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The American Union Speaker by John D. Philbrick
page 38 of 779 (04%)
these causes! No wars have ravaged these lands and depopulated these
villages! No desolating foreign foe! No domestic broils! No disputed
succession! No religious super-serviceable zeal! No poisonous monster! No
affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged us, cut off the sources
of resuscitation! No! This damp of death is the mere effusion of British
amity! We sink under the pressure of their support! We writhe under their
perfidious gripe! They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo!
these are the fruits of their alliance!

What then, my Lords, shall we bear to be told that, under such
circumstances, the exasperated feelings of a whole people, thus spurred on
to clamor and resistance, were excited by the poor and feeble influence of
the Begums? After hearing the description given by an eye-witness of the
paroxysm of fever and delirium into which despair threw the natives when on
the banks of the polluted Ganges, panting for breath, they tore more widely
open the lips of their gaping wounds, to accelerate their dissolution; and
while their blood was issuing, presented their ghastly eyes to heaven,
breathing their last and fervent prayer that the dry earth might not be
suffered to drink their blood, but that it might rise up to the throne of
God, and rouse the eternal Providence to avenge the wrongs of their
country,--will it be said that all this was brought about by the
incantations of these Begums in their secluded Zenana; or that they could
inspire this enthusiasm and this despair into the breasts of a people who
felt no grievance, and had suffered no torture?

What motive, then, could have such influence in their bosom? What motive!
That which nature, the common parent, plants in the bosom of man; and
which, though it may be less active in the Indian than in the Englishman,
is still congenial with, and makes a part of his being. That feeling which
tells him that man was never made to be the property of man; but that, when
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