They are made to stand with
Pilate, and Gesler, and the Inquisition. How ineffectual their
speech and action! and what a void their silence! They are but
helpless tools in this great work. It was no human power that
gathered them about this preacher.
What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives
to Congress for, of late years?--to declare with effect what kind of
sentiments? All their speeches put together and boiled down,--and
probably they themselves will confess it,--do not match for
manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual
remarks of crazy John Brown, on the floor of the Harper's Ferry
engine-house,--that man whom you are about to hang, to send to
the other world, though not to represent you there. No, he was not
our representative in any sense. He was too fair a specimen of a
man to represent the like of us. Who, then, were his constituents?
If you read his words understandingly you will find out. In his
case there is no idle eloquence, no made, nor maiden speech, no
compliments to the oppressor. Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness
the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharpe's
rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech,--a Sharpe's rifle
of infinitely surer and longer range.
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