Saturday, October 16, 2004
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell address to Joint Session of the 108th Congress
" It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue and defiled by your every vice. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches and like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you has not battered your conscience with bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the commonwealth? Ye furdid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here to get grievances redressed; are not yourselves become the greatest the grievance? Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean stable by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this house and which by God's help and the strength he has given me I am now come to do I command ye therefore upon the peril of your lives to depart immediately out of this place... Go and get out, make haste ye venal slaves be gone - so take away that shining bauble there and lock up the doors."
" It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue and defiled by your every vice. Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches and like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you has not battered your conscience with bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the commonwealth? Ye furdid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here to get grievances redressed; are not yourselves become the greatest the grievance? Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean stable by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this house and which by God's help and the strength he has given me I am now come to do I command ye therefore upon the peril of your lives to depart immediately out of this place... Go and get out, make haste ye venal slaves be gone - so take away that shining bauble there and lock up the doors."
# posted by Sete @ 10:03 AM 
