to the
multitude have been defended as follows:

"The prophetic Spirit is sometimes oblivious of the rules of the
drawing-room; and inspired Conscience, like the inspiring God, seeing
a hypocrite, will take the liberty to say so, and act accordingly. Are
the superficial amenities, the soothing fictions, the smotherings of
the burning heart,... really paramount in this world, and never to
give way? and when a soul of _power, unable to refrain_, rubs off,
though it be with rasping words, all the varnish from rottenness and
lies, is he to be tried in our courts of compliment for a misdemeanor?
Is there never a higher duty than that of either pitying or converting
guilty men,--the duty of publicly exposing them? of awakening the
popular conscience, and sweeping away the conventional timidities,
for a severe return to truth and reality? No rule of morals can be
recognized as just, which prohibits conformity of human speech to
fact; and insists on terms of civility being kept with all manner of
iniquity."

I certainly have not appealed to any conventional morality of
drawing-room compliment, but to the highest and purest principles
which I know; and I lament to find my judgment so extremely in
opposition. To me it seems that _inability to refrain_ shows weakness,
not _power_, of soul, and that nothing is easier than to give vent to
violent invective against bad rulers. The last sentence quoted, seems
to say, that the speaking of Truth is never to be condemned: but I
cannot agree to this. When Truth will only exasperate, and cannot do
good, silence is imperative. A man who reproaches an armed tyrant in
words too plain, does but excite him to murder; and the shocking thing
is, that this seems to have been the express object of Jesus. No good
result could be reasonably expected. Publicly to call men in authority
by names of intense insult, the writer of the above distinctly sees
will never convert them; but he thinks it was adapted to awaken the
popular conscience. Alas! it needs no divine prophet to inflame a
multitude against the avarice, hypocrisy, and oppression of rulers,
nor any deep inspiration of conscience in the multitude to be wide
awake on that point themselves A Publius Clodius or a Cleon will do
that work as efficiently as a Jesus; nor does it appear that the poor
are made better by hearing invectives against the rich and powerful.
If Jesus had been aiming, in a good cause, to excite rebellion, the
mode of addr