They are made to stand with
Pilate, and Gessler, 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 Sharp's rifles, while he
retained his faculty of speech- a Sharp's rifle of infinitely surer
and longer range.
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