We are not here to stand forward and say, ‘I am holier than thou.’  We have confessed, and that openly, and freely, and unreservedly, our share, our heavy share, in by-gone days, of vast wickedness; we have, we declare it again, and we had our deep remorse.  We sympathize with the preponderating bulk of the American people; we acknowledge and we feel the difficulties which beset them; we rejoice and we believe in their good intentions; but we have no patience—­I at least have none—­with those professed leaders, be they political or be they clerical, who mislead the people—­with those who, blasphemously resting slavery on the Holy Scriptures, desecrate their pulpits by the promulgation of doctrines better suited to the synagogue of Satan—­[cheers]—­nor with that gentleman who, the greatest officer of the greatest republic in the whole world, in pronouncing an inaugural address to the assembled multitudes, maintains the institution of slavery; and—­will you believe it?—­invokes the Almighty God to maintain those rights, and thus sanction the violation of his own laws!—­[Cries of ‘Shame!’] This is, indeed, a dismal prospect for those who tremble at human power; but we have this consolation:  Is it not said that, ’When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him?’ [Hear, hear!] He has done so now, and a most wonderful and almost inspired protector has arisen for the suffering of this much injured race. [Loud cheers.] Feeble as her sex, but irresistible as virtue and as truth, she will prove to her adversary, and to ours, that such boasting shall not be for his honor, ’for the Lord will sell Sisera into the hands of a woman.’ [Hear, hear! and loud cheers.] Now, I ask you this:  Is there one of you who believes that the statements of that marvellous book to which we have alluded present an exaggerated picture?—­[Tremendous cries of ‘No, no.’] Do they not know, say what they will, that the truth is not fully stated? [Hear, hear!] The reality is worse than the fiction. [Hear, hear!] But, apart from this, there is our solemn declaration that the vileness of the principle is at once exhibited in the mere notion of slavery, and the atrocities of it are the natural and almost inevitable consequences of the profession and exercise of absolute and irresponsible power. [Hear, hear!] But do you doubt the fact?  Look to the document.  I will quote to you from this book.  I have never read any thing more strikingly illustrative or condemnatory of the system we are here to denounce.  Here is the judgment pronounced by one of the judges in North Carolina.  It is impossible to read this judgment, however terrible the conclusion, without feeling convinced that the man who pronounced it was a man of a great mind, and, in spite of the law he was bound to administer, a man of a great heart. [Hear, hear!] Hear what he says.  The case was this:  It was a ‘case of appeal,’ in which the defendant had hired a slave woman for