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 excitement of those days
and our own, which this gentleman in kindness to the latter has
overlooked, is simply this: the men of that day went for the right,
as secured by laws. They were the people rising to sustain the laws
and the constitution of the province. The rioters of our day 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 Hancock, 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 he should sink into insignificance if he
condescended to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. 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!

Allusion has been made to what lawyers understand very well--the
"conflict of laws." We are told that nothing but the Mississippi
River runs between Saint Louis and Alton; and the conflict of laws
somehow or other gives the citizens of the former a right to find
fault with the defender of the press for publishing his opinions so
near their limits. Will the gentleman venture that argument before
lawyers? How the laws of the two States could be said to come into
conflict in such circumstances, I question whether any lawyer in
this audience can explain or understand. No matter whether the line
that divides one sovereign State from another be an imaginary one
or ocean-wide, the moment you cross it, the State you leave is
blotted out of existence, so far as you are concerned. The Czar
might as well claim to control the deliberations of Faneuil Hall,
as the laws of Missouri demand reverence, or the shadow of
obedience, from an inhabitant of Illinois.

Sir, as I understand this affair, it was not an individual
protecting his property; it was not one body of armed men
assaulting another, and making the streets of a peaceful city run
blood with their contentions. It did not bring back the