maker, with it, like the dirt- bug and its ball.

  Recent events will be valuable as a criticism on the
administration of justice in our midst, or, rather, as showing what
are the true resources of justice in any community. It has come to
this, that the friends of liberty, the friends of the slave, have
shuddered when they have understood that his fate was left to the
legal tribunals of the country to be decided. Free men have no faith
that justice will be awarded in such a case. The judge may decide this
way or that; it is a kind of accident, at best. It is evident that
he is not a competent authority in so important a case. It is no time,
then, to be judging according to his precedents, but to establish a
precedent for the future. I would much rather trust to the sentiment
of the people. In their vote you would get something of some value, at
least, however small; but in the other case, only the trammeled
judgment of an individual, of no significance, be it which way it
might.

  It is to some extent fatal to the courts, when the people are
compelled to go behind them. I do not wish to believe that the
courts were made for fair weather, and for very civil cases merely;
but think of leaving it to any court in the land to decide whether
more than three millions of people, in this case a sixth part of a
nation, have a right to be freemen or not! But it has been left to the
courts of justice, so called- to the Supreme Court of the land- and,
as you all know, recognizing no authority but the Constitution, it has
decided that the three millions are and shall continue to be slaves.
Such judges as these are merely the inspectors of a pick-lock and
murderer's tools, to tell him whether they are in working order or
not, and there they think that their responsibility ends. There was
a prior case on the docket, which they, as judges appointed by God,
had no right to skip; which having been justly settled, they would
have been saved from this humiliation. It was the case of the murderer
himself.

  The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the
law free. They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law
when the government breaks it.

  Among human beings, the judge whose words seal the fate of a man
furthest into eternity is not he who merely pronounces the verdict
of the law, but he, whoever he may be, who, from a love of truth,
and unprejudiced by any custom or enactment of men, utters a true
opinion or sentence concerning him. He it is that sentences him.
Whoever can discern truth has received his commission from a higher
source than the chiefest justice in the world who can discern only
law. He finds himself constituted judge of the judge. Strange that
it should be necessary to state such simple truths!

  I am more and more convinced that, with reference to any public
question, it is more important to know what the country thinks of it
than what the city thinks. The city does not think much. On any
moral question, I would rather have the opinion of Boxboro' than of
Boston and New York put together. When the former speaks, I feel as if
somebody had spoken, as if humanity was yet, and a reasonable being
had asserted its rights- as if some unprejudiced men among the
country's hills had at length turned their attention to the subject,
and by a few sensible words redeemed the reputation of the race. When,
in some obscure country town, the farmers come together to a special
town-meeting, to express their opinion on some subject which is vexing
the land, that, I think, is the true Congress, and the most
respectable one that is ever assembled in the United States.

  It is evident that there are, in this Commonwealth at least, two
parties, becoming more and more distinct- the party of the city, and
the party of the country. I know that the country is mean enough,
but I am glad to believe that there is a slight difference in her
favor. But as yet she has few, if any organs, through which to express
herself. The editorials which she reads, like the news, come from
the seaboard. Let us, the inhabitants of the country, cultivate
self-respect. Let us not send to the city for aught more essential
than our broadcloths and groceries; or, if we read the opinions of the
city, let us entertain opinions of our own.

   Among measures to be adopted, I would suggest to make as earnest
and vigorous an assault on the press as has already been made, and
with effect, on the church. The church has much improved within a
few years; but the press is, almost without exception, corrupt. I
believe that in this country the press exerts a greater and a more
pernicious influence than the church did in its worst period. We are
not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do
not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaper. At any
meeting of politicians- like that at Concord the other evening, for
instance- how impertinent it would be to quote from the Bible! how
pertinent to quote from a newspaper or from the Constitution! The
newspaper is a Bible which we read every morning and every
afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a Bible
which every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table and
counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are
continually dispersing. It is, in short, the only book which America
has printed and which America reads. So wide is its influence. The
editor is a preacher whom you voluntarily support. Your tax is
commonly one cent daily, and it costs nothing for pew hire. But how
many of these preachers preach the truth? I repeat the testimony of
many an intelligent foreigner, as well as my own convictions, when I
say, that probably no country was ever rubled by so mean a class of
tyrants as, with a few noble exceptions, are the editors of the
periodical press in this country. And as they live and rule only by
their servility, and appealing to the worse, and not the better,
nature of man, the people who read them are in the condition of the