Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from An Oration Delivered Before the Society of Alumni, of the University of Virginia, at Its Seventh Annual Meeting, Held in the Rotunda, on the 4th of July, 1844
The desire of honor, considered as an active principle of human cons duct, enters into all the ramifications of social duty. It is the principle which impels us to the performance of the duties of life, in all its varied relations, making the friend trusty, the citizen correct, the judge upright, the soldier. Faithful, the statesman incorrupt, woman chaste and man honest. It is the brightest jewel in the monarch's crown, the fairest ?ower in the hero's chaplet, a gem of pearly beauty even in the hovels of poverty and despair. How happy a theme for the consideration of young men about to enter on the theatre of life! When Christo pher Columbus sailed from the harbor of Palos, on his first voy age of discovery, amid the prayers and supplications of the multi tude assembled on the shore, he embarked upon an unknown and un travelled ocean, but he carried with him the unerring load-stone, faith ful to direct his course upon its trackless waves. In all the vicissitudes of calm and storm, of sunshine and darkness, the needle would be still true to its office. How much did its possession diminish the dangers of that daring and perilous voyage! Happy would it be for frail human na ture, if, when we embark on the stormy sea of life, we could secure some such moral guide, some sure index which, when tossed on its bil lows, should, like the rnariner's compass, point us still to the polar star of happiness. Is not this principle of honor, chastened by religion, such a guide? Will it not infallibly lead us to distinction, contentment and happiness? Take it then with you, young men, into the world you are about to enter on, and whether the sunshine of prosperity light up your way, or the clouds of adversity lower thick above it, look still to its in dex, and follow where it points.
The precepts of honor must be looked for in that golden rule before announced W'hatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them. L'is vain to look for them elsewhere; and vain est of all to seek them in what is popularly called the code of honor that absurdest relic of a semi-barbarous age, a code founded neither in wisdom, justice nor religion, - not in wisdom, for it subjects all offences to the same penalty not in justice, for it puts the injured at the mercy of the offending party not in religion, for it makes man the avenger of his own wrongs, while Heaven has said, vengeance is mine, I will repay. It deals out the same measure of redress to the grossest outrages and the slightest insults. It'grants the same hard terms to abused confidence betrayed friendship, insulted chastity, and to the most trivial affronts.
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