What were the purposes of coming into the Union among the original States? The States were originally sovereign without limit, as to foreign and domestic concerns. But being incapable of protecting themselves singly, they entered into the Union to defend themselves against foreign violence. The domestic concerns of the people were not, in general, to be acted on by it. The security of the power, of managing them by domestic legislature, is one of the great objects of the Union.
The Union is a means, not an end. By requiring greater sacrifices of domestic power, the end is sacrificed to the means. Suppose the surrender of all, or nearly all, the domestic powers of legislation were required; the means would there have swallowed up the end.
The argument that the compact may be enforced, shows that the Federal predicament changed. The power of the Union not only acts on persons or citizens, but on the faculty of the government, and restrains it in a way which the Const.i.tution nowhere authorizes. This new obligation takes away a right which is expressly "reserved to the people or the States,"
since it is nowhere granted to the government of the Union. You cannot do indirectly what you cannot do directly. It is said that this Union is competent to make compacts. Who doubts it? But can you make this compact? I insist that you cannot make it, because it is repugnant to the thing to be done.
The effect of such a compact would be to produce that inequality in the Union, to which the Const.i.tution, in all its provisions, is adverse.
Everything in it looks to equality among the members of the Union. Under it you cannot produce inequality. Nor can you get before-hand of the Const.i.tution, and do it by antic.i.p.ation. Wait until a State is in the Union, and you cannot do it; yet it is only upon the State in the Union that what you do begins to act.
But it seems that, although the proposed restrictions may not be justified by the clause of the Const.i.tution which gives power to admit new States into the Union, separately considered, there are other parts of the Const.i.tution which, combined with that clause, will warrant it.
And first, we are informed that there is a clause in this instrument which declares that Congress shall guarantee to every State a republican form of government; that slavery and such a form of government are incompatible; and, finally, as a conclusion from these premises, that Congress not only have a right, but are bound to exclude slavery from a new State. Here again, sir, there is an edifying inconsistency between the argument and the measure which it professes to vindicate. By the argument it is maintained that Missouri cannot have a republican form of government, and at the same time tolerate negro slavery. By the measure it is admitted that Missouri may tolerate slavery, as to persons already in bondage there, and be nevertheless fit to be received into the Union.
What sort of const.i.tutional mandate is this which can thus be made to bend and truckle and compromise as if it were a simple rule of expediency that might admit of exceptions upon motives of countervailing expediency. There can be no such pliancy in the peremptory provisions of the Const.i.tution. They cannot be obeyed by moieties and violated in the same ratio. They must be followed out to their full extent, or treated with that decent neglect which has at least the merit of forbearing to render contumacy obtrusive by an ostentatious display of the very duty which we in part abandon. If the decalogue could be observed in this casuistical manner, we might be grievous sinners, and yet be liable to no reproach. We might persist in all our habitual irregularities, and still be spotless. We might, for example, continue to covet our neighbors" goods, provided they were the same neighbors whose goods we had before coveted--and so of all the other commandments.
Will the gentlemen tell us that it is the quant.i.ty of slaves, not the quality of slavery, which takes from a government the republican form? Will they tell us (for they have not yet told us) that there are const.i.tutional grounds (to say nothing of common sense) upon which the slavery which now exists in Missouri may be reconciled with a republican form of government, while any addition to the number of its slaves (the quality of slavery remaining the same) from the other States, will be repugnant to that form, and metamorphose it into some nondescript government disowned by the Const.i.tution? They cannot have recourse to the treaty of 1803 for such a distinction, since independently of what I have before observed on that head, the gentlemen have contended that the treaty has nothing to do with the matter.
They have cut themselves off from all chance of a convenient distinction in or out of that treaty, by insisting that slavery beyond the old United States is rejected by the Const.i.tution, and by the law of G.o.d as discoverable by the aid of either reason or revelation; and moreover that the treaty does not include the case, and if it did could not make it better. They have, therefore, completely discredited their own theory by their own practice, and left us no theory worthy of being seriously controverted. This peculiarity in reasoning of giving out a universal principle, and coupling with it a practical concession that it is wholly fallacious, has indeed run through the greater part of the arguments on the other side; but it is not, as I think, the more imposing on that account, or the less liable to the criticism which I have here bestowed upon it.
But let us proceed to take a rapid glance at the reasons which have been a.s.signed for this notion that involuntary servitude and a republican form of government are perfect antipathies. The gentleman from New Hampshire has defined a republican government to be that in which all the men partic.i.p.ate in its power and privileges; from whence it follows that where there are slaves, it can have no existence. A definition is no proof, however, and even if it be dignified (as I think it was) with the name of a maxim, the matter is not much mended. It is Lord Bacon who says "That nothing is so easily made as a maxim"; and certainly a definition is manufactured with equal facility. A political maxim is the work of induction, and cannot stand against experience, or stand on anything but experience. But this maxim, or definition, or whatever else it may be, sets facts at defiance. If you go back to antiquity, you will obtain no countenance for this hypothesis; and if you look at home you will gain still less. I have read that Sparta, and Rome, and Athens, and many others of the ancient family, were republics. They were so in form undoubtedly--the last approaching nearer to a perfect democracy than any other government which has yet been known in the world. Judging of them also by their fruits, they were of the highest order of republics.
Sparta could scarcely be any other than a republic, when a Spartan matron could say to her son just marching to battle, "Return victorious, or return no more."
It was the unconquerable spirit of liberty, nurtured by republican habits and inst.i.tutions, that ill.u.s.trated the pa.s.s of Thermopylae. Yet slavery was not only tolerated in Sparta, but was established by one of the fundamental laws of Lycurgus, having for its object the encouragement of that very spirit. Attica was full of slaves--yet the love of liberty was its characteristic. What else was it that foiled the whole power of Persia at Marathon and Salamis? What other soil than that which the genial sun of republican freedom illuminated and warmed, could have produced such men as Leonidas and Miltiades, Themistocles and Epaminondas? Of Rome it would be superfluous to speak at large. It is sufficient to name the mighty mistress of the world, before Sylla gave the first stab to her liberties and the great dictator accomplished their final ruin, to be reminded of the practicability of union between civil slavery and an ardent love of liberty cherished by republican establishments.
If we return home for instruction upon this point, we perceive that same union exemplified in many a State, in which "Liberty has a temple in every house, an altar in every heart," while involuntary servitude is seen in every direction.
Is it denied that those States possess a republican form of government?
If it is, why does our power of correction sleep? Why is the const.i.tutional guaranty suffered to be inactive? Why am I permitted to fatigue you, as the representative of a slaveholding State, with the discussion of the "_nugae canorae_" (for so I think them) that have been forced into this debate contrary to all the remonstrances of taste and prudence? Do gentlemen perceive the consequences to which their arguments must lead if they are of any value? Do they reflect that they lead to emanc.i.p.ation in the old United States--or to an exclusion of Delaware, Maryland, and all the South, and a great portion of the West from the Union? My honorable friend from Virginia has no business here, if this disorganizing creed be anything but the production of a heated brain. The State to which I belong, must "perform a l.u.s.tration"--must purge and purify herself from the feculence of civil slavery, and emulate the States of the North in their zeal for throwing down the gloomy idol which we are said to worship, before her senators can have any t.i.tle to appear in this high a.s.sembly. It will be in vain to urge that the old United States are exceptions to the rule--or rather (as the gentlemen express it), that they have no disposition to apply the rule to them. There can be no exceptions by implication only, to such a rule; and expressions which justify the exemption of the old States by inference, will justify the like exemption of Missouri, unless they point exclusively to them, as I have shown they do not. The guarded manner, too, in which some of the gentlemen have occasionally expressed themselves on this subject, is somewhat alarming. They have no disposition to meddle with slavery in the old United States. Perhaps not--but who shall answer for their successors? Who shall furnish a pledge that the principle once ingrafted into the Const.i.tution, will not grow, and spread, and fructify, and overshadow the whole land? It is the natural office of such a principle to wrestle with slavery, wheresoever it finds it. New States, colonized by the apostles of this principle, will enable it to set on foot a fanatical crusade against all who still continue to tolerate it, although no practicable means are pointed out by which they can get rid of it consistently with their own safety. At any rate, a present forbearing disposition, in a few or in many, is not a security upon which much reliance can be placed upon a subject as to which so many selfish interests and ardent feelings are connected with the cold calculations of policy. Admitting, however, that the old United States are in no danger from this principle--why is it so? There can be no other answer (which these zealous enemies of slavery can use) than that the Const.i.tution recognizes slavery as existing or capable of existing in those States. The Const.i.tution, then, admits that slavery and a republican form of government are not incongruous. It a.s.sociates and binds them up together and repudiates this wild imagination which the gentlemen have pressed upon us with such an air of triumph. But the Const.i.tution does more, as I have heretofore proved. It concedes that slavery may exist in a new State, as well as in an old one--since the language in which it recognizes slavery comprehends new States as well as actual. I trust then that I shall be forgiven if I suggest, that no eccentricity in argument can be more trying to human patience, than a formal a.s.sertion that a const.i.tution, to which slave-holding States were the most numerous parties, in which slaves are treated as property as well as persons, and provision is made for the security of that property, and even for an augmentation of it by a temporary importation from Africa, with a clause commanding Congress to guarantee a republican form of government to those very States, as well as to others, authorizes you to determine that slavery and a republican form of government cannot coexist.
But if a republican form of government is that in which all the men have a share in the public power, the slave-holding States will not alone retire from the Union. The const.i.tutions of some of the other States do not sanction universal suffrage, or universal eligibility. They require citizenship, and age, and a certain amount of property, to give a t.i.tle to vote or to be voted for; and they who have not those qualifications are just as much disfranchised, with regard to the government and its power, as if they were slaves. They have civil rights indeed (and so have slaves in a less degree; ) but they have no share in the government. Their province is to obey the laws, not to a.s.sist in making them. All such States must therefore be forisfamiliated with Virginia and the rest, or change their system. For the Const.i.tution being absolutely silent on those subjects, will afford them no protection. The Union might thus be reduced from an Union to an unit. Who does not see that such conclusions flow from false notions--that the true theory of a republican government is mistaken--and that in such a government rights, political and civil, may be qualified by the fundamental law, upon such inducements as the freemen of the country deem sufficient? That civil rights may be qualified as well as political, is proved by a thousand examples. Minors, resident aliens, who are in a course of naturalization--the other s.e.x, whether maids, or wives, or widows, furnish sufficient practical proofs of this.
We are next invited to study that clause of the Const.i.tution which relates to the migration or importation, before the year 1808, of such persons as any of the States then existing should think proper to admit.
It runs thus: "The migration or importation of such persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation not exceeding ten dollars for each person."
It is said that this clause empowers Congress, after the year 1808, to prohibit the pa.s.sage of slaves from State to State, and the word "migration" is relied upon for that purpose.
Whatever may be the lat.i.tude in which the word "persons" is capable of being received, it is not denied that the word "importation" indicates a bringing in from a jurisdiction foreign to the United States. The two termini of the importation, here spoken of, are a foreign country and the American Union--the first the _terminus a quo_, the second the _terminus ad quem_. The word migration stands in simple connexion with it, and of course is left to the full influence of that connection.
The natural conclusion is, that the same termini belong to each, or, in other words, that if the importation must be abroad, so also must be the migration--no other termini being a.s.signed to the one which are not manifestly characteristic of the other. This conclusion is so obvious, that to repel it, the word migration requires, as an appendage, explanatory phraseology, giving to it a different beginning from that of importation. To justify the conclusion that it was intended to mean a removal from State to State, each within the sphere of the const.i.tution in which it is used, the addition of the words from one to another State in this Union, were indispensable. By the omission of these words, the word "migration" is compelled to take every sense of which it is fairly susceptible from its immediate neighbor, "importation." In this view it means a coming, as "importation" means a bringing, from a foreign jurisdiction into the United States. That it is susceptible of this meaning, n.o.body doubts. I go further. It can have no other meaning in the place in which it is found. It is found in the Const.i.tution of this Union--which, when it speaks of migration as of a general concern, must be supposed to have in view a migration into the domain which itself embraces as a general government.
Migration, then, even if it comprehends slaves, does not mean the removal of them from State to State, but means the coming of slaves from places beyond their limits and their power. And if this be so, the gentlemen gain nothing for their argument by showing that slaves were the objects of this term.
An honorable gentleman from Rhode Island, whose speech was distinguished for its ability, and for an admirable force of reasoning, as well to as by the moderation and mildness of its spirit, informed us, with less discretion than in general he exhibited, that the word "migration" was introduced into this clause at the instance of some of the Southern States, who wished by its instrumentality to guard against a prohibition by Congress of the pa.s.sage into those States of slaves from other States. He has given us no authority for this supposition, and it is, therefore, a gratuitous one. How improbable it is, a moment"s reflection will convince him. The African slave trade being open during the whole of the time to which the entire clause in question referred, such a purpose could scarcely be entertained; but if it had been entertained, and there was believed to be a necessity for securing it, by a restriction upon the power of Congress to interfere with it, is it possible that they who deemed it important, would have contented themselves with a vague restraint, which was calculated to operate in almost any other manner than that which they desired? If fear and jealousy, such as the honorable gentleman has described, had dictated this provision, a better term than that of "migration," simple and unqualified, and joined, too, with the word "importation," would have been found to tranquilize those fears and satisfy that jealousy. Fear and jealousy are watchful, and are rarely seen to accept a security short of their object, and less rarely to shape that security, of their own accord, in such a way as to make it no security at all. They always seek an explicit guaranty; and that this is not such a guaranty this debate has proved, if it has proved nothing else.
WENDELL PHILLIPS,
OF Ma.s.sACHUSETTS. (BORN 1811, DIED 1884.)
ON THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY;
FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON, DECEMBER 8, 1837
MR. CHAIRMAN:
We have met for the freest discussion of these resolutions, and the events which gave rise to them. [Cries of "Question," "Hear him," "Go on," "No gagging," etc.] I hope I shall be permitted to express my surprise at the sentiments of the last speaker, surprise not only at such sentiments from such a man, but at the applause they have received within these walls. A comparison has been drawn between the events of the Revolution and the tragedy at Alton. We have heard it a.s.serted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain had a right to tax the colonies, and we have heard the mob at Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot fathers who threw the tea overboard! Fellow citizens, is this Faneuil Hall doctrine? ["No, no."] The mob at Alton were met to wrest from a citizen his just rights--met to resist the laws. We have been told that our fathers did the same; and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary precedent has been thrown over the mobs of our day. To make out their t.i.tle to such defence, the gentleman says that the British Parliament had a right to tax these colonies. It is manifest that, without this, his parallel falls to the ground, for Lovejoy had stationed himself within const.i.tutional bulwarks. He was not only defending the freedom of the press, but he was under his own roof, in arms with the sanction of the civil authority. The men who a.s.sailed him went against and over the laws. The mob, as the gentleman terms it--mob, forsooth! certainly we sons of the tea-spillers are a marvellously patient generation!--the "orderly mob" which a.s.sembled in the Old South to destroy the tea, were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal enactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea tax and stamp act laws! Our fathers resisted, not the King"s prerogative, but the King"s usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolutionary history upside down. Our State archives are loaded with arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament unconst.i.tutional--beyond its power. It was not until this was made out that the men of New England rushed to arms. The arguments of the Council Chamber and the House of Representatives preceded and sanctioned the contest. To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a precedent for mobs, for a right to resist laws we ourselves have enacted, is an insult to their memory. The difference between the excitements of those days and our own, which the gentleman in kindness to the latter has overlooked, is simply this: the men of that day went for the right, as secured by the laws. They were the people rising to sustain the laws and const.i.tution of the Province. The rioters of our days go for their own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hanc.o.c.k, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the Hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American--the slanderer of the dead. The gentleman said that he should sink into insignificance if he dared to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up.
[By this time, the uproar in the Hall had risen so high that the speech was suspended for a short time. Applause and counter applause, cries of "Take that back," "Make him take back recreant," "He sha"n"t go on till he takes it back," and counter cries of "Phillips or n.o.body," continued until the pleadings of well-known citizens had somewhat restored order, when Mr. Phillips resumed.]
Fellow citizens, I cannot take back my words. Surely the Attorney-General, so long and so well known here, needs not the aid of your hisses against one so young as I am--my voice never before heard within these walls!
I must find some fault with the statement which has been made of the events at Alton. It has been asked why Lovejoy and his friends did not appeal to the executive--trust their defence to the police of the city?
It has been hinted that, from hasty and ill-judged excitement, the men within the building provoked a quarrel, and that he fell in the course of it, one mob resisting another. Recollect, sir, that they did act with the approbation and sanction of the Mayor. In strict truth, there was no executive to appeal to for protection. The Mayor acknowledged that he could not protect them. They asked him if it was lawful for them to defend themselves. He told them it was, and sanctioned their a.s.sembling in arms to do so. They were not, then, a mob; they were not merely citizens defending their own property; they were in some sense the _posse comitatus_, adopted for the occasion into the police of the city, acting under the order of a magistrate. It was civil authority resisting lawless violence. Where, then, was the imprudence? Is the doctrine to be sustained here that it is imprudent for men to aid magistrates in executing the laws?
Men are continually asking each other, Had Lovejoy a right to resist?
Sir, I protest against the question instead of answering it. Lovejoy did not resist, in the sense they mean. He did not throw himself back on the natural right of self-defence. He did not cry anarchy, and let slip the dogs of civil war, careless of the horrors which would follow. Sir, as I understand this affair, it was not an individual protecting his property; it was not one body of armed men resisting another, and making the streets of a peaceful city run blood with their contentions. It did not bring back the scenes in some old Italian cities, where family met family, and faction met faction, and mutually trampled the laws under foot. No! the men in that house were regularly enrolled, under the sanction of the Mayor. There being no militia in Alton, about seventy men were enrolled with the approbation of the Mayor. These relieved each other every other night. About thirty men were in arms on the night of the sixth, when the press was landed. The next evening, it was not thought necessary to summon more than half that number; among these was Lovejoy. It was, therefore, you perceive, sir, the police of the city resisting rioters--civil government breasting itself to the shock of lawless men.
Here is no question about the right of self-defence. It is in fact simply this: Has the civil magistrate a right to put down a riot?
Some persons seem to imagine that anarchy existed at Alton from the commencement of these disputes. Not at all. "No one of us," says an eyewitness and a comrade of Lovejoy, "has taken up arms during these disturbances but at the command of the Mayor." Anarchy did not settle down on that devoted city till Lovejoy breathed his last. Till then the law, represented in his person, sustained itself against its foes.
When he fell, civil authority was trampled under foot. He had "planted himself on his const.i.tutional rights,"--appealed to the laws,--claimed the protection of the civil authority,--taken refuge under "the broad shield of the Const.i.tution. When through that he was pierced and fell, he fell but one sufferer in a common catastrophe." He took refuge under the banner of liberty--amid its folds; and when he fell, its glorious stars and stripes, the emblem of free inst.i.tutions, around which cl.u.s.ter so many heart-stirring memories, were blotted out in the martyr"s blood.
It has been stated, perhaps inadvertently, that Lovejoy or his comrades fired first. This is denied by those who have the best means of knowing.
Guns were first fired by the mob. After being twice fired on, those within the building consulted together and deliberately returned the fire. But suppose they did fire first. They had a right so to do; not only the right which every citizen has to defend himself, but the further right which every civil officer has to resist violence. Even if Lovejoy fired the first gun, it would not lessen his claim to our sympathy, or destroy his t.i.tle to be considered a martyr in defence of a free press. The question now is, Did he act within the const.i.tution and the laws? The men who fell in State Street, on the 5th of March, 1770, did more than Lovejoy is charged with. They were the first a.s.sailants upon some slight quarrel, they pelted the troops with every missile within reach. Did this bate one jot of the eulogy with which Hanc.o.c.k and Warren hallowed their memory, hailing them as the first martyrs in the cause of American liberty? If, sir, I had adopted what are called Peace principles, I might lament the circ.u.mstances of this case. But all you who believe as I do, in the right and duty of magistrates to execute the laws, join with me and brand as base hypocrisy the conduct of those who a.s.semble year after year on the 4th of July to fight over the battles of the Revolution, and yet "d.a.m.n with faint praise" or load with obloquy, the memory of this man who shed his blood in defence of life, liberty, property, and the freedom of the press!
Throughout that terrible night I find nothing to regret but this, that, within the limits of our country, civil authority should have been so prostrated as to oblige a citizen to arm in his own defence, and to arm in vain. The gentleman says Lovejoy was presumptuous and imprudent--he "died as the fool dieth." And a reverend clergyman of the city tells us that no citizen has a right to publish opinions disagreeable to the community! If any mob follows such publication, on him rests its guilt.
He must wait, forsooth, till the people come up to it and agree with him! This libel on liberty goes on to say that the want of right to speak as we think is an evil inseparable from republican inst.i.tutions!
If this be so, what are they worth? Welcome the despotism of the Sultan, where one knows what he may publish and what he may not, rather than the tyranny of this many-headed monster, the mob, where we know not what we may do or say, till some fellow-citizen has tried it, and paid for the lesson with his life. This clerical absurdity chooses as a check for the abuses of the press, not the law, but the dread of a mob. By so doing, it deprives not only the individual and the minority of their rights, but the majority also, since the expression of their opinion may sometime provoke disturbances from the minority. A few men may make a mob as well as many. The majority then, have no right, as Christian men, to utter their sentiments, if by any possibility it may lead to a mob!
Shades of Hugh Peters and John Cotton, save us from such pulpits!
Imprudent to defend the liberty of the press! Why? Because the defence was unsuccessful? Does success gild crime into patriotism, and the want of it change heroic self-devotion to imprudence? Was Hampden imprudent when he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard? Yet he, judged by that single hour, was unsuccessful. After a short exile, the race he hated sat again upon the throne.
Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker Hill battle reached a New England town. The tale would have run thus: "The patriots are routed,--the redcoats victorious, Warren lies dead upon the field."
With what scorn would that Tory have been received, who should have charged Warren with imprudence! who should have said that, bred a physician, he was "out of place" in that battle, and "died as the fool dieth." How would the intimation have been received, that Warren and his a.s.sociates should have merited a better time? But if success be indeed the only criterion of prudence, _Respice finem_,--wait till the end!
_Presumptuous_ to a.s.sert the freedom of the press on American ground! Is the a.s.sertion of such freedom before the age? So much before the age as to leave one no right to make it because it displeases the community?
Who invents this libel on his country? It is this very thing which ent.i.tles Lovejoy to greater praise. The disputed right which provoked the Revolution--taxation without representation--is far beneath that for which he died. [Here there was a general expression of strong disapprobation.] One word, gentlemen. As much as thought is better than money, so much is the cause in which Lovejoy died n.o.bler than a mere question of taxes. James Otis thundered in this hall when the King did but touch his pocket. Imagine, if you can, his indignant eloquence had England offered to put a gag upon his lips. The question that stirred the Revolution touched our civil interests. This concerns us not only as citizens, but as immortal beings. Wrapped up in its fate, saved or lost with it, are not only the voice of the statesman, but the instructions of the pulpit and the progress of our faith.
The clergy, "marvellously out of place" where free speech is battled for--liberty of speech on national sins! Does the gentleman remember that freedom to preach was first gained, dragging in its train freedom to print? I thank the clergy here present, as I reverence their predecessors, who did not so far forget their country in their immediate profession as to deem it duty to separate themselves from the struggle of "76--the Mayhews and Coopers, who remembered that they were citizens before they were clergymen.
Mr. Chairman, from the bottom of my heart I thank that brave little band at Alton for resisting. We must remember that Lovejoy had fled from city to city,--suffered the destruction of three presses patiently. At length he took counsel with friends, men of character, of tried integrity, of wide views, of Christian principle. They thought the crisis had come; it was full time to a.s.sert the laws. They saw around them, not a community like our own, of fixed habits, of character moulded and settled, but one "in the gristle, not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." The people there, children of our older States, seem to have forgotten the blood-tried principles of their fathers the moment they lost sight of our New England hills. Something was to be done to show them the priceless value of the freedom of the press, to bring back and set right their wandering and confused ideas. He and his advisers looked out on a community, staggering like a drunken man, indifferent to their rights and confused in their feelings. Deaf to argument, haply they might be stunned into sobriety. They saw that of which we cannot judge, the necessity of resistance. Insulted law called for it. Public opinion, fast hastening on the downward course, must be arrested.