to avert the consequences of this sad calamity! ”

“ Suppose you drive any one headlong from his farm with clods of earth, and stones, and sticks; and if you are ordered to replace a man whom you have driven away with armed men, will you say that you have complied with the terms of the interdict? If words are to govern everything,—if causes are to be settled not by reason but by accidental expressions, then you may say that you have done so, and I will agree. ”

“ But enough of this, sir. Where to deceive an enemy in open strife, to gain a mighty object, such as security, or conceal one's needful proceedings from the eyes of those who have no right to pry, is the end proposed, some palliation may be found, perhaps, for a deviation from the strict truth. ”

“ The political incident of the deposition is sketched with extraordinary knowledge of the world;—the ebb of fortune, on the one hand, and on the other, the swelling tide, which carries every thing along with it. ”

“ But this sect unloosed their tongues in reproach and began to admonish them, saying, “What meanness is this, and what evident treason; that man should, for worldly advantages, personal profit, easy circumstances, or protection of life and property, cast himself into this great detriment and evident loss, and embark in a course of action which will conduce to the greatest abasement and involve the utmost infamy and disgrace both here and hereafter! ”

“ Many a drop of blood flowed in the field or on the scaffold, from these tangled briars and thorns of controversy; many a man marched to a stake to bear testimony to the most frivolous and incomprehensible of their dogmas. This was an untoward consequence; but if it was an 383evil to be burnt at a stake, it was well and becoming to have an opinion (whether right or wrong) for which a man was willing to be burnt at a stake. ”

“ In my electric state I see the root of the real cause—ambition of earthly state. The root of evil that grew to a tree of distrust of brother to brother. Each aroused in strength of pride to combat of their separate interests. ”

“ Thus, hatched by Licentiousness, Faction would attain to its enormous Growth: The unprincipled among the Great would form the Head, the unprincipled among the Populace would form the Body, of this rapacious Monster. ”

“ In the second the two persons quarrel over the question whether justice or injustice, truth or falsehood, pays better, or over some religious question, and lay a wager upon it. A decision is given against the person with whom the audience is expected to sympathize, for instance, the champion of justice. ”

“ A conflict is at hand,—if the signs of the times do not deceive us,—which is to be more hotly contested, and which will require more firmness of nerve and greater singleness of purpose, (combined with sleepless vigilance and unswerving integrity,) than any through which we have passed to victory. ”

“ According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, thy comforts have given joy to my soul.
93:20. Doth the seat of iniquity stick to thee, who framest labour in commandment?
Doth the seat of iniquity stick to thee, etc.... That is, wilt thou, O God, who art always just, admit of the seat of iniquity: that is, of injustice, or unjust judges, to have any partnership with thee? Thou who framest, or makest, labour in commandment, that is, thou who obligest us to labour with all diligence to keep thy commandments.
93:21. They will hunt after the soul of the just, and will condemn innocent blood. ”

“ The glove of each contestant was flung into the lists by the judge, and the dispute committed for settlement to the power of God and their own good swords. It is a stirring picture of those days of daring and of might, when force took the place of justice, and the deadliest blows were the only convincing arguments. ”

“ The bad omen of a kingdom's ruin: Where no counsel is, no consultation at all, but every thing done rashly, or no prudent consultation for the common good, but only caballing for parties and divided interests, the people fall, crumble into factions, fall to pieces, fall together by the ears, and fall an easy prey to their common enemies. ”

“ The plots and feats of those that press To seize on titles, wealth, or power, Shall seem to thee a game of chess, Devised to pass a tedious hour. What matters it to him who fights For shows of unsubstantial good, Whether his Kings, and Queens, and Knights, Be things of flesh, or things of wood? ”

“ Think of thy lover under torture, on the rack, burnt at the stake. Hast ever seen a man after he has been broken on the wheel? his limbs torn from their sockets, his chest sunken under the weights—and the stake? ”

“ Being arrived at the fatal place, they thrust in the stake at the fundament of the person who is the miserable subject of this doom, and then taking him by the legs, draw on his body upon it, till the point of the stake appears at his shoulders. ”

“ Love betrayed, trust violated, aspiration misinterpreted, were the spiritual aspects; a divided household, entangling obligations, a probability of serious loss, were the material evils which accompanied them. ”

“ For there are only two divisions in this world of ours, only two companies, only two flocks. The kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light, the Lord's people and those who are none of His, the sheep and the goats. ”

“ This is the source of the erroneous excesses of Remorse and Revenge; the one extending itself over the future, and the other over the past; provinces in which their suggestions can only be the sources of evil. The purpose of a resolution to act more wisely and virtuously in future, and the sense of a necessity of caution in repressing an enemy, are the sources from which the enormous superstitions implied in the words cited have arisen. ”

“ Now, in all questions of property between ourselves and others, we should all be willing to give to others the benefit of the doubt, and then the disputes would be very easily settled, or rather, disputes would never arise. ”

“ The whole court is filled with rumours and secret whispers; the nobles are sad, and the people full of turmoil and noise, without any head, having no one to direct their rage to any specific object. The issue seems involved in dangers, especially for us, as, in regard to themselves, it matters not who wins. ”

“ But in and out of these gates, for one-half of a thousand years, far more of corruption, cruelty, and darkness, has crept, or trailed, or strutted, than of the qualities fitly called by their high-sounding names. ”

“ What Sovereign has more relatives to enrich, or services to recompense; more evils to repair, more jealousies to dread, more dangers to fear, more clamours to silence; or stands more in need of information and advice? ”

“ And kings, like private folks, are bought and sold.
The ruling rogue, who dreads to be cashier'd,
Contrives, as he is hated, to be fear'd:
Confounds accounts, perplexes all affairs:
For vengeance more embroils, than skill repairs. ”

“ If effects may show their causes (as they are often a perfect demonstration of them) , our misfortunes, our disasters, serve to prove our deficiencies in council, and the consequences they draw with them. If reason be allowed in this dark age, the judgment of dependencies and foresight of contingencies in affairs do confirm my position. for, if we view ourselves at home, are we in strength, are we in reputation, equal to our ancestors? ”

“ It is this entire order of things that is to fall and pass away in the battle of this great day—the order of things which for centuries has held the people docile under the ruling powers, civil, social and religious. ”

“ Time may unlock the cabinets of princes, unfold the secret negotiations of statesmen, and hand down the immortal characters of dignified worth, or the blackened traits of finished villainy in exaggerated colors. ”

“ To shrink from the dangerous obligation to which we stood pledged, or even to appear so to shrink, was to relinquish that hold upon public opinion, both at home and abroad, which hold we had at last obtained, and to abandon the moral power which, if a contest did arise, would be the main portion of our strength. ”

“ If your scheme should pass into an act, it will become a job: your sanguine temper will cool: r——s will be the only gainers. Party and faction will intermingle, and defeat the most essential parts of the whole design. Standing armies, in times of peace; projects of excise, and bribing at elections, are all you are like to be employed in ”

“ What we see of the motives of great conflicts is usually only the surface. Even in the case of the little domestic quarrels, the irritating frictions of everyday life, the vessel of knowledge sails only over the easily excited ripples. ”

“ But since the pretext of this expedition is of a private nature, why should the people at large be sufferers in a quarrel in which they have no concern? Rather let the parties determine their dispute between themselves, and commit their cause to the justice and judgment of the gods. ”

“ There is hardly a house in this country which has not by this time made a personal contribution to our cause. In each of these houses one of two trials is being endured—bereavement, the lesser evil, or suspense, the greater. ”

“ The common topics for the advocate for the defence to employ are, a complaint of that calamity which has taken place by no fault of his, but in consequence of some overruling power; and a complaint also of the power of fortune and the powerless state of men, and an entreaty that the judges should consider his intentions, and not the result. ”

“ And these two forces we may regard as in some sense rivals,—rivals not by the necessity of their own nature, but as exhibited in man and his history,—and rivals dividing the empire of the world between them. ”

“ Do not look only at the divisions and offences, but run up those streams to the fountain, and mark those that cause them, and especially that in them which causes these divisions and offences, those lusts on each side whence come these wars and fightings. ”

“ The true course of dramatic development consists in the annulment of contradictions viewed as such, in the reconciliation of the forces of human action, which alternately strive to negate each other in their conflict. ”

“ In this country we have had to encounter severe trials, and have encountered them with uniform success. Amid foreign wars, the shock of disputed successions, rebellion at home, extreme distress, the bitter contention of parties, the institutions of this country have stood uninjured. ”

“ A deliberate attempt may be made to recognize many wills, harmonize discords. Order may be brought out of chaos, and the limits of the realm within the borders of which order reigns may be indefinitely extended. ”