regard to the making
of altars, tongs, snuffers and candlesticks, there is much left
for nature still to tell. Thinking of Moses as a man, admitting
that he was above his fellows, that he was in his day and generation
a leader, and, in a certain narrow sense, a patriot, that he was
the founder of the Jewish people; that he found them barbarians
and endeavored to control them by thunder and lightning, and found
it necessary to pretend that he was in partnership with the power
governing the universe; that he took advantage of their ignorance
and fear, just as politicians do now, and as theologians always
will, still, I see no evidence that the man Moses was any nearer
to God than his descendants, who are still warring against the
Philistines in every civilized part of the globe. Moses was a
believer in slavery, in polygamy, in wars of extermination, in
religious persecution and intolerance and in almost everything that
is now regarded with loathing, contempt and scorn. The Jehovah of
whom he speaks violated, or commands the violation of at least nine
of the Ten Commandments he gave. There is one thing, however, that
can be said of Moses that cannot be said of any person who now
insists that he was inspired, and that is, he was in advance of his
time.

_Question_. What do you think of the Buckner Bill for the colonization
of the negroes in Mexico?

_Answer_. Where does Mr. Buckner propose to colonize the white
people, and what right has he to propose the colonization of six
millions of people? Should we not have other bills to colonize
the Germans, the Swedes, the Irish, and then, may be, another bill
to drive the Chinese into the sea? Where do we get the right to
say that the negroes must emigrate?

All such schemes will, in my judgment, prove utterly futile.
Perhaps the history of the world does not give an instance of the
emigration of six millions of people. Notwithstanding the treatment
that Ireland has received from England, which may be designated as
a crime of three hundred years, the Irish still love Ireland. All
the despotism in the world will never crush out of the Irish heart
the love of home--the adoration of the old sod. The negroes of
the South have certainly suffered enough to drive them into other
countries; but after all, they prefer to stay where they were born.
They prefer to live where their ancestors were slaves, where fathers
and mothers were sold and whipped; and I don't believe it