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up by such unequivocal attestations to his importance.
[Cheers.] To suppose Faneuil Hall roused to such a pitch by the advent of any insignificant person, to suppose the
Daily Advertiser awakened to knowledge of any so recent event by a trifling matter, would be-
ocean into tempest tossed,
To waft a feather or to drown a fly. [Laughter and cheers.]
Daniel Webster once said, in this country, that in the case of a suspected murderer, “suicide is confession.”
In the same way, mob law now is confession [cheers],--confession that the land knows itself guilty, cannot abide the gaze of honest men, and dreads the testimony against itself of a voice whose trumpet notes have rung out over so many well-fought fields of reform, and at whose summons the best spirits of our father-land are still glad to gather.
[Loud cheers.] It was an Irish character in one of Lever's novels, I believe, who first proclaimed that “he had rather, at any time, knock a man down, than argue with him;” but the preference seems to have found now admirers off of the
Green Isle.
[Cheers.] I am not sure,
Mr. Chairman, that we are correct, after all, in ascribing all this indignation in the city to the fear of national rebuke at the hands of
Mr. Thompson.
I am afraid it was no such honorable sentiment as the dread of being held up to the gaze of other nations, “a mildewed ear blasting our wholesome brothers;” of having painted to us--
the exulting tyrant's sneer
Borne to us from the old world's thrones,
And all their grief, who, pining, hear,
In sunless mines and dungeons drear,
How Freedom's land her faith disowns!
I fear we must trace it to a baser origin.
These are the hurricane months of American politics.
Every day
