Accordingly I gave a loud hem! said, “Mr. Speaker!” for the fourth time. “Mr. Speaker, I rise to the question——” though it did not strike me I had been standing up ever since I came into the house. “I rise to the question, Mr. Speaker,” says I. But to see how terribly strange some things work. No sooner had I fairly rose to the question, and got a chance to make my speech, than I began to wish myself a hundred miles off.
Five minutes before I was as bold as a lion, but now I should have been glad to crawl into a knot-hole. “Mr. Speaker, I rise to the question,” says I again, but I am bound to say, the more I rose to the question, the more the question seemed to fall away from me. And just at that minute, a little fat round-faced man, with a bald head, that was sitting right before me, speaks to another member, and says:
It dashed me a good deal, and I don’t know but I should have sat right down without another word, but Colonel Crabapple, the member for Turkeytown, gave me a twitch by the tail of my wrapper:
“That’s right, Turniptop,” says he, “give them the grand touch.”
This had a mighty encouraging effect, and so I hemmed and hawed three or four times, and at last made a beginning.
“Mr. Speaker,” says I, “this is a subject of vital importance. The question is, Mr. Speaker, on the amendment. I have a decided opinion on that subject, Mr. Speaker. I’m altogether opposed to the last gentleman, and I feel bound in duty to my constituents, Mr. Speaker, and the responsibility of my office, to express my mind on this subject. Mr. Speaker, our glorious forefathers fought, bled, and died for glorious liberty. I’m opposed to this question, Mr. Speaker—my constituents have a vital interest in the subject of cart-wheels.
“Let us take a retrospective view, Mr. Speaker, of the present condition of all the kingdoms and tribes of the earth.
“Look abroad, Mr. Speaker, over the wide expansion of nature’s universe—beyond the blazing billows of the Atlantic.
“Behold Buonaparte going about like a roaring thunderbolt! All the world is turned topsy-turvy, and there is a terrible rousing among the sons of men.
“But to return to this subject, Mr. Speaker. I’m decidedly opposed to the amendment: it is contrary to the principles of freemen and the principles of responsibility. Tell it to your children, Mr. Speaker, and to your children’s children, that freedom is not to be bartered, like Esau, for a mess of potash. Liberty is the everlasting birthright of the grand community of nature’s freemen. Sir, the member from Boston talks of horse-shoes, but I hope we shall stand up for our rights. If we only stand up for our rights, Mr. Speaker, our rights will stand up for us, and we shall all stand uprightly without shivering or shaking. Mr. Speaker, these are awful times; money is hard to get, whatever the gentleman from Rowley may say about pumpkins.