But if the indifference to public affairs, which is now confined only to a class--only to a portion of the people--to too large a portion, indeed, but still only to a portion,--if it were to become general, if things were allowed to go on their way, without any interest taken in them by private persons, by those whose intelligence goes to create a commanding public opinion, then you would soon find your private interests, the comfort and lives of individuals, threatened and assailed. If your public affairs, as they are directed in your Public Councils, were uncontrolled by the sentiments of private men, they would soon be coming down into our streets and into our private dwellings with a most disastrous influence. They would make their appearance in the shape of armed men. They would be heard in the rattle of musketry and the roar of cannon; and the door-posts of the humblest and of the richest homes of the people might be spattered with the blood of inoffensive men, women, and children,--of the very persons who maintain that they have nothing to do with public matters. Already, well off as we may be in comparison with other nations, have not our public concerns, through the criminal neglect and insensibility of the people, taken such a direction as, if it does not put us in peril of having our blood spilt in the streets, yet endangers the sacred rights of Free Thought and Free Speech, and makes it hazardous to property and to personal liberty to obey the plainest dictates of humanity? There are things, as I have already intimated, which ought to be dearer to us than life, which may be exposed to suffer loss; and which are exposed to harm at this very hour by the bad administration of our public concerns. No doubt, these quiet people who have been so savagely butchered in the streets of Paris, little dreamed, when they left their homes that day, that they would be shot down as the enemies of the Government. They had nothing to do with the Government. They had no thought of crossing its path. They were pursuing the even tenor of their own quiet way. They desired only to mind their own business. And yet, had they been taking the most active interest in public affairs, they could not possibly have come to so miserable an end, as I will presently show.