lt in it, if no
galled horse did wince." Our friends find, after all, that men do not
so much hate us as the truth we utter and the light we bring. They find
that the community are not the honest seekers after truth which they
fancied, but selfish politicians and sectarian bigots, who shiver, like
Alexander's butler, whenever the sun shines on them. Experience has
driven these new laborers back to our method. We have no quarrel with
them--would not steal one wreath of their laurels. All we claim is,
that, if they are to be complimented as prudent, moderate, Christian,
sagacious, statesmanlike reformers, we deserve the same praise; for they
have done nothing that we, in our measure, did not attempt before.

I claim this, that the cause, in its recent aspect, has put on nothing
but timidity. It has taken to itself no new weapons of recent years; it
has become more compromising,--that is all! It has become neither more
persuasive, more earnest, more Christian, more charitable, nor more
effective than for the twenty years pre-ceding. Mr. Hale, the head of
the Free Soil movement, after a career in the Senate that would do honor
to any man,--after a six years' course which entitles him to the respect
and confidence of the antislavery public, can put his name, within
the last month, to an appeal from the city of Washington, signed by a
Houston and a Cass, for a monument to be raised to Henry Clay! If that
be the test of charity and courtesy, we cannot give it to the world.
Some of the leaders of the Free Soil party of Massachusetts, after
exhausting the whole capacity of our language to paint the treachery of
Daniel Webster to the cause of liberty, and the evil they thought he was
able and seeking to do,--after that, could feel it in their hearts to
parade themselves in the funeral procession got up to do him honor! In
this we allow we cannot follow them. The deference which every gentleman
owes to the proprieties of social life, that self-respect and regard to
consistency which is every man's duty,--these, if no deeper feelings,
will ever prevent us from giving such proofs of this newly invented
Christian courtesy. We do not play politics, antislavery is no half-jest
with us; it is a terrible earnest, with life or death, worse than life
or death, on the issue. It is no lawsuit, where it matters not to the
good feeling of opposing counsel which way the verdict goes, and where
advocates can shake hands after the decision as plea