eg in the comic song
did on its owner: which, when he had once got started on it, the more he
tried to stop it, the more it would run away. At the hazard of wearing
this point threadbare, I will relate an anecdote which seems too
strikingly in point to be omitted. A witty Irish soldier, who was always
boasting of his bravery when no danger was near, but who invariably
retreated without orders at the first charge of an engagement, being
asked by his captain why he did so, replied: "Captain, I have as brave a
heart as Julius Caesar ever had; but, somehow or other, whenever
danger approaches, my cowardly legs will run away with it." So with Mr.
Lamborn's party. They take the public money into their hand for the
most laudable purpose that wise heads and honest hearts can dictate; but
before they can possibly get it out again, their rascally "vulnerable
heels" will run away with them.
Seriously this proposition of Mr. Lamborn is nothing more or less than
a request that his party may be tried by their professions instead of
their practices. Perhaps no position that the party assumes is more
liable to or more deserving of exposure than this very modest request;
and nothing but the unwarrantable length to which I have already
extended these remarks forbids me now attempting to expose it. For the
reason given, I pass it by.
I shall advert to but one more point. Mr. Lamborn refers to the late
elections in the States, and from their results confidently predicts
that every State in the Union will vote for Mr. Van Buren at the next
Presidential election. Address that argument to cowards and to knaves;
with the free and the brave it will effect nothing. It may be true; if
it must, let it. Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours
may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was
the last to desert, but that I never deserted her. I know that the great
volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that
reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a
current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity
over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave
unscathed no green spot or living thing; while on its bosom are riding,
like demons on the waves of hell, the imps of that evil spirit, and
fiendishly taunting all those who dare resist its destroying course with
the hopelessness of their effort; and, knowing this, I cannot deny tha
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