Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

74FREEDOM ОГ SPEECH. — CANNING.

my answers to the Prince К, the old diplomatist

quickly discovered the tendency of my views.

" You do not belong either to your country or to your age," said he, " you are an enemy to the power of speech as a political engine."

" It is true," I replied; " any other way of ascertaining the worth of men appears to me preferable to public speaking, in a country where self-love is so easily excited as in mine. I do not believe that there could be found in France many men who would not sacrifice their most cherished opinions to the desire of having it said that they had made a good speech."

" Nevertheless," pursued the liberal Russian prince "everything is included in the gift of language; everything that is in man, and something even beyond, reveals itself by discourse: there is divinity in speech."

" I agree with you," I replied; " and it is for that very reason that I dread to see it prostituted."

" When a genius like that of Mr. Canning's," continued the prince, "enchained the attention of the first men of England and of the world, surely political speech was something great and glorious."

" What good has this brilliant genius produced ? And what evil would he not have caused if he had had inflammable minds for auditors? Speech employed in private, as a means of persuasion, to change the direction of ideas, to influence the action of a man, or of a small number of men, appeal's to me useful, either as an auxiliary, or as a counterbalance to power; but I fear it in a large political assembly whose deliberations are conducted in public. It too often secures a triumph to limited views and fallacious popular notions, at the expense of lofty,