“It appears that in the State of Massachusetts public views are divided as to the means to be employed for joining the pieces of the American Union. The most violent, represented by Senator Sumner, preach war to the knife, and the emancipation of the blacks. They propose to give liberty to all the slaves in the Union, with indemnities to loyalists only. Thus, then, if we are to believe Senator Sumner, the surest way of establishing peace in North America will be to let loose several millions of blacks, and incite them to murder and incendiarism.” On the other hand, in France was the testimony of Count Agénor de Gasparin, noble friend of the national cause, who, in a powerful work, cited the speech at Worcester, and adopted its conclusion,[199]--also of M. Édouard Laboulaye, who, at a later day, when presiding over the Antislavery Conference at Paris, surrounded by the Abolitionists of all countries, paid a flattering tribute to Mr. Sumner, winding up with allusion to this speech:-- “Charles Sumner, a man who in his turn took up this cause and defended it with the most admirable eloquence, which, as you probably all know, was the occasion of his being nearly killed in his place in the Senate,--an act for which the assassin was rewarded by his Southern friends. They gave him a cane, gold-mounted, bearing the inscription, ‘_Hit him again._’ Mr. Sumner came to France, and we made his acquaintance at that time. The object of his journey was the reëstablishment of his health,--and he recovered it; for he it was, who, during the whole of the war, was the real adviser of America: he felt, and he said, more boldly than any one, that the war could be terminated only by the Abolition of Slavery.”[200] The position accorded to Mr. Sumner in Europe, beginning especially with this speech, was attested at a still later day in an article by M. Michel Chevalier, a Senator of France under the Empire, renowned for various writings, especially in Political Economy. In a sympathetic review of the address on the “Duel between France and Germany,” this authority thus expresses himself:--