“I have heard of crimes which betoken greater pravity of heart, but never have I heard or read of an act more flagitious in its open defiance of sacred rights, in its ruthless disregard of all humane sentiment and shameless violation of decency and order. We shall form a more just conception of the outrage by viewing it abstractedly from any interest we may feel in it as fellow-citizens of the parties concerned. Suppose we had read, among the items of recent transatlantic intelligence, that Count Buol, at the Peace Congress in Paris, offended by some expression of the Earl of Clarendon, had felled him to the ground with murderous blows. Imagine what a thrill of horror would have struck through the heart of Europe, and how the wrath of the nations would have chased the perpetrator of such an act from the face of the earth. Or suppose Mr. Hume, of the British Commons, had entered the House of Lords, and beaten Lord Brougham with a club until he was borne senseless from the spot. “With what confidence should we look to be advised by the next steamer that the culprit had been doomed to expiate his crime by the direst penalty which the laws of England have provided!--if, indeed, the English law has made any provision for such a case, and not rather, as the law of the Roman Commonwealth did the crime of parricide, left it unprovided for, as an impossible, unsupposable enormity. “One supposition more. Conceive the situation of the parties in the case before us reversed. Suppose Senator Butler, who has said severer things of Mr. Sumner than Mr. Sumner of him, to have been the victim, and some member from Massachusetts, perhaps a far-away cousin of Mr. Sumner, to have been the aggressor. Does any one here present imagine that the ‘gallant relative’ in that case would be going about unmolested on a paltry bail of five hundred dollars? If the trusty bowie-knife or omnipresent revolver of Southern chivalry did not otherwise dispose of him, does any one doubt that the summary and prompt vengeance of Congress and the law would have been demanded by one side and conceded by the other?” Here is a brief extract from the speech of Rev. Dr. Wayland.