eclaration would answer declaration,
each stronger than the one before. The moves would go on like the dispute
of two German students, of whom each is bound to a sharper retort on a
graduated scale, until at last comes _dummer Junge_![417]--and then they
must fight. There is a gentleman in the upper fifteen of the signers of the
writ--the hawking of whose names appears to me very bad taste--whom I met
in cordial cooperation for many a year at a scientific board. All I knew
about his religion was that he, as a clergyman, must in some sense or other
receive the 39 Articles:--all that he could know about mine was that I was
some kind of heretic, or so reputed. If we had come to signing opposite
manifestoes, turn-about, we might have found ourselves in the lowest depths
of party discussion at our very council-table. I trust the list of
subscribers to the declaration, when it comes to be published, will show
that the bulk of those who have really added to our knowledge have seen the
thing in its true light.

"The promoters--I say nothing about the subscribers--of the movement will,
I trust, not feel aggrieved at the course I have taken or the remarks I
have made. Walter Scott says that before we judge Napoleon by the
temptation to which he yielded, we ought to remember how much he may have
resisted: I invite them to apply this rule to myself; they can have no idea
of the feeling with which I {264} contemplate all attempts to repress
freedom of inquiry, nor of the loathing with which I recoil from the
proposal to be art and part. They have asked me to give a public opinion
upon a certain point. It is true that they have had the kindness to tender
both the opinion they wish me to form, and the shape in which they would
have it appear: I will let them draw me out, but I will not let them take
me in. If they will put an asterisk to my name, and this letter to the
asterisk, they are welcome to my signature. As I do not expect them to
relish this proposal, I will not solicit the favor of its adoption. But
they have given a right to think, for they have asked me to think; to
publish, for they have asked me to allow them to publish; to blame them,
for they have asked me to blame their betters. Should they venture to find
fault because my direction of disapproval, publicly given, is half a
revolution different from theirs, they will be known as having presented a
loaded document at the head of a traveler in the highway of discussion,