I soon
found out my mistake, but I did not feel at liberty to withdraw my
challenge. When I learned the infamous character of his personal
lectures, I declined all further correspondence with him till he should
retract his slanders; but still I did not feel free to say I would not
debate with him, if his friends should bring him to reasonable terms.
His friends in Halifax succeeded in doing so, and out of regard to the
wishes of my friends, I submitted to the temporary degradation of being
placed on the same platform with my unprincipled calumniator, and the
calumniator of the best, the wisest, and the greatest men of every age
and nation. I do not regret having done so.
"He will leave this discussion a sadder and a wiser man. He has found
that the power of insolence, and falsehood, and of vulgar, brutal wit,
has its bounds; that there are those whom they cannot abash or cow; that
the _might_ in moral encounters is with the _right_.
"I part with my opponent without malice, though without regret. If he
has natural characteristics which others have not, and lacks some higher
qualities which others have, the fault is not entirely his. He did not
make himself. Nor did he nurse, or rear, or train himself. He is the
production, and his character may, to a great extent, be the production,
of influences over which he had no control.
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