similar
circumstances presupposed, he could not evade the obligations which they
impose. From such obligations there is no dispensation to be bought--no,
not at Rome; from the obligations observe, and those obligations, we
repeat, are--sincerity in the first place, and respectful or deferential
language in the second. Such were the duties; now let us look to the
performance. And that we may judge of _that_ with more advantage for
searching and appraising the qualities of this document, permit us to
suggest three separate questions, the first being this: What was the
occasion of the Address? Secondly, what was its ostensible object?
Thirdly, what are the arguments by which, as its means, the paper
travels towards that object?

First, as to the _occasion_ of the Address. We have said that the date,
viz., the 31st of October, is falsified. It was _not_ dated on the 31st
of October, but on or about the seventh day of November. Even that
falsehood, though at first sight trivial, is enough for suspicion. If X,
a known liar, utters a lie at starting, it is not for him to plead in
mitigation the apparent uselessness of the lie, it is for us to presume
out of the fact a use, where the fact exists. A leader in the French
Revolution protested often against bloodshed and other atrocities--not
as being too bad, but, on the contrary, as being too good, too precious
to be wasted upon ordinary occasions. And, on the same principle, we may
be sure that any habitual liar, who has long found the benefit of
falsehoods at his utmost need, will have formed too profound a reverence
for this powerful resource in a moment of perplexity ever to throw away
a falsehood, or to squander upon a caprice of the moment that lie which,
being seasonably employed, might have saved him from confusion. The
artist in lying is not the man to lie gratuitously. From the first,
therefore, satisfied ourselves that there was a lurking motive--the key
to this falsification of date--we paused to search it out. In that we
found little difficulty. For what was the professed object of this
Address? It was to meet and to overthrow two notions here represented as
great popular errors. But why at this time? Wherefore all this heat at
the present moment? Grant that the propositions denounced as erroneous
_were_ so in very deed, why should criminals standing under the shadow
of public vengeance ready to descend, so childishly misuse the interval,
mercifully allowed for their