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never seems to alter his opinions of its value. [Let them find the facts, or make them, who are interested in having it true.] The value of a statement consists in its truth: unless the design was to deceive. In that case its value is a minus quantity to all who are deceived.
The question may be put to me here, with as much force perhaps as in any other place—if this document is the miserable specimen of sophistry you suppose, how comes it to pass, that such men as Franklin, Roger Sherman and other northern men of unquestionable acumen—how comes it they should have put their signatures to it! For the same reason that made them adopt the constitution—a strong imperious necessity. A necessity vehement and inappeasable, demanded of them the adoption of some constitution of government. The same necessity narrowed their choice to the one they did adopt or none. It was the best of two alternatives, notwithstanding its great and almost fatal blemishes. So with regard to the Declaration—the blood at Lexington had been spilt, Warren and his companions had fallen at Bunker Hill, Montgomery at Quebec—it was a time of trouble, when every face gathered blackness, and every town felt distresses daily. The fall time was come when the leaders must declare what they purposed to do; and so pressing was the emergency, as to narrow their choice to the Declaration as it stands or none. They signed it notwithstanding its defects, and in so doing did as I myself would have done.
But the signers had some apology for this act, besides the rigorous necessity that pressed them. There was some excellent things about it, as I trust it is yet possible to show. It is not the taste or the genius of the signers that I impugn. Their part in it was what emergent circumstances compelled. An apology for them is manifest; not so with the writer. His part in the premises was the work of the closet—of premeditation and preparation. He therefore is not entitled to any indulgence for the crude nonsense it exhibits.
If the question occurs to any one, how the same tree bringeth forth good fruit and evil fruit? my response will be simply because there are two trees. The composition is evidently the production of two minds. Upon a close and critical examination of this
