were sent into the Court of Request, accompanied by a body of musketeers with screwed bayonets, and with orders to tell us what we ought to do, and how we were to vote, I know what would be the duty of this House; I know it would be our duty to order the officer to be taken and hanged up at the door of our lobby; but, sir, I doubt much if such a spirit could be found in this House, or in any House of Commons that will ever be in England.

Sir, I talk not of imaginary things; I talk of what has happened to an English House of Commons, and from an English army; not only from an English army, but an army that was raised by that very House of Commons, an army that was paid by them, and an army that was commanded by generals appointed by them. Therefore, do not let us vainly imagine that an army, raised and maintained by authority of Parliament, will always be submissive to them. If any army be so numerous as to have it in their power to overawe the Parliament, they will be submissive as long as the Parliament does nothing to disoblige their favorite general; but, when that case happens, I am afraid that, in place of the Parliament's dismissing the army, the army will dismiss the Parliament, as they have done heretofore. We are come to the Rubicon. Our army is now to be reduced, or it never will be; and this nation, already overburdened with debts and taxes, must be loaded with the heavy charge of perpetually supporting a numerous standing army, and remain forever exposed to the danger of having its liberties trampled upon by any future king or ministry who shall take it in their heads to do so, and shall take a proper care to model the army for that purpose. Hon. William Pulteney.

LAST WORDS.

[The following extracts are taken from a speech made by Elijah P. Lovejoy to a meeting of citizens in Alton, Ill., a day or two before he was killed by a mob, while defending his printing-press from violence. The latter event occurred Nov. 7, 1837.]

I.

I FEEL, Mr. Chairman, that this is the most solemn moment of my life. I feel, I trust, in some measure the responsibilities which at this hour I sustain to these my fellow-citizens, to the church of which I am a minister, to my country, and to God. And let me beg of you, before I proceed further, to

construe nothing I shall say as being disrespectful to this assembly. I have no such feeling: far from it. And if I do not act or speak according to their wishes at all times, it is because I cannot conscientiously do it.

Mr. Chairman, I do not admit that it is the business of this assembly to decide whether I shall or shall not publish a newspaper in this city. I have the right to do it. I know that I have the right freely to speak and publish my sentiments, subject only to the laws of the land for the abuse of that right. That right was given me by my Maker, and is solemnly guaranteed to me by the Constitution of these United States and of this State. What I wish to know of you is, whether you will protect me in the exercise of that right, or whether, as heretofore, I am to be subjected to personal indignity and outrage. These resolutions, and the measures proposed by them, are spoken of as a compromise -a compromise between two parties. Mr. Chairman, this is not so. There is but one party here. It is simply a question whether the law shall be enforced, or whether the mob shall be allowed to continue to trample it under their feet, as they now do, by violating with impunity the rights of an inno

cent man.

Mr. Chairman, what have I to compromise? If freely to forgive those who have so greatly injured me, if to pray for their temporal and eternal happiness, if still to wish for the prosperity of your city and State, notwithstanding all the indignities I have suffered in it;-if this be the compromise intended, then do I willingly make it.

But if by a compromise is meant that I should cease from doing that which duty requires of me, I cannot make it. And the reason is, that I fear God more than I fear man. Think not that I would lightly go contrary to public sentiment around me. The good opinion of my fellow men is dear to me, and I would sacrifice anything but principle to obtain their good wishes; but when they ask me to surrender this, they ask for more than I can—than I dare give.

It is a very different question, whether I shall voluntarily, or at the request of friends, yield up my post, or whether I shall forsake it at the demand of a mob. The former I am at all times ready to do, when circumstances occur to require it, as I will never put my personal wishes or interests in competition with the cause of that Master whose minister I am. But the latter, be assured, I never will do. God in His providence-so say all my brethren, and so I think-has devolved upon me the responsibility of maintaining my

ground here, and, Mr. Chairman, I am determined to do it! A voice comes to me from Maine, from Massachusetts, from Connecticut, from New York, from Pennsylvania; yea, from Kentucky, from Mississippi, from Missouri, calling upon me in the name of all that is dear in heaven or earth, to stand fast; and by the help of God, I will stand. I know I am but one, and you are many. My strength would avail but little against you all. You can crush me, if you will; but I shall die at my post, for I cannot and will not forsake it!

II.

Is not this a free State?

WHY should I flee from Alton? When assailed by a mob at St. Louis, I came hither, as to the home of freedom and of the laws. The mob has pursued me here, and why should I retreat again? Where can I be safe, if not here? Have not I a right to claim the protection of the laws? What more can I have in any other place? Sir, the very act of retreating will embolden the mob to follow me wherever I go. No, sir, there is no way to escape the mob, but to abandon the path of duty; and that, God helping me, I will never do.

It has been said here, that my hand is against every man, and every man's hand against me. The last part of the declaration is too painfully true. I do indeed find almost every hand lifted against me; but against whom in this place has my hand been raised? I appeal to every individual present; whom of you have I injured? Whose character have Í traduced? Whose family have I molested? Whose business have I meddled with? If any, let him rise here and testify against me.-No one answers.

Do not your resolutions say that you find nothing against my private or personal character? And does any one believe that if there were anything to be found, it would not be found and brought forth? If in anything I have offended against the law, I am not so popular in this community as that it would be difficult to convict me. You have judges, courts, and juries; they find nothing against me.

And now you

come together for the purpose of driving out a confessedly innocent man, for no cause but that he dares to think and speak as his conscience and his God dictate. Will conduct like this stand the scrutiny of your country, of posterity,above all, of the judgment-day? For remember, the Judge of that day is no respecter of persons. Pause, I beseech you, and reflect. The present excitement will soon be over; the voice of conscience will at last be heard. And in

some season of honest thought, even in this world, as you review the scenes of this hour, you will be compelled to say, "He was right, he was right.”

But you have been exhorted to be lenient and compassionate, and in driving me away, to affix no unnecessary disgrace upon me. Sir, I reject all such compassion. You cannot disgrace me. Scandal and falsehood and calumny have already done their worst. My shoulders have borne the burthen till it sits easy upon them. You may hang me up as the mob hung up the martyrs of Vicksburg! you may burn me at the stake, as they did McIntosh at St. Louis; or you may tar and feather me, or throw me into the Mississippi, as you have often threatened to do; but you cannot disgrace me. I, and I only, can disgrace myself; and the deepest of all disgrace would be, at a time like this, to deny my Master, by forsaking His cause.

Again, you have been told that I have a family, who are dependent on me; and this has been given as a reason why I should be driven off as gently as possible. It is true, Mr. Chairman, I am a husband and a father; and this it is that adds the bitterest ingredient to the cup of sorrow I am called to drink. Yet I am not unhappy. I have counted the cost, and stand prepared freely to offer up my all in the service of God. I am commanded to forsake father and mother and wife and children for Jesus' sake; and as his professed disciple I stand prepared to do it. The time for fulfilling this pledge, in my case, it seems to me has come. Sir, I dare not flee away from Alton. Should I attempt it, I should feel that the angel of the Lord with his flaming sword was pur suing me wherever I went. It is because I fear God that I am not afraid of all who oppose me in this city. No, sir, the contest has commenced here, and here it must be finished. Before God and you all, I here pledge myself to continue it, if need be, till death. If I fall, my grave shall be made in Alton. Elijah P. Lovejoy, 1837.

ON THE MOBBING AND MURDER OF LOVEJOY.

I.

AN American citizen murdered, a home desolated, a wife widowed, a child made fatherless-these, citizens of Alton, are recollections which will not fade with the fading excitements of the hour. From these you can never flee; no bars

can protect, no concealments hide you from them, no flight can leave them behind; they are become a part of your own souls. The dreadful truth that you are murderers will follow you through all your future existence: in whatever scenes you may mingle, beneath whatever sky you may repose, the grisly accuser will dog you. Though you essay to drown its voice in the madness of intoxication, or in the excitements of deeper and still deeper crime,-vain will be the attempt; it will await you in the grave. Yea, in the last great congregation the gory phantom will start forth, and arraign you at the bar of eternal justice. Much do I misjudge if the hours do not frequently come, when you would gladly hide yourselves in the grave, were it not that secret "dread of something after death," which God has left as his witness and prophet in the souls of the guiltiest, will warn you that the tortures you experience are but the faint and shadowy earnest of a immortal remorse.

And what have you gained by all this dreadful and guilty self-sacrifice? Whatever may have been the faults of your victim, you have embalmed and canonized them. Whatever may have been the defects of his cause or of his advocacy of it, you have done much, by your mad act, to identify that cause with that of freedom of speech and American liberty, and you have given its advocate rank among the apostles of humanity and martyrs to the rights of man; among the Vanes and Sydneys of other times you have ensured his name a record,while the traducer and the murderer are forgot ten in the grave. Instead of checking the cause for which he labored, you have made the sympathies of this whole nation react upon you like an earthquake. You have virtually surrendered the field of argument, by a resort to force; you have made the name of the object of your hate worth more to him and his cause than a hundred years of life. You cannot bury his shed blood in the earth :-it will have voice -it will plead louder than a thousand presses. From its every drop will spring an army of living antagonists. Did you dream that in this age you could muzzle free discussion? You might as well attempt to muzzle Etna. Did you hope to chain liberty of speech? You might as well lay grasp upon Niagara. Did you think to oppose yourselves to the progress of free opinion? You might as well throw yourselves across the path of the lightning or the whirlwind. The nation or conspiracy of nations that opposes itself to the course of free inquiry opposes itself to the Providence of God and the destiny of the race, and might as well think to suspend the laws of nature, or stay the earth in her orbit.