“Leaving, therefore, all considerations of personal interest, personal feeling, and personal safety; leaving even the peace of mind of a numerous and most affectionate family wholly out of view, I have reasoned thus with myself: What is now left to be done? We have urged our claims with so much truth; we have established them so clearly on the ground of both law and reason, that there is no answer to us to be found other than that of a suspension of our personal safety. If I still write in support of those claims, I must be blind not to see that a dungeon is my doom. If I write at all, and do not write in support of those claims, I not only degrade myself, but I do a great injury to the rights of the nation by appearing to abandon them. If I remain here, I must, therefore, _cease to write_, either from compulsion, or from a sense of duty to my countrymen; therefore it is impossible to do any good to the cause of my country by remaining in it; but, if I remove to a country where I can write with perfect freedom, it is not only _possible_, but very _probable_, that I shall, sooner or later, be able to render that cause important and lasting services. “Upon this conclusion it is, that I have made my determination; for, though life would be scarcely worth preserving, with the consciousness that I walked about my fields or slept in my bed merely at the mercy of a Secretary of State; though, under such circumstances, neither the song of the birds in spring, nor the well-strawed homestead in winter could make me forget that I and my rising family were slaves, still there is something so powerful in the thought of country and neighbourhood, and home and friends, there is something so strong in the numerous and united ties with which these and endless other objects fasten the mind to a long-inhabited spot, that to tear oneself away nearly approaches to the separating the soul from the body. But then, on the other hand, I asked myself: ‘What! shall I submit in silence? Shall I be as dumb as one of my horses? Shall that indignation which burns within me be quenched? Shall I make no effort to preserve even the _chance_ of assisting to better the lot of my unhappy country? Shall that mind, which has communicated its light and warmth to millions of other minds, now be extinguished for ever; and shall those who, with thousands of pens at their command, still saw the tide of opinion rolling more and more heavily against them, now be ever secure from that pen, by the efforts of which they feared being overwhelmed? Shall truth never again be uttered? Shall her voice never be heard, even from a distant shore?’