At length
he took counsel with friends, men of character, of tried integrity, of
wide views, of Christian principle. They thought the crisis had come; it
was full time to assert the laws. They saw around them, not a community
like our own, of fixed habits, of character moulded and settled, but one
"in the gristle, not yet hardened into the bone of manhood." The
people there, children of our older States, seem to have forgotten the
blood-tried principles of their fathers the moment they lost sight
of our New England hills. Something was to be done to show them the
priceless value of the freedom of the press, to bring back and set right
their wandering and confused ideas. He and his advisers looked out on
a community, staggering like a drunken man, indifferent to their rights
and confused in their feelings. Deaf to argument, haply they might
be stunned into sobriety. They saw that of which we cannot judge, the
necessity of resistance. Insulted law called for it. Public opinion,
fast hastening on the downward course, must be arrested.
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