the appointed time a Moses or a Joshua to lead forth the oppressed from their long captivity, in vindication of their outrages at the hands of those who have assumed prerogatives that belong only to the Almighty.
"Allusion has been made to the dangerous tendency of free speech, and in the same connection the memory of our fathers commended to the highest reverence and their example presented as worthy of all imitation. Who was it that said, errors of opinion might be safely tolerated where reason was left free to combat them, and trembled for his country when he reflected that God was just, and had no attribute that would take side with the oppressor? Who described that crime for denouncing which this meeting has been convened to call us to account, as 'one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which our fathers rose in rebellion to oppose?'
"A gentleman here says that the Union 'rests on a foundation as sure as the everlasting hills.' Did not the Eternal City claim a foundation just as sure, and what has been her subsequent history? Go on if you will, and close every avenue to free discussion, the mind will still be left to conquer, whose empire is absolute and irresistible, and which has itself the power to snap this Union in sunder when it shall no longer serve the purpose for which it was intended.
"Under the despotisms of the old world it may be possible to smoulder free discussion at the point of the bayonet, but not in a republic where every man's
