But I feel that I shall be wanting in respect to my countrymen if I pursue this argument further.

I blush that it should be necessary to speak upon the subject at all.

And these are men and things, which we have been reproved for condemning, because evidence was wanting both as to fact and person! If there ever was a case, which could not, in any rational sense of the word, be prejudged, this is one.

As to the fact--it appears, and sheds from its own body, like the sun in heaven, the light by which it is seen; as to the person--each has written down with his own hand, _I am the man_.

Condemnation of actions and men like these is not, in the minds of a people, (thanks to the divine Being and to human nature!) a matter of choice; it is like a physical necessity, as the hand must be burned which is thrust into the furnace--the body chilled which stands naked in the freezing north-wind.