[45] the wildest enthusiasm. Perhaps no man, except Charles Sumner, could have followed such a speaker as Mr. Adams proved himself to be that day, and maintained the fervor of the meeting. In alluding to what Mr. Adams had said, he modestly renounced any hope of exciting a deeper feeling, or even a desire to fan the fires of patriotism and liberty which had been once more re-kindled in the old Bay State. But one thing, at least, he declared that he could do, ‘I can join them —Giddings and Adams—in a renunciation of those party relations which seem now inconsistent with the support of freedom. Like them, I have been a Whig, because I thought this Party represented the moral sentiments of the country; that it was the Party of Humanity: but it has ceased to sustain this character. It does not represent the moral sentiments of the country; it is not the Party of Humanity: and a party which renounces its sentiments, must itself expect to be renounced. For myself, therefore, in the coming conflict, I wish it to be understood that I belong to the Party of Freedom—to that party which plants itself on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.’ He then proceeded with his speech, in terms of fervid eloquence.
I am reminded, he said, by the transactions in which we are now engaged, of an incident in French history. It was late in the night, at Versailles, that a courtier of Louis XVI., penetrating the bedcham-ber of his master, and arousing him from his slumbers, communicated to him the intelligence—big with gigantic destinies—that the people of Paris, smarting under wrong and falsehood, had risen in their might, and, after a severe contest with hireling troops, destroyed the Bastile. The unhappy monarch, turning upon his couch, said, ‘It is an insurrection.’ ‘No, Sire,’ was the reply of the honest courtier, ‘it is a revolution.’ And such is our Movement to-day. It is a Revolution—not beginning
