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Show 266 TUE LlBEitT\' DELL. mate Jurist! Your last great essay was to flout at a "Higher Law"! Most able and eloquent Advocate ! CoulJ. you find no other cause to plead than that of our lowest instincts against our highc!:ot and holiest sentiments? Ala.s ! that your latest .and ablest argument was tho duty and rightfulness of Slave-catching ! was urged to make men smother their humanity I Sagacious Statcsma.n ! l?atcd to die not very old, yet to live long enough to see all tho plans of biB tnanhood become obsolete ideas, except just those be bad abandoned ! Surely he was a great party leader, who found the Whig party strong, spent life in its service, and died prophesying its annihilation : found it decent, at least in profession ; left it despicable in utter shamelessness : found it tho natural and well-dispose~ ally of free labor and free speech ; stirred it to a contest with its rival in servile bidding for Southern fellowship, and left it despicable for the attempt, and still more despicable and ridiculous for the failure ! DA::iU~L W.EDST.ER. 267 No thoughtful man should £o rgct, . m any esti-mate of .l\Ir. 'Vcbstcr, his impudent ntt.cmpt to smother freedom of discussion. Impudent is none too strong a word, when any man, however conspicuoua for nbility or position, sets himself to fetter free speech. Neither is the gravity of the wrong to be measured by the failure or success of the attempt. Such things grow by precedent. What is impudent and only ridiculous to-day, may become of weight and fearful to-morrow. The Abolitionists nrc sometimes blamed for their severe judgments of men whose general characters arc good. The examples of bad men are of little importance. It iB the faults of good men, of popular idols, that arc dangerous; and precedents set by such need special protest. What weapons they become in the hands of unscrupulous imit.'l.tors l Tacitus told us long age_ Non timemua Vespasianum; ea Pn:nct"pis retas, ea moderatio. Sed diutius durant exempla, quam mores. Precedents are longer lived than character. '\Ve have a |
