Why?  Am I not standing on the banks of the Mississippi, cheered, welcomed, and supported, as warmly and as heartily as when I stepped first upon your glorious shores?  Opposition, hostility, venomous calumny, have exhausted all means to check the sympathy of the people.  And has that sympathy subsided? has it abated? is it checked?  No, it rolls on swelling as I advance—­here I have again an imposing evidence before my eyes, here in St. Louis, my namesake city, where so much, and that so perseveringly, was done to prevent this evidence.

Yes, it rolls, and will roll on, swelling till it will finally submerge all endeavours to mislead the instincts of freemen, to fetter the energies of the nation, to stifle its spirit, and to check the growing aspirations of the people’s upright heart.

When the struggle is about principles, indifference is suicide.  Nay, indifference is impossible:  for indifference about the fate of that principle upon which your national existence and all your future rests—­is passive submission to the opposite principle—­it is almost equivalent to an alliance with the despots. He who is not for freedom is against freedom.  There is no third choice.

The people’s instinct feels the danger of losing an irreparable opportunity, and hence the fact, never yet met in history, that a homeless exile becomes an object of such sympathy, rolling on like a sea, in spite of all the passionate rage of my enemies, and all the Christian tolerance of the Reverend Father Jesuits, which they in such an evident manner show to me.  It is time to advertise them by a few remarks that I am aware of their hostility, and ready to meet it openly.  I make this advertisement by design here, because it is not my custom to attack from behind or in the dark.  Mine is not the famous doctrine, that the end sanctifies the means.  I like to meet the enemy face to face—­a fair field and fair arms.

And in one thing more I will not imitate my reverend opponents.  I will never indulge in any personalities, never act otherwise than becoming to a gentleman.  If they choose to pursue a different course, let them do so, and let them earn the fruits of it.

My humble person I entirely submit to the good pleasure of their passion.  If they tell you, gentlemen, that I am no great man, they speak the truth.  Being on good terms with my conscience, I do not much care to be on bad terms with Czars and Emperors, their obedient servants, and the reverend father Jesuits.  Nay, if I were on good terms with them, I scarcely could remain on good terms with my conscience.  So much for myself—­now a few words as to the question between us.