r foe, I should have had a pleasanter fight; but soldiers cannot
always choose their antagonists, nor can they keep, in all cases, to
their own best mode of warfare. The hunter cannot always find the
noblest game; and perhaps it is better for his neighbour, if not so
pleasant to himself, that he should sometimes be obliged to employ his
dogs and rifles in destroying vermin.

"I feel that an apology is due from me to you and the public, for
entering the lists with my opponent. It is soon given. When I first
offered to meet him in discussion on the Bible, I supposed him to be a
well-informed and respectable man, and the representative of the
highest intellectual and moral culture, combined with superior talent
and experience as a debater, that the orthodox world could boast. I soon
found out my mistake, but I did not feel at liberty to withdraw my
challenge. When I learned the infamous character of his personal
lectures, I declined all further correspondence with him till he should
retract his slanders; but still I did not feel free to say I would not
debate with him, if his friends should bring him to reasonable terms.
His friends in Halifax succeeded in doing so, and out of regard to the
wishes of my friends, I submitted to the temporary degradation of being
placed on the same platform with my unprincipled calumniator, and the
calumniator of the best, the wisest, and the greatest men of every age
and nation. I do not regret having done so.

"He will leave this discussion a sadder and a wiser man. He has found
that the power of insolence, and falsehood, and of vulgar, brutal wit,
has its bounds; that there are those whom they cannot abash or cow; that
the _might_ in moral encounters is with the _right_.

"I part with my opponent without malice, though without regret. If he
has natural characteristics which others have not, and lacks some higher
qualities which others have, the fault is not entirely his. He did not
make himself. Nor did he nurse, or rear, or train himself. He is the
production, and his character may, to a great extent, be the production,
of influences over which he had no control. I shall not therefore state
all I have felt while listening to the false and fierce personalities
with which this discussion has been disgraced. I will rather acknowledge
my own errors, and lament that anything he has said or done should have
been permitted, in any case, to affect my own style of advocacy, and
render me less g