For the honor of the country, therefore, at the present time, and for the cause of truth hereafter, it is important that the hideous features of that bill, which were then masked, should be now unmasked.

Those arguments have lost nothing of their weight by this enforced delay, and I have lost nothing of my right to present them.

Discussion has been denounced as agitation, and then it has been dictatorially proclaimed that “agitation must be put down.” Sir, humble as I am, I submit to no such dictation, come from what quarter or from what numbers it may.

If such a prohibition is intended to be laid upon me personally, I repel it.

If intended to silence me as the representative of the convictions and feelings of my constituents, I repel it all the more vehemently.

In this government, it is not tolerable for any man, however high, or for any body of men, however large, to prescribe what subjects may be agitated, and what may not be agitated.

Such prescription is at best but a species of lynch law against free speech.

It is as hateful as any other form of that execrable code; and I do but express the common sentiment of all generous minds, when I say that for one, I am all the more disposed to use my privilege of speech, when imperious men, and the…

In Italy, the pope decides what books may be read; in Austria, the emperor decides what books may be written; but we are more degraded than the subject of pontiff or Cæsar, if we are to be told what topics we may discuss.

If the subjects of a despotic government are bound to be jealous even of the poor privileges which they possess, how sensitive, how “tremblingly alive all o’er” ought we to be at these threatened encroachments upon freedom of speech and…

I think that those who say so much about recalling us to a sense of our constitutional obligations, would do well to remember, that the very first article of the amendments to the constitution secures the freedom of speech and the freedom…

By the common consent of this country, manifested in all forms for more than half a century, the old alien and sedition law has been condemned.

Has that law been condemned for fifty years in order to make our shame more conspicuous by its revival under circumstances of intolerable aggravation?

If it be just and heroic to rebel against all arbitrary invasions of free thought and free expression, then is it not proportionably base and dastardly to utter menaces, or threaten social or political disabilities for the unconstrained…

On the face of it, it must be a bad cause which will not bear discussion.

He convicts himself of wrong who refuses to hear the arguments of his opponent.

It seems as if, when a freeman debases his soul by lending himself to the defence of slavery, God punishes him on the spot by demoralizing his own nature with that spirit of tyranny which belongs to slavery.

Wherein consists the advantage of a republican government over a despotism, if the freedom of speech and of the press, which can be strangled in the one by arbitrary command, can be stifled in the other by obloquy and denunciation?

It is remarkable, too, that of all the “agitators” in the country, there are none more violent than those who are agitating against agitation.

Throughout the north, that portion of the public press which volunteers its influence to extend the domain of slavery, and to maintain it by extra-constitutional laws, is constantly provoking the agitation it denounces.

What are these so-called Union meetings in northern cities but an extensive apparatus of agitation,--a piece of machinery to manufacture and send abroad the very articles which its managers declare to be contraband?

In the most clamorous days of anti-slavery, there never was half so much said and written against the institution as is now said and written for it.

Is it not extraordinary, too, that this interdict on discussion should be applied to a subject which touches the highest interests of man, and calls into fervid action all the noblest faculties of his nature; which, more than any thing…

We may discuss the question of bank or sub-treasury, of tariff or free trade; but the only subject too sacred to be approached, is slavery and its aggrandizements.

This is a free country, except when a man wishes to vindicate the claims of freedom.