I do not
wish, it happens, to be associated with Massachusetts, either in
holding slaves or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better
than herself in these respects. - As for Massachusetts, that huge
she Briareus, Argus and Colchian Dragon conjoined, set to watch
the Heifer of the Constitution and the Golden Fleece, we would
not warrant our respect for her, like some compositions, to
preserve its qualities through all weathers. - Thus it has
happened, that not the Arch Fiend himself has been in my way, but
these toils which tradition says were originally spun to obstruct
him. They are cobwebs and trifling obstacles in an earnest man's
path, it is true, and at length one even becomes attached to his
unswept and undusted garret. I love man - kind, but I hate the
institutions of the dead un-kind. Men execute nothing so
faithfully as the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and
letter. _They_ rule this world, and the living are but their
executors. Such foundation too have our lectures and our
sermons, commonly. They are all _Dudleian;_ and piety derives
its origin still from that exploit of _pius Aeneas_, who bore his
father, Anchises, on his shoulders from the ruins of Troy. Or
rather, like some Indian tribes, we bear about with us the
mouldering relics of our ancestors on our shoulders. If, for
instance, a man asserts the value of individual liberty over the
merely political commonweal, his neighbor still tolerates him,
that he who is _living near_ him, sometimes even sustains him,
but never the State.
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