like this. For mine is a Political Trial;
I shall treat it accordingly. I am charged with no immoral act--with
none even of selfish ambition. It is not pretended that I have done a
deed, or spoken a word, in the heat of passion, or vengeance, or with
calculated covetousness, to bring money, office, or honor, to myself
or any friend. I am not suspected of wishing to do harm to man or
woman; or with disturbing any man's natural rights. Nay, I am not even
charged with such an offence. The Attorney and the two Judges are of
one heart and mind in this prosecution; Mr. Hallett's "Indictment" is
only the beast of burthen to carry to its own place Mr. Curtis's
"Charge to the Grand-Jury," fit passenger for fitting carriage! The
same tree bore the Judge's blossom in June, and the Attorney's fruit
in October,--both reeking out the effluvia of the same substance. But
neither Attorney nor Judge dares accuse me of ill-will which would
harm another man, or of selfishness that seeks my own private
advantage. No, Gentlemen of the Jury, I am on trial for my love of
Justice; for my respect to the natural Rights of Man; for speaking a
word in behalf of what the Declaration of Independence calls the
"self-evident" Truth,--that all men have a natural, equal, and
unalienable Right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. I am
charged with words against what John Wesley named, the "Sum of all
Villanies," against a national crime so great, that it made
freethinking Mr. Jefferson, with all his "French Infidelity,"
"tremble" when he remembered "that God is just." I am on trial for my
manly virtue,--a Minister of the Christian Religion on trial for
keeping the Golden Rule! It is alleged that I have spoken in Boston
against kidnapping in Boston; that in my own pulpit, as a minister, I
have denounced Boston men for stealing my own parishioners; that as a
man, in Faneuil Hall, the spirit of James Otis, of John Hancock, and
three Adams's about me, with a word I "obstructed" the Marshal of
Boston and a Boston Judge of Probate, in their confederated attempts
to enslave a Boston man. When the Government of the United States has
turned kidnapper, I am charged with the "misdemeanor" of appealing
from the Atheism of purchased officials to the Conscience of the
People; and with rousing up Christians to keep the golden rule, when
the Rulers declared Religion had nothing to do with politics and there
was no Law of God above the fugitive slave bill!

Su