ed against them. But I
would also, if I could, array his name, opinions, and influence against
the opposite extreme--against a few but an increasing number of men who,
for the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to assail and to
ridicule the white man's charter of freedom, the declaration that "all men
are created free and equal." So far as I have learned, the first American
of any note to do or attempt this was the late John C. Calhoun; and if I
mistake not, it soon after found its way into some of the messages of the
Governor of South Carolina. We, however, look for and are not much shocked
by political eccentricities and heresies in South Carolina. But only
last year I saw with astonishment what purported to be a letter of a very
distinguished and influential clergyman of Virginia, copied, with apparent
approbation, into a St. Louis newspaper, containing the following to me
very unsatisfactory language:

"I am fully aware that there is a text in some Bibles that is not in mine.
Professional abolitionists have made more use of it than of any passage in
the Bible. It came, however, as I trace it, from Saint Voltaire, and was
baptized by Thomas Jefferson, and since almost universally regarded as
canonical authority`All men are born free and equal.'

"This is a genuine coin in the political currency of our generation. I am
sorry to say that I have never seen two men of whom it is true. But I must
admit I never saw the Siamese Twins, and therefore will not dogmatically
say that no man ever saw a proof of this sage aphorism."

This sounds strangely in republican America. The like was not heard in the
fresher days of the republic. Let us contrast with it the language of that
truly national man whose life and death we now commemorate and lament: I
quote from a speech of Mr. Clay delivered before the American Colonization
Society in 1827:

"We are reproached with doing mischief by the agitation of this question.
The society goes into no household to disturb its domestic tranquillity.
It addresses itself to no slaves to weaken their obligations of obedience.
It seeks to affect no man's property. It neither has the power nor the
will to affect the property of any one contrary to his consent. The
execution of its scheme would augment instead of diminishing the value of
property left behind. The society, composed of free men, conceals itself
only with the free. Collateral consequences we are not responsible for.
It is