These noble-hearted men whom I have named must surely have found quite irksome the constant practice of what Dr. Gardiner used to call “that despicable virtue, prudence.”  One would have thought, when they heard that name spoken with contempt, their ready eloquence would have leaped from its scabbard to avenge even a word that threatened him with insult.  But it never came—­never!  I do not say I blame them.  Perhaps they thought they should serve the cause better by drawing a broad black line between themselves and him.  Perhaps they thought the Devil could be cheated:  I do not!

* * * * *

Caution is not always good policy in a cause like ours.  It is said that, when Napoleon saw the day going against him, he used to throw away all the rules of war, and trust himself to the hot impetuosity of his soldiers.  The masses are governed more by impulse than conviction, and even were it not so, the convictions of most men are on our side, and this will surely appear, if we can only pierce the crust of their prejudice or indifference.  I observe that our Free Soil friends never stir their audience so deeply as when some individual leaps beyond the platform, and strikes upon the very heart of the people.  Men listen to discussions of laws and tactics with ominous patience.  It is when Mr. Sumner, in Faneuil Hall, avows his determination to disobey the Fugitive Slave Law, and cries out:  “I was a man before I was a Commissioner,”—­when Mr. Giddings says of the fall of slavery, quoting Adams:  “Let it come.  If it must come in blood, yet I say let it come!”—­that their associates on the platform are sure they are wrecking the party,—­while many a heart beneath beats its first pulse of anti-slavery life.

These are brave words.  When I compare them with the general tone of Free Soil men in Congress, I distrust the atmosphere of Washington and of politics.  These men move about, Sauls and Goliaths among us, taller by many a cubit.  There they lose port and stature.  Mr. Sumner’s speech in the Senate unsays no part of his Faneuil Hall pledge.  But, though discussing the same topic, no one would gather from any word or argument that the speaker ever took such ground as he did in Faneuil Hall.  It is all through, the law, the manner of the surrender, not the surrender itself, of the slave, that he objects to.  As my friend Mr. Pillsbury so forcibly says, so far as any thing in the speech shows, he puts the slave behind the jury trial, behind the habeas corpus act, and behind the new interpretation of the Constitution, and says to the slave claimant:  “You must get through all these before you reach him; but, if you can get through all these, you may have him!” It was no tone like this which made the old Hall rock!  Not if he got through twelve jury trials, and forty habeas corpus acts, and constitutions built high as yonder monument, would he permit so much as the shadow of a little finger of the slave claimant to touch the slave!  At least so he was understood. * * *