Page:Speeches of Carl Schurz (IA speechesofcarlsc00schu).pdf/242

232 forbidden fruit unexamined. But we are inclined to become rather fastidious at a dinner-table to which we sit down every day.

I may boast of some little experience in this matter. A good joke may draw a laugh, a pretty figure or brilliant illustration may bring down a house, a pathetic appeal to the tender sympathies of human nature may draw tears from the eyes of an audience—but in this country it requires a strong array of facts and solid argument to change their convictions. Mere eloquence may tickle their senses and move their hearts, but mere eloquence is not sufficient to reach their minds—for their minds are not always accessible even through their hearts. Thus the dangers connected with the freedom of speech decrease in the same measure as it is more extensively exercised. The seductive powers of eloquence grow less, the more the people expose themselves to the seduction.

The people of this country ought certainly to be the last to speak of the dangerous influence of eloquence, for their history is full of examples which show that the highest oratory cannot move the popular mind from the ground of strong moral convictions. Eloquence has not seldom been more dangerous to those who possessed it, than to those upon whom it was destined to operate. New England had a favorite son, whose massive eloquence had more than once thrilled the heart of the nation. New England had been true to him as long as he was true to her. But once, on the 7th day of March, 1850, he spoke again, spoke with all that power which none but he possessed, spoke for a cause which the conscience of New England condemned—spoke himself to death—but the conscience of New England still lives. [Applause.]

If the greatest efforts of the thunderer of Massachusetts could not shake the moral convictions of the people, what chance have those who with the strength of their