This is what he said--and he put it in the neat modern English taught him in my schools: "We have tried to forget what we are--English boys! We have tried to put reason before sentiment, duty before love; our minds approve, but our hearts reproach us.

While apparently it was only the nobility, only the gentry, only the twenty-five or thirty thousand knights left alive out of the late wars, we were of one mind, and undisturbed by any troubling doubt; each and every one of these fifty-two lads who stand here before you, said, 'They have chosen--it is their affair.' But think!--the matter is altered--_All England is marching against us_! Oh, sir, consider! -- reflect!--these people are our people, they are bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, we love them--do not ask us to destroy our nation!" Well, it shows the value of looking ahead, and being ready for a thing when it happens.

If I hadn't foreseen this thing and been fixed, that boy would have had me!--I couldn't have said a word.
But I was fixed.

I said: "My boys, your hearts are in the right place, you have thought the worthy thought, you have done the worthy thing.

You are English boys, you will remain English boys, and you will keep that name unsmirched.