d, or denied. He was
shunned as though he had been a pestilence. Most of his old friends
forsook him. He was regarded as a moral plague, and at the bare
mention of his name the bloody hands of the church were raised in
horror. He was denounced as the most despicable of men.

Not content with following him to his grave, they pursued him after
death with redoubled fury, and recounted with infinite gusto and
satisfaction the supposed horrors of his death-bed: gloried in the fact
that he was forlorn and friendless, and gloated like fiends over what
they supposed to be the agonizing remorse of his lonely death.

It is wonderful that all his services are thus forgotten. It is
amazing that one kind word did not fall from some pulpit; that some one
did not accord to him, at least--honesty. Strange that in the general
denunciation some one did not remember his labor for liberty, his
devotion to principle, his zeal for the rights of his fellow-men. He
had, by brave and splendid effort, associated his name with the cause
of progress. He had made it impossible to write the history of
political freedom with his name left out. He was one of the creators
of light, one of the heralds of the dawn. He hated tyranny in the name
of kings, and in the name of God, with every drop of his noble blood.
He believed in liberty and justice, and in the sacred doctrine of human
equality. Under these divine banners he fought the battle of his life.
In both worlds he offered his blood for the good of man. In the
wilderness of America, in the French assembly, in the sombre cell
waiting for death, he was the same unflinching, unwavering friend of
his race; the same undaunted champion of universal freedom. And for
this he has been hated; for this the church has violated even his grave.

This is enough to make one believe that nothing is more natural than
for men to devour their benefactors. The people in all ages have
crucified and glorified. Whoever lifts his voice against abuses,
whoever arraigns the past at the bar of the present, whoever asks the
king to show his commission, or question the authority of the priest,
will be denounced as the enemy of man and God. In all ages reason has
been regarded as the enemy of religion. Nothing has been considered so
pleasing to the Deity as a total denial of the authority of your own
mind. Self-reliance has been thought deadly sin; and the idea of living
and dying without the aid and consolation