Page 52 - Hampdens Monument Unveiled

swept away -absorbed, by the loan -monger, by the Jew, and the
jobber of the stock exchange, wrecked in the foul and
Blood tinged deluge of the funding and paper money system! The
Englishman who knows and feels something of the 'heroic
magnitude of mind' of the men of other days, cannot look
without abhorrence and loathing at the men who now fill their
places. Look at the 'serviles' who now sit at the back of the
minister of the day, whoever he may be, to register his
decrees, to vote the money he demands!

Hear a poor creature, calling itself a county member,
reproaching a fellow member for his independence, and
proclaiming his rule of action to be -the opinion of a
minister! Loathsome -loathsome! Look at the men who great in
numbers have bought or bullied themselves into the Commons
House -effeminate, licentious, rapacious, servile to the
dispenser of patronage, insolent to those from whom they
nominally derive their power, ignorant of their countrymen, and
reckless of their interests, whether moral or material.

Hampden thou shouldst be living at this hour.

Our readers must bear with us in thus enlarging upon this
topic : we speak not in anger or scorn, nor in unreflecting
disparagement of the present; for though it is not in the
governing class, or in the class impoverished, degraded, and
demoralized by misgovernment, we yet, and by bad social
arrangements, believe that there is now in our beloved country
as strong aspirations for the TRUE and the JUST as at any
period of our history, but the large heart of the nation, its
wants, its desires, its sense of wrong, wants and waits for
utterance. We have spoken because we know, and because we feel,
and because HAMPDEN is not commemorated every year, and the
great, ennobling, purifying principles, embodied and expressed
in his name and actions, are not often brought home to the
feelings, and presented to the minds of our countrymen. Would
that we could have accomplished our task more worthily than in
these few and fugitive lines.