OUR attachment to the Queen, our own Victoria, is mingled with a tenderness not inconsistent with the sterner sentiment, which it softens and embellishes without enervating. Let her legitimate authority as a constitutional monarch, let her reputation as a woman, be assailed, and notwithstanding the lamentation of Burke① that the age of chivalry was past, thousands of swords would leap from their scabbards to avenge her. Ay, and they would be drawn as freely and wielded as vigorously and bravely in Canada or in Nova Scotia, as in England. Loyalty! love of British institutions! -they are ingrafted on our very nature; they are part and parcel of ourselves; and I can no more tear them from my heart (even if I would, and lacerate all its fibres) than I could sever a limb from my body.
And what are those institutions? A distinguished Americane statesman recently answered this question. He said: "The proudest Government that exists upon the face of the Earth②is that of Great Britain. And the great Pitt,her proudeststatesman, when he would tell of Britain"s crowning glory, did not speak, as he might have done, of her wide-spread dominion, upon which the sun never sets. He did not speak of martial achievements, of glorious battle-fields, and of splendid naval conflicts. But he said, with swelling breast and kindling eye, that the poorest man of Great Britain in his cottage might bid defiance to all the force of the Crown. It might be frail, its roof might shake, the wind might blow through it, the storm might enter, the rain might enter; but the King of England could not enter it. In all his forces he dared not cross the threshold of that ruined tenement."- HON. W. YOUNGWORDSachievements, exploits. attachment, affection (for). distinguished, illustrious. dominion, empire. embellishes, adorns. inconsistent, irreconcilable.
ingrafted, rooted. lacerate, mangle. lamentation, complaint. recently, lately. tenement, habitation. vigorously, powerfully.
NOTES
① Lamentation of Burke. -See Panegyric on Marie Antoinette .
② The great Pitt. -William Pitt. Barl of Chatham.