Orations and Arguments by English and American Statesmen

Description

From the Introduction The purpose of this book is to furnish a collection of oratorical and argumentative masterpieces, suitable for students in the schools and for general readers. In making the selection the following considerations have had determining weight: 1. That every speech included should be in itself memorable a great utterance upon a great subject, attaining its distinction through the essential qualities of nobility and force of ideas, rather than through accidents of occasion, of feeling, or of rhetorical display; 2. That each should be in topic so related to the great thoughts, memories, or problems of our own time, as to have for us still an inherent and vital interest; 3. That the collection as a whole should include material enough to permit of a varied selection for tlje use of successive classes in the schools. The speeches thus chosen have been printed from the best available texts, without change, save that the spelling has been made uniform throughout, and that three of the speeches those of Webster, Calhoun, and Seward have been shortened somewhat by the omission of matters of merely temporary or local interest. Yet even the omitted portions have been summarized for the reader, whenever they have seemed to bear upon the main argument.