From Mr. Charles Sumner's eulogy on Abraham Lincoln, delivered in Boston, we make the following extracts which, with the speech alluded to, might be made use of by the people in answer to the authorities quoted by the antiquated Minister of Foreign Affairs and his colleagues, which we be so unfortunate as to be plunged into another Constitutional Convention. The speech mentioned was made during his great contest with the Hon. S.A. Douglas:
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But the topic to which the future President returned with the most frequency, and to which he clung with all the grasp of his soul, was the practical character of the Declaration of Independence in announcing the Liberty and Equality of all men. These were no idle words, but substantial truth binding on the conscience of mankind. I know not if this grand pertinacity has been noticed before; but I deem it my duty to say, that to my mind it s by far the most important of that controversy, and one of the most interesting in the biography of the speaker. The words which he then uttered live, after him, and nobody can hear of that championship without feeling a new motive to fidelity in the cause of Liberty and Equality.
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He finished his speech on this occasion by saying:
"I leave you, hoping that the lamp of Liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal."
He has left us now, and for the last time, and I catch the closing benediction of that speech, already sounding through the ages, like a choral harmony.
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