ORATION. 23 revolutions. It is well to be taught by an enemy. Never before was presented to a nation so immediately the issue of victory or death. It is not for ourselves alone ; it is for the poor and oppressed of all lands, that we would maintain this great City of Refuge. Hear what a liberal writer of the greatest and richest among European empires has just said of his own country: “ Millions of our laboring population live constantly in view of penal pauperism, and nearly a million of them on the average are actually paupers. They pass through life without hope; they die in degradation; the only haven of their old age, after a life of toil, is the workhouse.” He might have added that, from this powerful monarchy, peaceful, insolent in its prosperity, the working men are now flying by tens of thousands and seeking an asylum here, — hastening from that “ Land of settled government ” to this distracted theatre of civil war. What an assurance of faith, what an omen of victory ! From the interested forebodings of tory lords and of Quarterly Reviewers, I turn to the instinctive action of the poor Irish immigrant, and gain new hope for my country. Nor is it only as a refuge ; it is as an example alike to oppressors and oppressed, that we would
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