the banks of the Mississippi, cheered,
welcomed, and supported, as warmly and as heartily as when I stepped
first upon your glorious shores? Opposition, hostility, venomous
calumny, have exhausted all means to check the sympathy of the people.
And has that sympathy subsided? has it abated? is it checked? No, it
rolls on swelling as I advance--here I have again an imposing evidence
before my eyes, here in St. Louis, my namesake city, where so much, and
that so perseveringly, was done to prevent this evidence.

Yes, it rolls, and will roll on, swelling till it will finally submerge
all endeavours to mislead the instincts of freemen, to fetter the
energies of the nation, to stifle its spirit, and to check the growing
aspirations of the people's upright heart.

When the struggle is about principles, indifference is suicide. Nay,
indifference is impossible: for indifference about the fate of that
principle upon which your national existence and all your future
rests--is passive submission to the opposite principle--it is almost
equivalent to an alliance with the despots. _He who is not for freedom
is against freedom_. There is no third choice.

The people's instinct feels the danger of losing an irreparable
opportunity, and hence the fact, never yet met in history, that a
homeless exile becomes an object of such sympathy, rolling on like a
sea, in spite of all the passionate rage of my enemies, and all the
Christian tolerance of the Reverend Father Jesuits, which they in such
an evident manner show to me. It is time to advertise them by a few
remarks that I am aware of their hostility, and ready to meet it openly.
I make this advertisement by design here, because it is not my custom to
attack from behind or in the dark. Mine is not the famous doctrine,
_that the end sanctifies the means_. I like to meet the enemy face
to face--a fair field and fair arms.

And in one thing more I will not imitate my reverend opponents. I will
never indulge in any personalities, never act otherwise than becoming to
a gentleman. If they choose to pursue a different course, let them do
so, and let them earn the fruits of it.

My humble person I entirely submit to the good pleasure of their
passion. If they tell you, gentlemen, that I am no great man, they speak
the truth. Being on good terms with my conscience, I do not much care to
be on bad terms with Czars and Emperors, their obedient servants, and
the reverend father Jesuits. Nay, if I