ernment takes the life of a man without the
consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is
taking a step towards its own dissolution. Is it not possible that an
individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced
simply because they were made? or declared by any number of men to be
good, if they are not good? Is there any necessity for a man's being a
tool to perform a deed of which his better nature disapproves? Is it the
intention of law-makers that good men shall be hung ever? Are judges
to interpret the law according to the letter, and not the spirit? What
right have you to enter into a compact with yourself that you will do
thus or so, against the light within you? Is it for you to make up your
mind,--to form any resolution whatever,--and not accept the convictions
that are forced upon you, and which ever pass your understanding? I do
not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man,
because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases
of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks
a human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases. Business men may
arrange that among themselves. If they were the interpreters of the
everlasting laws which rightfully bind man, that would be another thing.
A counterfeiting law-factory, standing half in a slave land and half in
free! What kind of laws for free men can you expect from that?

I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for
his character,--his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly,
and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was
crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are
the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old
Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.

I see now that it was necessary that the bravest and humanest man in
all the country should be hung. Perhaps he saw it himself. I almost fear
that I may yet hear of his deliverance, doubting if a prolonged life, if
any life, can do as much good as his death.

"Misguided"! "Garrulous"! "Insane"! "Vindictive"! So ye write in your
easy-chairs, and thus he wounded responds from the floor of the Armory,
clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of nature is: "No man sent
me here; it was my own prompting and that of my Maker. I acknowledge no
master in human form."

And in what a sweet and noble strain he