It is
not difficult to discern what sort of humanity our government is to
learn from these Siren singers. Our government also; I admit, with some
reason, as a step towards the proposed fraternity, is required to abjure
the unjust hatred which it bears to this body of honor and virtue. I
thank God I am neither a minister nor a leader of opposition. I protest
I cannot do what they desire. I could not do it, if I were under the
guillotine,--or, as they ingeniously and pleasantly express it, "looking
out of the little national window." Even at that opening I could receive
none of their light. I am fortified against all such affections by the
declaration of the government, which I must yet consider as lawful, made
on the 29th of October, 1793,[27] and still ringing in my ears. This
Declaration was transmitted not only to all our commanders by sea and
land, but to our ministers in every court of Europe. It is the most
eloquent and highly finished in the style, the most judicious in the
choice of topics, the most orderly in the arrangement, and the most rich
in the coloring, without employing the smallest degree of exaggeration,
of any state-paper that has ever yet appeared. An ancient writer
(Plutarch, I think it is) quotes some verses on the eloquence of
Pericles, who is called "the only orator that left stings in the minds
of his hearers." Like his, the eloquence of the Declaration, not
contradicting, but enforcing, sentiments of the truest humanity, has
left stings that have penetrated more than skin-deep into my mind and
never can they be extracted by all the surgery of murder; never can the
throbbings they have created be assuaged by all the emollient cataplasms
of robbery and confiscation.
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