Throughout that terrible night I find nothing to regret but this, that, within the limits of our country, civil authority should have been so prostrated as to oblige a citizen to arm in his own defence, and to arm in vain.  The gentleman says Lovejoy was presumptuous and imprudent—­he “died as the fool dieth.”  And a reverend clergyman of the city tells us that no citizen has a right to publish opinions disagreeable to the community!  If any mob follows such publication, on him rests its guilt.  He must wait, forsooth, till the people come up to it and agree with him!  This libel on liberty goes on to say that the want of right to speak as we think is an evil inseparable from republican institutions!  If this be so, what are they worth?  Welcome the despotism of the Sultan, where one knows what he may publish and what he may not, rather than the tyranny of this many-headed monster, the mob, where we know not what we may do or say, till some fellow-citizen has tried it, and paid for the lesson with his life.  This clerical absurdity chooses as a check for the abuses of the press, not the law, but the dread of a mob.  By so doing, it deprives not only the individual and the minority of their rights, but the majority also, since the expression of their opinion may sometime provoke disturbances from the minority.  A few men may make a mob as well as many.  The majority then, have no right, as Christian men, to utter their sentiments, if by any possibility it may lead to a mob!  Shades of Hugh Peters and John Cotton, save us from such pulpits!

Imprudent to defend the liberty of the press!  Why?  Because the defence was unsuccessful?  Does success gild crime into patriotism, and the want of it change heroic self-devotion to imprudence?  Was Hampden imprudent when he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard?  Yet he, judged by that single hour, was unsuccessful.  After a short exile, the race he hated sat again upon the throne.

Imagine yourself present when the first news of Bunker Hill battle reached a New England town.  The tale would have run thus:  “The patriots are routed,—­the redcoats victorious, Warren lies dead upon the field.”  With what scorn would that Tory have been received, who should have charged Warren with imprudence! who should have said that, bred a physician, he was “out of place” in that battle, and “died as the fool dieth.”  How would the intimation have been received, that Warren and his associates should have merited a better time?  But if success be indeed the only criterion of prudence, Respice finem,—­wait till the end!

Presumptuous to assert the freedom of the press on American ground!  Is the assertion of such freedom before the age?  So much before the age as to leave one no right to make it because it displeases the community?  Who invents this libel on his country?  It is this very thing which entitles Lovejoy to greater praise.  The disputed right which provoked the Revolution—­taxation