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*Contaminate our fingers with base bribes?
And sell the mighty space of our large honors,
For so much trash as may be grasped thus?
I had rather be a dog, and bay the moon,
Than such a Roman.

Cas. Brutus, bay not me,

I'll not endure it: you forget yourself
To hedge me in; I am a soldier, I,
Older in practice, abler than yourself
To make conditions.

Bru. Go to; you're not, Cassius.
Cas. I am.

Bru. I say, you are not.

Cas. Urge me no more, I shall forget myself; Have mind upon your health, tempt me no further. Bru. Away, slight man!

Cas. Is 't possible?

Bru. Hear me, for I will speak.

Must I give way and room to your rash tcholer?

Shall I be frighted when a madman stares?

Cas. O ye gods! ye gods! must I endure all this?

Bru. All this? Ay, more; fret till your proud heart break;

Go, show your slaves how +choleric you are,

And make your bondmen tremble. Must I +budge?

Must I observe you? Must I stand and crouch
Under your testy humor? By the gods,
You shall digest the venom of your spleen,
Though it do split you; for, from this day forth,
I'll use you for my mirth, yea, for my laughter
When you are waspish.

Cas. Is it come to this?

Bru. You say you are a better soldier:

Let it appear so; make your vaunting true,

And it shall please me well; for mine own part,

I shall be glad to learn of noble men.

Cas. You wrong me every way, you wrong me, Brutus; I said an elder soldier, not a better:

Did I say better?

Bru. If you did, I care not.

Cas. When Cesar lived, he durst not thus have moved me. Bru. Peace, peace; you durst not so have tempted him. Cas. I durst not!

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Cas. What? Durst not tempt him?

Bru. For your life, you durst not.

Cas. Do not presume too much upon my love;

I may do that I shall be sorry for.

Bru. You have done that you should be sorry for. There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats;

For I am armed so strong in honesty,

That they pass by me as the idle wind,
Which I respect not. I did send to you

For certain sums of gold, which you denied me;

For I can raise no money by vile means:
Ye Gods! I had rather coin my heart,

And drop my blood for drachmas, than to wring
From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash,
By any indirection. I did send

Το you for gold to pay my legions,

Which you denied me: was that done like Cassius?
Should I have answered Caius Cassius so?
When Marcus Brutus grows so covetuous,
To lock such rascal +counters from his friends,
Be ready, gods, with all your thunderbolts,
Dash him to pieces!

Cas. Bru.

I denied you not.

You did.

Cas. I did not: he was but a fool

That brought my answer back. Brutus hath rived my heart; A friend should bear a friend's infirmities,

But Brutus makes mine greater than what they are.

Bru. I do not, till you practice them on me.

Cas.

Bru.

Cas.

You love me not.

I do not like your faults.

A friendly eye could never see such faults.

Bru. A flatterer's eye would not, though they do appear As huge as high +Olympus.

Cas. Come, Antony, and young Octavius, come, Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius,

For Cassius is aweary of the world:

Hated by one he loves; braved by his brother;
Checked like a bondman; all his faults observed,
Set in a note-book, learned and conned by rote,
To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep
My spirit from mine eyes. There is my dagger,
And here my naked breast; within, a heart
Dearer than Plutus' mine, richer than gold:
If that thou be 'st a Roman, take it forth;
I, that denied thee gold, will give my heart:
Strike as thou did'st at Cesar; for I know,

When thou didst hate him worst, thou lovedst him better
Than ever thou lovedst Cassius.

Bru. Sheathe your dagger:

Be angry when you will, it shall have scope;

Do what you will, dishonor shall be humor.

O Cassius, you are yoked with a lamb,

That carries anger as the flint bears fire:
Who, much enforced, shows a hasty spark,
And straight is cold again.

Cas. Hath Cassius lived

To be but mirth and laughter to his Brutus,

When grief or blood ill-tempered vexeth him?

Bru. When I spoke that, I was ill-tempered too.

Cas. Do you confess so much? Give me your hand.
Bru. And my heart too.

Cas. O Brutus !

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Cas. Have you not love enough to bear with me, When that rash humor which my mother gave me, Makes me forgetful?

Bru. Yes, Cassius; and from henceforth, When you are over-earnest with your Brutus, He'll think your mother chides, and leave you so.

SHAKSPEARE.

LESSON CXCIV.

BRITISH REFUGEES.

Extract from a speech delivered in the Legislature of Virginia, in favor of permitting the British refugees, or those who had joined the English party in the war of independence, to return to the United States.

1. WE have, Mr. Chairman, an extensive country without population. What can be a more obvious policy, than that this country ought to be peopled? People form the strength and constitute the wealth of a nation. I want to see our vast forests filled up, by some process a little more speedy than the ordinary course of nature. I wish to see these states rapidly ascending to that rank, which their natural advantages authorize them to hold among the nations of the earth. Cast your eyes over this extensive country. Observe the salubrity of your climate; the variety and fertility of your soil; and see that soil intersected in every quarter, by bold, navigable streams, flowing to the east and to the west, as if the finger of heaven were marking out the course of your settlements, inviting you to enterprise, and pointing the way to wealth.

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2. Sir, you are destined, at some period or other, to become a great agricultural and commercial people: the only question is, whether you choose to reach this point by slow gradations, and at some distant period, lingering on through a long and sickly +minority, subjected meanwhile to the machinations, insults, and oppressions of enemies foreign and domestic, without sufficient strength to resist and chastise them; or whether you choose rather to rush at once, as it were, to the full enjoyment of those high destinies, and be able to cope, single-handed, with the proudest oppressor of the world.

+

3. If you prefer the latter course, as I trust you do, encourage +emigration; encourage the husbandmen, the mechanics, the merchants of the old world to come and settle in the land of promise

Make it the home of the skillful, the industrious, the fortunate, and the happy, as well as the asylum of the distressed. Fill up the measure of your population as speedily as you can, by the means which Heaven has placed in your power; and I venture to prophesy there are now those living, who will see this favored land among the most powerful on earth; able to take care of herself, without resorting to that policy so dangerous, though sometimes unavoidable, of calling in foreign aid. Yes, they will see her great in arts and in arms; her golden harvests waving over fields of immeasurable extent; her commerce penetrating the most distant seas; and her cannon silencing the vain boast of those who now proudly affect to rule the waves.

4. Instead of refusing permission to the refugees to return, it is your true policy to encourage emigration to this country, by every means in your power. Sir, you must have men. You can not get along without them. Those heavy forests of timber, under which your lands are groaning, must be cleared away. Those vast riches which cover the face of your soil, as well as those which lie hid in its bosom, are to be developed and gathered only by the skill and enterprise of men. Your timber must be worked up into ships, to transport the productions of the soil, and find the best markets for them abroad. Your great want is the want of men; and these you must have, and will have speedily, if you are wise.

5. Do you ask, how you are to get them? Open your doors, sir, and they will come. The population of the old world is full to overflowing. That population is ground, too, by the oppressions of the governments under which they live. They are already standing on tiptoe upon their native shores, and looking to your coasts with a wishful and longing eye. They see here, a land blessed with natural and political advantages, which are not equaled by those of any other country on earth; a land, on which a gracious Providence hath emptied the horn of abundance; a land, over which peace hath now stretched forth her white wings, and where content and plenty lie down at every door.

6. They see something still more attractive than this. They see a land in which Liberty has taken up her abode; that Liberty whom they had considered a fabled goddess, existing only in the fancies of the poets. They see her here, a real divinity; her altars rising on every hand, throughout these happy states; her glories chanted by three millions of tongues; and the whole region smiling under her blessed influence. Let but this celestial goddess, Liberty, stretch forth her fair hand toward the people of the old world; tell them to come and bid them welcome; and you will see them pouring in from the north, from the south, from the east, and from the west. Your wilderness will be cleared and settled;

your deserts will smile; your ranks will be filled; and you will soon be in a condition to defy the powers of any adversary.

7. But gentlemen object to any accession from Great Britain, and particularly to the return of the British refugees. Sir, I feel no objection to the return of those deluded people. They have, to be sure, mistaken their own interests most wonderfully, and most woefully have they suffered the punishment due to their offenses. But the relations which we bear to them and to their native country, are now changed. Their king hath acknowledged our independence. The quarrel is over. Peace hath returned, and found us a free people.

+

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8. Let us have the magnanimity to lay aside our antipathies and prejudices, and consider the subject in a political light. They are an enterprising, moneyed people. They will be serviceable in taking off the surplus produce of our lands, and supplying us with necessaries during the infant state of our manufactures. Even if they be inimical to us, in point of feeling and principle, I can see no objection, in a political view, to making them tributary to our advantage. And as I have no prejudices to prevent my making use of them, so I have no fear of any mischief they can do us. Afraid of them! What, sir, shall we, who have laid the proud British lion at our feet, now be afraid of his whelps?

PATRICK HENRY.

LESSON CXCV.

THE FOURTEENTH CONGRESS.

1. I HAD the honor to be a member of the fourteenth Congress. It was an honor then. What it is now, I shall not say. It is what the twenty-second Congress have been pleased to make it. I have neither time, nor strength, nor ability, to speak of the legislators of that day, as they deserve; nor is this a fit occasion. Yet the coldest or most careless nature, can not recur to such associates, without some touch of generous feeling, which, in quicker spirits, would kindle into high and almost holy enthusiasm.

2. +Pre-eminent, among them, was a gentleman of South Carolina,* now no more, the purest, the calmest, the most philosophical of our country's modern statesmen: one, no less remarkable

*Lowndes.

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