Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/79

 6S Aiiti-Slaveiy and Reform Papers.

of this word is a mere trope with most who persist in using it, and I have no doubt that many of the rest have alreadv in silence retracted their words.

Eead his admirable answers to Mason and others.

How they are dwarfed and defeated by the contrast ! On the one side, half-brutish, half-timid questioning ; on the other, truth, clear as lightning, crashing into their obscene temples. 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 {q'n casual remarks of crazy John Brown, on the floor of the Har- per's Ferry engine house, — that man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not to repre- sent joii 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 con- stituents ? 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 oppres- sor. Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharpens rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech, — a Sharpens rifle of infinitely surer and longer range.