Let us cease, then, to look for a lamp to our feet in the feeble tapers that glimmer in the sepulchers of the past. Rather let us hail those ever-burning lights above in whose beams is the brightness of the noon-day. As the cedars of Lebanon are higher than the grass of the valley, as the heavens are higher than the earth, as man is higher than the beasts of the field, as the angels are higher than man, as he that ruleth his spirit is higher than he that taketh a city; so are the virtues and glories and victories of peace higher than the virtues and victories of war.
To this great work of world-wide peace let me summon you. Believe that you can do it, and you can do it. Blessed are the peace-makers for they are the children of God.
(_Loud clamor for recognition, the chair recognizing Patrick Henry of Virginia._)
PATRICK HENRY. [16]Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Continental Congress:--We have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free--if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us.
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat, but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable--and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.