mble year after year on the 4th of July to fight over the battles of
the Revolution, and yet "damn with faint praise" or load with obloquy,
the memory of this man who shed his blood in defence of life, liberty,
property, and the freedom of the press!

Throughout that terrible night I find nothing to regret but this, that,
within the limits of our country, civil authority should have been so
prostrated as to oblige a citizen to arm in his own defence, and to arm
in vain. The gentleman says Lovejoy was presumptuous and imprudent--he
"died as the fool dieth." And a reverend clergyman of the city tells
us that no citizen has a right to publish opinions disagreeable to the
community! If any mob follows such publication, on him rests its guilt.
He must wait, forsooth, till the people come up to it and agree with
him! This libel on liberty goes on to say that the want of right to
speak as we think is an evil inseparable from republican institutions!
If this be so, what are they worth? Welcome the despotism of the Sultan,
where one knows what he may publish and what he may not, rather than the
tyranny of this many-headed monster, the mob, where we know not what we
may do or say, till some fellow-citizen has tried it, and paid for the
lesson with his life. This clerical absurdity chooses as a check for the
abuses of the press, not the law, but the dread of a mob. By so doing,
it deprives not only the individual and the minority of their rights,
but the majority also, since the expression of their opinion may
sometime provoke disturbances from the minority. A few men may make a
mob as well as many. The majority then, have no right, as Christian men,
to utter their sentiments, if by any possibility it may lead to a mob!
Shades of Hugh Peters and John Cotton, save us from such pulpits!

Imprudent to defend the liberty of the press! Why? Because the defence
was unsuccessful? Does success gild crime into patriotism, and the want
of it change heroic self-devotion to imprudence? Was Hampden imprudent
when he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard? Yet he, judged by
that single hour, was unsuccessful. After a short exile, the race he
hated sat again upon the throne.

Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker Hill battle
reached a New England town. The tale would have run thus: "The patriots
are routed,--the redcoats victorious, Warren lies dead upon the field."
With what scorn would that Tory have been received, who sh