Your first juvenile lance
was broken against that giant. I think you were even the first who
attacked the grim phantom. You have an exceedingly good understanding,
very good humor, and the best heart in the world. The dictates of that
temper and that heart, as well as the policy pointed out by that
understanding, led you to abhor the old code. You abhorred it, as I did,
for its vicious perfection. For I must do it justice: it was a complete
system, full of coherence and consistency, well digested and well
composed in all its parts. It was a machine of wise and elaborate
contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and
degradation of a people, and the debasement, in them, of human nature
itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man. It is a
thing humiliating enough, that we are doubtful of the effect of the
medicines we compound,--we are sure of our poisons. My opinion ever was,
(in which I heartily agree with those that admired the old code,) that
it was so constructed, that, if there was once a breach in any essential
part of it, the ruin of the whole, or nearly of the whole, was, at some
time or other, a certainty.
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