[By this time, the uproar in the Hall had risen so high that the speech was suspended for a short time.  Applause and counter applause, cries of “Take that back,” “Make him take back recreant,” “He sha’n’t go on till he takes it back,” and counter cries of “Phillips or nobody,” continued until the pleadings of well-known citizens had somewhat restored order, when Mr. Phillips resumed.]

Fellow citizens, I cannot take back my words.  Surely the Attorney-General, so long and so well known here, needs not the aid of your hisses against one so young as I am—­my voice never before heard within these walls!

* * * * *

I must find some fault with the statement which has been made of the events at Alton.  It has been asked why Lovejoy and his friends did not appeal to the executive—­trust their defence to the police of the city?  It has been hinted that, from hasty and ill-judged excitement, the men within the building provoked a quarrel, and that he fell in the course of it, one mob resisting another.  Recollect, sir, that they did act with the approbation and sanction of the Mayor.  In strict truth, there was no executive to appeal to for protection.  The Mayor acknowledged that he could not protect them.  They asked him if it was lawful for them to defend themselves.  He told them it was, and sanctioned their assembling in arms to do so.  They were not, then, a mob; they were not merely citizens defending their own property; they were in some sense the posse comitatus, adopted for the occasion into the police of the city, acting under the order of a magistrate.  It was civil authority resisting lawless violence.  Where, then, was the imprudence?  Is the doctrine to be sustained here that it is imprudent for men to aid magistrates in executing the laws?

Men are continually asking each other, Had Lovejoy a right to resist?  Sir, I protest against the question instead of answering it.  Lovejoy did not resist, in the sense they mean.  He did not throw himself back on the natural right of self-defence.  He did not cry anarchy, and let slip the dogs of civil war, careless of the horrors which would follow.  Sir, as I understand this affair, it was not an individual protecting his property; it was not one body of armed men resisting another, and making the streets of a peaceful city run blood with their contentions.  It did not bring back the scenes in some old Italian cities, where family met family, and faction met faction, and mutually trampled the laws under foot.  No! the men in that house were regularly enrolled, under the sanction of the Mayor.  There being no militia in Alton, about seventy men were enrolled with the approbation of the Mayor.  These relieved each other every other night.  About thirty men were in arms on the night of the sixth, when the press was landed.  The next evening, it was not thought necessary to summon more than half that number; among these was Lovejoy.  It was, therefore, you perceive, sir, the police of the city resisting rioters—­civil government breasting itself to the shock of lawless men.