But only last year I saw with astonishment what purported to be
a letter of a very distinguished and influential clergyman of Virginia,
copied, with apparent approbation, into a St. Louis newspaper, containing
the following to me very unsatisfactory language:
"I am fully aware that there is a text in some Bibles that is not in
mine. Professional abolitionists have made more use of it than of any
passage in the Bible. It came, however, as I trace it, from Saint
Voltaire, and was baptized by Thomas Jefferson, and since almost
universally regarded as canonical authority`All men are born free and
equal.'
"This is a genuine coin in the political currency of our generation. I am
sorry to say that I have never seen two men of whom it is true. But I
must admit I never saw the Siamese Twins, and therefore will not
dogmatically say that no man ever saw a proof of this sage aphorism."
This sounds strangely in republican America. The like was not heard in
the fresher days of the republic. Let us contrast with it the language of
that truly national man whose life and death we now commemorate and
lament: I quote from a speech of Mr. Clay delivered before the American
Colonization Society in 1827:
"We are reproached with doing mischief by the agitation of this
question.
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