In allusion to the speech of the attorney general he said: "_Imprudent!_ to defend the liberty of the press! Why? Because the defence was unsuccessful! Does success gild crime into patriotism and the want of it change heroic self-devotion into imprudence? Was Hampden imprudent when he drew the sword and threw away the scabbard? Yet he, judged by that single hour, was unsuccessful. After a short exile the race he hated sat again upon the throne. "Imagine yourselves present when the first news of Bunker Hill battle reached a New England town. The tale would have run thus: 'The patriots are routed--the red coats victorious--Warren lies dead upon the field.' With what scorn would that Tory have been received who should have charged Warren with imprudence, who should have said that 'bred a physician, he was out of place, and died as the fool dieth.' How would the intimation have been received that Warren and his successors should have waited a better time?' "_Presumptuous!_ to assert the freedom of the press on American ground! Is the assertion of such freedom before the age? So much before the age as to leave no one a right to make it because it displeases the community? Who invented this libel on his country? It is this very thing which entitled Lovejoy to greater praise. The disputed right which provoked the revolution was far beneath that for which he died. (Here was a strong and general expression of disapprobation.) One word, gentlemen. As much as thought is better than money, so much is the cause in which Lovejoy died nobler than a mere question of taxes. James Otis thundered in this hall when the King did but touch his _pocket_. Imagine if you can, his indignant eloquence if England had offered to put a gag on his lips. Mr. Chairman, from the bottom of my heart I thank that brave little band at Alton for resisting. We must remember that Lovejoy had fled from city to city--suffering the destruction of three printing presses patiently. At length he took counsel with friends, men of character, of tried integrity, of wide views of Christian principle. They thought the crisis had come--that it was full time to assert the laws. They saw around them, not a community like our own, of fixed habits and character, but one in the gristle, not yet hardened in the bone of manhood. The people there, children of our older States, seem to have forgotten the blood-tried principles of their fathers, the moment they lost sight of New England hills. Something was to be done to show them the priceless value of freedom of the press, to bring back and set right their wandering and confused ideas. He and his advisers looked on a community, struggling like a drunken man, indifferent to their rights and confused in their feelings. Deaf to argument, haply they might be stunned into sobriety. They saw that of which we cannot judge, the _necessity_ of resistance. Insulted law called for it. Public opinion, fast hastening on the downward course, must be arrested.