Because I differ from you on that vital point, what is your
platform resource? Instantly to turn upon me, charging that I have
no sense of the enormity of the crime itself, but am its aider and
abettor! So, another time--taking me as representing your opponent
in other cases--you set up a platform credulity; a moved and
seconded and carried-unanimously profession of faith in some
ridiculous delusion or mischievous imposition. I decline to
believe it, and you fall back upon your platform resource of
proclaiming that I believe nothing; that because I will not bow
down to a false God of your making, I deny the true God! Another
time you make the platform discovery that War is a calamity, and
you propose to abolish it by a string of twisted resolutions tossed
into the air like the tail of a kite. I do not admit the discovery
to be yours in the least, and I have not a grain of faith in your
remedy. Again, your platform resource of representing me as
revelling in the horrors of a battle-field like a fiend incarnate!
Another time, in another of your undiscriminating platform rushes,
you would punish the sober for the drunken. I claim consideration
for the comfort, convenience, and refreshment of the sober; and you
presently make platform proclamation that I have a depraved desire
to turn Heaven's creatures into swine and wild beasts! In all such
cases your movers, and your seconders, and your supporters --your
regular Professors of all degrees, run amuck like so many mad
Malays; habitually attributing the lowest and basest motives with
the utmost recklessness (let me call your attention to a recent
instance in yourself for which you should blush), and quoting
figures which you know to be as wilfully onesided as a statement of
any complicated account that should be all Creditor side and no
Debtor, or all Debtor side and no Creditor.
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