We have, this very afternoon, heard bitter denunciations of Brooks in Washington, and Titus, Stringfellow, Atchison, Jones, and Shannon in Kansas—­the battle-ground of slavery.  I certainly am not going to advocate or shield them; but they and their acts are but the necessary outcome of the Nebraska law.  We should reserve our highest censure for the authors of the mischief, and not for the catspaws which they use.  I believe it was Shakespeare who said, “Where the offence lies, there let the axe fall;” and, in my opinion, this man Douglas and the Northern men in Congress who advocate “Nebraska” are more guilty than a thousand Joneses and Stringfellows, with all their murderous practices, can be. [Applause.]

We have made a good beginning here to-day.  As our Methodist friends would say, “I feel it is good to be here.”  While extremists may find some fault with the moderation of our platform, they should recollect that “the battle is not always to the strong, nor the race to the swift.”  In grave emergencies, moderation is generally safer than radicalism:  and as this struggle is likely to be long and earnest, we must not, by our action, repel any who are in sympathy with us in the main, but rather win all that we can to our standard.  We must not belittle nor overlook the facts of our condition—­that we are new and comparatively weak, while our enemies are entrenched and relatively strong.  They have the administration and the political power; and, right or wrong, at present they have the numbers.  Our friends who urge an appeal to arms with so much force and eloquence, should recollect that the government is arrayed against us, and that the numbers are now arrayed against us as well; or, to state it nearer to the truth, they are not yet expressly and affirmatively for us; and we should repel friends rather than gain them by anything savouring of revolutionary methods.  As it now stands, we must appeal to the sober sense and patriotism of the people.  We will make converts day by day; we will grow strong by calmness and moderation; we will grow strong by the violence and injustice of our adversaries.  And, unless truth be a mockery and justice a hollow lie, we will be in the majority after a while, and then the revolution which we will accomplish will be none the less radical from being the result of pacific measures.  The battle of freedom is to be fought out on principle.  Slavery is a violation of the eternal right.  We have temporized with it from the necessities of our condition; but as sure as God reigns and school children read, THAT BLACK FOUL LIE CAN NEVER BE CONSECRATED INTO GOD’S HALLOWED TRUTH! [Immense applause lasting some time.] One of our greatest difficulties is, that men who know that slavery is a detestable crime and ruinous to the nation, are compelled, by our peculiar condition and other circumstances, to advocate it concretely, though damning it in the raw.  Henry Clay was a brilliant example of this tendency; others