of men is to be
defeated. We must not begin with the confession of our faint-heartedness
and our cowardice. A quiet, sober, unaltered frame of judgment, that
insults no one, that has in it nothing violent, brutal and defying, is
the frame that becomes us. If I would teach another man, my superior
in rank, how he ought to construe and decide upon the conduct I hold, I
must begin by making that conduct explicit.

It is not in morals, as it is in war. There stratagem is allowable, and
to take the enemy by surprise. "Who enquires of an enemy, whether it is
by fraud or heroic enterprise that he has gained the day?" But it is not
so that the cause of liberty is to be vindicated in the civil career of
life.

The question is of reducing the higher ranks of society to admit the
just immunities of their inferiors. I will not allow that they shall be
cheated into it. No: no man was ever yet recovered to his senses in a
question of morals, but by plain, honest, soul-commanding speech. Truth
is omnipotent, if we do not violate its majesty by surrendering its
outworks, and giving up that vantage-ground, of which if we deprive it,
it ceases to be truth. It finds a responsive chord in every human bosom.
Whoever hears its voice, at the same time recognises its power. However
corrupt he may be, however steeped in the habits of vice, and hardened
in the practices of tyranny, if it be mildly, distinctly, emphatically
enunciated, the colour will forsake his cheek, his speech will alter and
be broken, and he will feel himself unable to turn it off lightly, as a
thing of no impression and validity. In this way the erroneous man,
the man nursed in the house of luxury, a stranger to the genuine,
unvarnished state of things, stands a fair chance of being corrected.

But, if an opposite, and a truer way of thinking than that to which he
is accustomed, is only brought to his observation by the reserve of him
who entertains it, and who, while he entertains it, is reluctant to
hold communion with his wealthier neighbour, who regards him as his
adversary, and hardly admits him to be of the same common nature, there
will be no general improvement. Under this discipline the two ranks of
society will be perpetually more estranged, view each other with
eye askance, and will be as two separate and hostile states, though
inhabiting the same territory. Is this the picture we desire to see of
genuine liberty, philanthropic, desirous of good to all, and ov