eproach
of Quixotism or of fanaticism; but after you have well weighed what you
undertake, if you see your way clearly, and are convinced that you are
right, go forward, even tho you, like Mr. Garrison, do it at the risk
of being torn to pieces by the very men through whose changed hearts
your purpose will one day be accomplished. Fight on with all your
strength against whatever odds and with however small a band of
supporters. If you are right, the time will come when that small band
will swell into a multitude; you will at least lay the foundations of
something memorable, and you may, like Mr. Garrison--tho you ought not
to need or expect so great a reward--be spared to see that work
completed which, when you began it, you only hoped it might be given to
you to help forward a few stages on its way.

"The other lesson which it appears to me important to enforce, amongst
the many that may be drawn from our friend's life, is this: If you aim
at something noble and succeed in it, you will generally find that you
have succeeded not in that alone. A hundred other good and noble things
which you never dreamed of will have been accomplished by the way, and
the more certainly, the sharper and more agonizing has been the struggle
which preceded the victory. The heart and mind of a nation are never
stirred from their foundations without manifold good fruits. In the case
of the great American contest these fruits have been already great, and
are daily becoming greater. The prejudices which beset every form of
society--and of which there was a plentiful crop in America--are rapidly
melting away. The chains of prescription have been broken; it is not
only the slave who has been freed--the mind of America has been
emancipated. The whole intellect of the country has been set thinking
about the fundamental questions of society and government; and the new
problems which have to be solved and the new difficulties which have to
be encountered are calling forth new activity of thought, and that great
nation is saved probably for a long time to come, from the most
formidable danger of a completely settled state of society and
opinion--intellectual and moral stagnation. This, then, is an additional
item of the debt which America and mankind owe to Mr. Garrison and his
noble associates; and it is well calculated to deepen our sense of the
truth which his whole career most strikingly illustrates--that tho our
best directed efforts may often s