While advocating at this time, as ever afterwards, the utmost liberty of discussion, he stated his creed in these words: “There is nothing so safe in a free country as _free discussion_, nothing so dangerous as the suppression of it; _peace_ and _liberty of speech_, _violence_ and _intolerance_, respectively go together.” He argued and advised in a lengthy paper against “the usual unfortunate concomitants of controversy, bitterness, railing, unfairness, and exaggerated prejudices. “We have not the least objection to the most unbounded ardor of expression, to the most enthusiastic convictions, expressed in the most positive manner, so long as they relate to _truths_ or _principles_. But when the propagandist comes to regard those who do not receive his views as devoid of all principle and necessarily dishonest, and becomes offensively personal, then controversy is morbid and mischievous. And as nothing gives such vigor to like or dislike as conscience, so they who profess to be conscientious are often conscientiously bitter. There is no revulsion against men or measures so violent as that of pure and honorable men. A man consciously right should watch against severe judgments of others. It is sad and curious to observe the progress of exaggerated impressions of personal character. Those who do not follow our conscience on the slavery question are often, nevertheless, on the whole, more conscientious men than we. Those whose reasonings we pronounce cold and inhuman are not cold or inhuman men. Those whose commercial interests reduce them, as it seems to us, to a policy on this particular question which outrages justice and rectitude, are in their private character most estimable for truth, and even for tender sympathy. Indeed, this is often shown in strange contrast; for the very men who give their counsel and zeal and money against the unseen slave _of the South_ irresistibly pity the particular fugitive whom they may _see_ running through the North. They give the Union Committee money to catch the slave, and give the slave money to escape from the Committee.” All who were acquainted with Mr. Beecher know that the course he advised for others he persistently and conscientiously pursued himself. We doubt if any man ever lived who was engaged in so many severe battles and carried into them or brought from them so little bitterness.