# The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 06/Discourse 3

A SERMON
OF THE
DANGERS WHICH THREATEN THE RIGHTS OF MAN IN AMERICA.
Preached at the Music Hall, on Sunday, July 2, 1854.
"And He gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul."—Psalm cvi. 15.
Next Tuesday will be the seventy-eighth anniversary of American Independence. The day suggests a national subject as theme for meditation this morning. The condition of America makes it a dark and a sad meditation. I ask your attention, therefore, to a "Sermon of the Dangers which threaten the Rights of Man in America."
The human race is permanent as the Mississippi, and like that is fed from springs which never dry; but the several nations are as fleeting as its waves. In the great tide of humanity, States come up, one after the other, a wave or a bubble; each lasts its moment, then dies—passed off, forgot:
"Or like the snow-falls in the river,
A moment white—then melts for ever,"
while the great stream of humanity rolls ever forward, from time to eternity:—not a wave needless; not a snow flake, no drop of rain or dew, no ephemeral bubble, but has its function to perform in that vast, unmeasured, never-ending stream.
How powerless appears a single man! He is one of a thousand million men; the infinitesimal of a vulgar fraction; one leaf on a particular tree in the forest. A single nation, like America, is a considerable part of mankind now living; but when compared with the human race of all time, past and to come, it seems as nothing; it is but one ​ bough in the woods. Nay, the population of the earth, today, is but one tree in the wide primeval forest of mankind, which covers the earth and outlasts the ages. The leaf may fall and not be missed from the bough ; the branch may be rudely broken off, and its absence not marked; the tree will die and be succeeded by other trees in the forest, green with summer beauty, or foodful and prophetic with autumnal seed. Tree by tree, the woods will pass away, and, unobserved, another forest take its place,—arising, also, tree by tree.
How various the duration of States or men—dying at birth, or lasting long periods of time! For more than three thousand years, Egypt stood the queen of the world's young civilization, invincible as her own pyramids, which yet time and the nations alike respect. From Romulus, the first half-mythologic king of the seven-hilled city, to Augustulus, her last historic emperor, it is more than twelve centuries. At this day the Austrian, the Spanish, the French and German sovereigns sit each on a long-descended throne. Victoria is "daughter of a hundred kings." Pope Pius the Ninth claims two hundred and fifty-six predecessors, canonical and "infallible." His chair is reckoned more than eighteen hundred years old; and it rests on an Etrurian platform yet ten centuries more ancient. The Turkish throne has been firmly fixed at Constantinople for four hundred years. Individual tyrants, like summer flies, are short-lived; but tyranny is old and lasting. The family of ephemera, permanent amid the fleeting, is yet as old as that of elephants, and will last as long.
But free governments have commonly been brief. If the Hebrew people had well-nigh a thousand years of independent national life, their Commonwealth lasted but about three centuries; the flower of their literature and religion was but little longer. The historic period of Greece begins 776 b. c.; her independence was all over in six hundred and thirty years. The Roman deluge had swallowed it up. No Deucahon and Pyrrha could re-people the land with men. Her little States—how brief was their hour of freedom for the people 1 From the first annual archon of Athens to her conquest by Philip, and the death of her liberty, it was only two hundred and forty-five years! ​ Her tree of freedom grew In a narrow field of time and briefly bore its age-outlasting fruit of science, literature, and art. Now the tree is dead; its fragments are only curious Athenian stone. The Grecian colonies in the East, Ætolian, Dorian, Ionian—how fair they flourished in the despotic waste of Asia! how soon those liberal blossoms died! Even her colonies in the advancing West had no long independent life. Cyrene, Syracusa, Agrigentum, Crotona, Massilia Saguntum,—how soon they died!—flowers which the savage winter swiftly nipped.
The Roman Commonwealth could not endure five hundred years. Her theocratic Tarquin the Proud must be succeeded by a more despotic dictator, with the style of democrat; and Rome, abhorring still the name of king, see all her liberties laid low. The red sea of despotism opened to let pass one noble troop—the elder Brutus at the head, the younger bringing up the rear-then closed again and swallowed up that worse than Ægyptian host, clamouring only for "bread and games!"
The republics of Italy in the Middle Ages were no more fortunate. The half-Grecian Commonwealths, Naples, Amalphi, Gaëta,—what promise they once held forth; and w:hat a warning fate! They were only born to die. A similar destiny befell the towns of more northern Italy, where freedom later found a home,—Milan, Padua, Genoa, Verona, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Pisa. Nay, in the midnight of the dark ages, seven hundred years ago, in the very city of the Popes and Caesars, in the centre of that red Roman sea of despotism, there was a momentary spot of dry free land; and Amaldo da Brescia eloquently spoke of "Roman Liberty." The "Roman Republic" and "Roman Senate" became once more familiar words. Italian liberty, Lombard republics,—how soon they all went down! No city—not even Florence—kept the people's freedom safe three hundred years. Silently the wealthy nobles and despotic priests sapped the walls. Party spirit blinded the else clear eyes: "the State may perish; let the faction thrive." The republicans sought to crush the adjacent feeble States. They forgot justice, the higher law of God: unworthy of liberty, they fell and died! Let the tyrant swallow up the Italian towns; they were unfit for freedom. "A generous disdain of one man's will is to ​ republics what chastity is to woman;" they spumed this austere virtue. Let them serve their despots. "Liberty withdrew from a people who disgraced her name." Let Dante burn his poetic brand of infamy into the forehead of his countrymen. But while freedom lasted, how fair was her blossom, how rich and sweet her fruit! What riches, what beauty, what science, letters, art, came of that noble stock! Italy was the world's wonder—for a day; its sorrow ever since. So the cactus flowers into one gorgeous ecstasy of bloom; then the excessive blossom, with withering collapse, swoons and dies of its voluptuous and tropical delight.
Liberty wanders from the North, through Italy, the fairest of all earthly lands ; then sits sadly down on the tallest of the Alps, and once more reviews those famous towns; the jewels that adorn the purple robe of history—all tarnished, shattered, spoiled. Slowly she turns her face northward and longs for hope. But even the Teutonic towns, where freedom ever wore a sober dress, were only spots of sunshine in a day of wintry storm. Swiss, German, Dutch, they were brief as fair. In Novogorod and in Poland, how soon was Slavonian freedom lost! So in a winter day in the country have I seen a little frame of glass screening from the northern snow and ice a nicely sheltered spot, where careful hands tended little delicate plants, for beauty and for use. How fair the winter garden seemed amid the wildering snow, and else all-conquering frost! The little roses lifted up their face and kissed the glass which sheltered from the storm. But anon, some rude hand broke the frail barrier down, and in an hour the plants were frozen, stiff and dead; and the little garden was all filled with snow and ice;—a garden now no more!
How often do you see in a great city a man perish in his youth, bowed down by lusts of the body. The graves of such stand thick along the highway of our mortal life,—numberless, nameless, or all too conspicuously marked. Other men we see early bowed down by their ambition, and they live a life far worse than merely sensual death—themselves the ghastliest monuments, beacons of ruin! And so, along the highway that mankind treads, there are the open sepulchres of nations, which perished of their sin; ​ or else transformed to stone, the gloomy sphinxes sit there by the wayside—a hard, dread, awful lesson to the nations that pass by. Let America,
"The Heir of all the ages! and the youngest born of time!"
gather up every jewel which the prodigal scattered from his hand, look down into his grave, and then confront these gloomy, awful sphinxes, and learn what lessons of guidance they have; or of warning, if it alone is to be found! Even the sphinx has a riddle which we needs must learn, or else perish.
The greater part of a nation's life is not delight; it is discipline. A famous political philosopher, who has survived two revolutionary storms in France, has just now written, "God has made the condition of all men more severe than they are willing to believe. He causes them at all times to purchase the success of their labours and the progress of their destiny at a dearer price than they had anticipated."
The merchant knows how difficult it is to acquire a great estate; the scholar, youthful and impatient, well understands that the way of science or of letters is steep and hard to climb; the farmer, knowing the stern climate of New England, her niggard soil, rises early and retires late, and is never off his guard. These men all thrive. But, alas! the people of America do not know on what severe conditions alone national welfare is to be won. Human nature is yet only a New England soil and climate for freedom to grow in.
Nations may come to an end through the decay of the family they belong to; and thus they may die out of old age,—for there is an infancy, manhood, and old age to a nation as well as to a man. Then the nation comes to a natural end, and like a shock of corn fully ripe, in its season it is gathered to its people. But I do not find that any State has thus lived out its destiny, and died a natural death.
Again, States may perish by outward violence, military conquest,—for as the lion in the wilderness eateth up the wild ass, so the strong nations devour the weak. But this ​ happened most often in ancient times, when men and States were more rapacious even than now.
Thirdly, States may perish through their own vice, moral or political. Their national institutions may be a defective machine which works badly, and fails of producing national welfare of body or spirit. It may not secure national unity of action—there being no national gravitation of the great masses which fly asunder; or it may fail of individual variety of action — ^having no personal freedom; excessive national gravitation destroys individual cohesion, and pulls the people flat; the men are slaves; they cannot reach the moral and spiritual welfare necessary for a nation's continuous life. In both these cases the vice is political; the machinery is defective, made after false ideas. Or when the institutions are good and capable of accommodating the nation's increase and growth, the vice may be moral, lying deeper in the character of the people. They may have a false and unimprovable form of religion, which suits not the nature of man or of God, and which consequently produces a false system of morals, and so corrupts the nation's heart. They may become selfish, gross, cowardly, atheistic, and so decay inwardly and perish. If left all alone, such a people will rot down and die of internal corruption. Mexico is in a perishing condition to-day; so is Spain; so are some of the young nations of South America, and some of the old of Asia and Europe. Nothing can ever save Turkey,—not all the arms of all the allied West; and though Protestant and Catholic join hands, Christendom cannot propagate Mahometanism, nor keep it from going down.
Leave these nations to their fate and they will die. But commonly, they are not left to themselves; other people rush in and conquer. The wild individual man is rapacious by instinct. The present nations are rapacious also by calculation; they prey on feeble States. The hooded crow of Europe watches for the sickly sheep. In America the wolves prowl round the herd of buffaloes and seize the sickly, the wounded, and the old. And so there are scavengers of the nations,—fillibusters, the flesh-flies and carrion-vultures of the world, who have also their function to perform. Wealth and power are never left without occupants. Home was corrupt, her institutions ​ bad, her religion worn out, her morals desperate; northern nations came upon her. "Wheresoever the body is, thither the eagles will be gathered together."
In Europe there are nations in this state of decay, from moral or political vice. All the Italo-Greek populations, most of the Celto-Roman, all the Celtic, all the old Asiatic populations—the Hungarians and Turks. The Teutonic and Slavic families alone seem to prosper, full of vigorous, new life, capable of making new improvements, to suit the altered phases of the world.
In America there is only one family in a condition of advance, of hardy health. Spanish America is in a state of decay; she has a bad form of religion, and bad morals; her republics only "guarantee the right of assassination;" an empire is her freest state. But in the north of North America the Anglo-Saxon British colonies rapidly advance in material and spiritual development, and one day doubtless they will separate from the parent stem and become an independent tree. The roots of England run under the ocean; they come up in Africa, India, Australia, America, in many an island of all the seas. Great fresh, living trunks grow up therefrom. One day these offshoots will become self-supporting, with new and independent roots, and ere long will separate from the parent stem; then there will be a great Anglo-Saxon trunk in Australia, another in India, another in Africa, another in the north of our own continent, and yet others scattered over the manifold islands of the sea, an Anglo-Saxon forest of civilization.
But in the centre of the North American continent, the same Anglo-Saxons have passed from their first condition of scattered and dependent colonies, and become a united and independent nation, five-and-twenty millions strong. Our fellow-countrymen here in America compose one-fortieth part of all the inhabitants of the globe. We are now making the greatest political experiment which the sun ever looked down upon.
First, we are seeking to found a State on industry, and not war. All the prizes of America are rewards of toil, not fighting. We are ruled by the constable, not by the soldier. It is only in exceptional cases, when the liberal institutions of America are to be trodden under foot, that the constable disappears, and the red arm of the soldier ​ clutches at the people's throat. That is the first part of our scheme—we are aiming to found an industrial State.
Next, the national theory of the government is a democracy—the government of all, by all, for all. All officers depend on election, none are foreordained. There are to be no special privileges, only natural, universal rights.
It would be a fair spectacle,—a great industrial Commonwealth, spread over half the continent, and folding in its bosom one-fortieth of God's whole family! It is a lovely dream; nor Athenian Plato, nor English Thomas More, nor Bacon, nor Harrington, ever dared to write on paper so fair an ideal as our fathers and we have essayed to put into men. I once thought this dream of America would one day become a blessed fact ! We have many elements of national success. Our territory for quantity and quality is all we could ask ; our origin is of the Caucasian's best. No nation had ever so fair a beginning as we. The Anglo-Saxon is a good hardy stock for national welfare to grow on. To my American eye, it seems that human nature had never anything so good for popular liberty to be grafted into. We are already strong, and fear nothing from any foreign power. The violent cannot take us by force. No nation is our enemy.
But the question now comes. Is America to live or to die? If we live, what life shall it be? Shall we fall into the sepulchre of departed States — a new debauchee of the nations? Shall we live petrified to stone, a despotism many-headed, sitting—another sphinx—by the wayside of history, to scare young nations in their march and impede their progress? Or shall we pursue the journey—a great, noble-hearted Commonwealth, a nation possessing the continent, full of riches, full of justice, full of wisdom, full of piety, and full of peace? It depends on ourselves. It is for America, for this generation of Americans, to say which of the three shall happen. No fate holds us up. Our character is our destiny. I am not a timid man; I am no excessive praiser of times passed by; I seldom take counsel of my fears, often of my hopes;—but now I must say that since '76 our success was never so doubtful as at this time. England is in peril; the despots on the continent hate her free Parliament, which makes laws for the people—just laws; they hate her ​ free speech, which tells every grievance at home or abroad; they hate her free soil, which offers a home to every exile, republican or despotic. England is in peril, for every tyrant hates her. Russia is in danger, for the two strongest powers of Christendom have just clasped hands, and sworn an oath to fight against that great marauding empire of the East. Their armies threaten her cities; her sovereign deserts his capital; her treasure is carried a thousand miles inward; the Western fleets blockade her ports and sweep her navies from the sea. But Russia has no peril like ours; England has no danger so great as that which threatens us this .day. In the darkest periods of the American Revolution, when Washington's army, without blankets, without coats, without shoes, fled through the Jerseys, when they marked the ice of the Delaware, and left revolutionary tracks in frozen blood, we were not in such peril as to-day. When General Gage had the throat of Boston in his hand, and perfidiously disarmed the people, we were not in such danger. Yea, when four hundred houses in yonder town went up in one great cloud of smoke towards heaven, the liberties of America were not in such peril as they are to-day. Then we were called to fight with swords—and when that work was to be done, was America ever found wanting? Then our adversary was the other side of the sea, and wicked statutes were enacted against us in Westminster Hall. Now our enemy is at home; and something far costlier than swords is to be called into service.
Look at some of these dangers. I shall pass by all that are trifling. I find four great perils. Here they are:—
I. There comes the danger from our exclusive Devotion to Riches.
II. The danger from the Roman Catholic Church, established in the midst of us.
III. The danger from the idea that there is no Higher Law above the Statutes which men make.
IV. The danger from the Institution of Slavery, which is based on that atheistic idea last named.
I. Of the danger which comes from our exclusive Devotion to Riches. ​ Power is never left without a possessor: when it fell from the theocratic and military classes, from the priest, the noble, and the king, it passed to the hands of the capitalists. In America, ecclesiastical office is not power; noble or royal birth is of small value. If Madison or Jefferson had left any sons but mulattoes, their distinguished birth would avail them nothing. The son of Patrick Henry lived a strolling schoolmaster, and a pauper's funeral was asked for his body. Money is power; the only permanent and transmissible power; it goes by device. Money "can ennoble sots and slaves and cowards."
It gives rank in the Church. The millionaire is always a saint. The priests of commerce wiU think twice before damning a man who enhances their salary and gives them dinners. In one thing the American Heaven resembles the New Jerusalem:—its pavement is "of fine gold." The capitalist has the chief seat in our Christian synagogue. It is a rare minister who dares assail a vice which has riches on its side. Is there a clergyman at the South who speaks against the profitable wickedness which chains three million American men P How few at the North I European gentility is ancient power; American is new money hot from the stamping.
In society, money, is genteel; it is always respectable. The high places of society do not belong to ecclesiastical men, as in Home; to military men, as in St. Petersburg; to men of famous family, as in. England and Spain; to men of science and literature, men of genius, as in Berlin; but to rich men.
Money gives distinction in literature, so far as the literary class can control the public judgment. The colleges revere a rich man's son; they name professorships after such as endow them with money, not mind. Critics respect a rich man's book; if he has not brains, he has brass, which is better. The capitalist is admitted a member of the Academies of Arts and Sciences, of collegiate societies; if he cannot write dissertations, he can give suppers, and there must be a material basis for science. At anniversaries, he receives the honorary degree. ’Tis easier to weigh purses, sure, than brains." A dull scholar is expelled from college for idleness, and twenty years later returns to New England with half a million of money, and ​ gets his degree. As he puzzles at the Latin diploma, he asks, "If I had come home poor, I wonder how long it would have taken the 'Alma Mater' to find out that I was ever a ’good scholar,' and now 'merited an honorary-degree'—facts which I never knew before!"
In politics, money has more influence than in Turkey, Austria, Russia, England, or Spain. For in our politics the interest of property is preferred before all others. National legislation almost invariably favours capital, and not the labouring hand. The Federalists feared that riches would not be safe in America—the many would plunder the wealthy few. It was a groundless fear. In an industrial commonwealth, property is sure of popular protection. Where all own hayricks no one scatters fire-brands. Nowhere in the world is property so secure or so much respected; for it rests on a more natural basis than elsewhere. Nowhere is wealth so powerful, in Church, Society, and State. In Kentucky and elsewhere, it can take the murderer's neck out of the halter. It can make the foolish "wise;" the dull man "eloquent;" the mean man "honourable, one of our most prominent citizens;" the heretic "sound orthodox;" the ugly "fair;" the old man a "desirable young bridegroom." Nay, vice itself becomes virtue, and man-stealing is Christianity! Here, nothing but the voter's naked ballot holds money in check: there are no great families with their historic tradition, as in all Europe; no bodies of literary or scientific men to oppose their genius to mere material gold. The Church is no barrier, only its servant, for when the minister depends on the wealth of his parish for support, you know the common consequence. Lying rides on obligation's back. The minister respects the hand that feeds him: "the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib." Yet now and then a minister looks starvation in the face, and continues his unpopular service of God. No political institutions check the authority of wealth; it can bribe, and buy the venal; the brave it sometimes can intimidate arid starve. Money can often carry a bill through the legislature—state or national. The majority as hardly strong enough to check this pecuniary sway.
In the "most democratic" States, gold is most powerful. Thus, in fifteen States of America, three hundred thousand ​ proprietors own thirteen hundred millions of money invested in men. In virtue thereof they control the legislation of their own States, making their institutions despotic, and not republican; they keep the poor white man from political power, from comfort, from the natural means of education and religion; they destroy his self-respect, and leave him nothing but his body; from the poorest of the poor, they take away his body itself. Next they control the legislation of America; they make the President, they appoint the Supreihe Court, they control the Senate, the Representatives; they determine the domestic and foreign policy of the nation. Finally, they affect the laws of all the other sixteen States—the Southern hand colouring the local institutions of New Haven and Boston.
That is only one example—one of many. Russia is governed by a long-descended Czar; England by a Queen, nobles, and gentry,—men of ancient family, with culture and riches. America is ruled by a troop of men with nothing but new money and what it brings—three hundred thousand slaveholders and their servants, North and South. Boston is under their thumb; at their command the mayor spits in the face of Massachusetts law, and plants a thousand bayonets at the people's throat. They make ball cartridges under the eaves of Faneuil Hall.
Accordingly, money is the great object of desire and pursuit. There are material reasons why this is so in many lands:—in America there are also social, political, and ecclesiastical reasons for it. "To be rich is to be blessed: poverty is damnation: "that is the popular creed.
The public looks superficially at the immediate effect of this opinion, at this exceeding and exclusive desire for riches; they see its effect on Israel and John Jacob, on Stephen, Peter, and Robert: it makes them rich, and their children respectable and famous. Few ask. What effect will this have on the nation? They foresee not the future evil it threatens. Nay, they do not consider how it debauches the institutions of America—ecclesiastical, academic, social, political; how it corrupts the hearts of the people, making them prize money as the end of life, and manhood as only the means thereto, making money master, and human nature its tool or servant, but no more.
The political effect of this unnatural esteem for riches is. ​ not at all well understood. History but too plainly tells of the dangerous power of priests or nobles consolidated into a class, and their united forces directed by a single able head. The power of allied kings, concentrating whole realms of men and money on a single point; the effect of armies and navies collected together and marshalled by a single will; is all too boldly written in the ruin of many a State. We have often been warned against the peril from forts, and castles, and standing armies. But the power of consolidated riches, the peril which accumulated property may bring upon the liberties of an industrial commonwealth, though formidably near, as yet is all unknown, all unconsidered too. Already the consolidated property of one-eightieth part of the population controls all the rest.
Two special causes, both exceptional and fleeting, just now stimulate the acquisitiveness of America almost to madness.
One is the rapid development of the art of manufacturing the raw materials gathered from the bosom or the surface of the earth. The invention of printing made education and freedom possible on a large scale; one of the immediate results thereof is this—the head briefly performs the else long-protracted labour of the hand. Wind, water, fire, steam, lightning, have become pliant forces to manufacture wood, flax, cotton, wool, and aU the metals. This result is nowhere so noticeable as in New England, where education is almost universal. The New England school-house is the machine-shop of America. What the State invests in slates and teachers pays dividends in hard coin. This new power over the material world, the first and unexpected commercial result of the public education of the people, gives a great and perhaps lasting stimulus to the pursuit of wealth. It affects the most undisciplined portions of the world,—for the educated man leaves much rough labour for the ignorant, and enhances the demand for the results of their toil. The thinking head raises the wages of all mere hands. Hence arises the increased value of slaves at the South, and the rapid immigration of the most ignorant Irishmen to the North. They are to the thoughtful projector what the Merrimack is to the cotton-spinner—a rude force pliant before his will. Dr. Paustus is the unconscious pioneer of many a pilgrimage. ​ The other cause is the discovery of gold in California and then in Australia. This doubles or trebles the pecuniary momentum of America. Its stimulating influence on our covetousness, accumulation, and luxury, is obvious. What further and ultimate effects it will produce I shall not now pause to inquire. When a whirlwind rises, all men can see that dust is mounting to the sky.
Besides, the form of American industry is changed. Once New England and all the North were chiefly agricultural; manufactures and commerce were conducted on a small scale; and therein each man wrought on his own account. There was a great deal of individual activity, individuality of character. Few men worked for wages. Now New England is mainly manufacturing and commercial, Vermont is the only farming State. Mechanics, men and women, work for wages; many in the employment of a single man; thousands in the pay of one company, organized by superior ability. The workman loses his independence, and is not only paid but governed also by his employer's money. His opinions and character are formed after the prescribed pattern, by the mill he works in. The old military organizations for defence or aggression brought freedom of body distinctly in peril: the new industrial organizations jeopardize spiritual individuality, all freedom of mind and conscience. New England is a monumental proof thereof.
Another change also follows: the military habits of the North are all gone. Once New England had more fire-locks than householders; every man was a soldier and a marksman. Now the people have lost their taste for military discipline, and neither keep nor bear arms. Of course a few holiday soldiers, called out by a doctor, and commanded by an apothecary, can overawe the town.
The Northern, and especially the Eastern and Middle States, are the great centre of this industrial development. Here, and especially in New England, the desire for riches has become so powerful that a very large proportion of our men of the greatest practical intellect have almost exclusively turned their attention to purely productive business, to commerce and manufactures. They rarely engage in the work of politics—unprofitable and distasteful to the individual, and, at first sight, merely preservative and ​ defensive to the community. This they shun or neglect, as the mass of men avoid military discipline. The statutes must be made and administered by politicians. Here they are not able men. Of the forty-one New England delegate^ in Congress, of the six governors, of the many other professional leaders in politics, how many first-rate men are there? how many middle-sized second-rate men? The control of the national affairs passes out of the fingers of the North—which has yet three-fifths of the population, and more than four-fifths of the speculative and practical intelligence and material wealth. The nation is controlled by the South, whose ablest men almost exclusively attend to politics. Besides, the State politics of the North fall into the hands of men quite inadequate to such a weighty trust. This mistake is as fatal as it would be in time of war to send all the able-bodied men to the plough, and the women and children to the camp. We are mismanaged at home, and dishonourably routed in the Federal capital. In the present state of the world I think no nation would be justified in turning non-resistant, tearing down its forts, disbanding its armies, melting up its guns and swords; and I am sure the North suffers sadly from devoting so large a part of its masterly, practical men to the productive work of commerce and manufactures. Her politicians are not strong enough for her own defence. In American politics the great battle of ideas and principles, yea, of measures, is to be fought. Shall we keep our Washingtons surveying land?
The national effect of this estimate and accumulation of riches is to produce a great and rapid development of the practical understanding; a great love for vulgar finery which pleases the palate or the eye; great luxury of dress, ornament, furniture. You see this in the hotels and public carriages on land and sea, in the costume of the nation, at public and private tables. Along with this there comes a certain refinement of the public taste.
But there is no proportionate culture of the higher intellectual faculties—of the reason and imagination; still less of yet nobler powers—moral, affectional, and religious. From the common school to the college, the chief things taught are arithmetic and elocution; not the art to ​ reason and create, but the trade to calculate and express. Everything is measured by the money standard. "The protection of property is the great object of government." The politician must suit the pecimiary interest of his constituency, though at the cost of justice; the writer, author, or editor, the pecuniary interest of his readers, though at the sacrifice of truth ; the minister, the pecuniary interest of his audience, though piety and morality both come to the ground. Mammon is a profitable god to worship—he gives dinners!
I think it must be confessed in the last eighty years the general moral and religious tone of the people in the free States has improved. This change comes from the natural forward tendency of mankind, the instinct of development quickened by our free institutions. But, at the same time, it is quite plain to me that the moral and religious tone of American politicians, writers, and preachers, has proportionately and absolutely gone down. You see this in the great towns: if Boston were once the "Athens of America," she is now only the "Corinth." Athens has retreated to some inland Salamis.
But, in general, this peril from the excessive pursuit of riches comes unavoidably from our position in time and space, and our consequent political institutions. It belongs to the period of transition from the old form of vicarious rule by theocratic, military, and aristocratic governments, to the personal administration of an industrial commonwealth. I do not much fear this peril, nor apprehend lasting evil from it. One of the great things which mankind now most needs is power over the material world as the basis for the higher development of our spiritual faculties. Wealth is indispensable ; it is the material pulp around the spiritual seed. No nation was ever too rich, too well fed, clad, housed, and comforted. The human race still suffers from poverty, the great obstacle to our progress. Doubtless we shall make many errors in our national attempt to organize the productive forces into an industrial State, as our fathers — thousands of years ago—in organizing their destructive powers into a military state. Once, man cut his fingers with iron; he now poisons them with gold. All Christendom shares this peril, though America feels it most. She is now like a ​ thriving man who gets rich fast, and thinks more than he ought of his money, and less of his manhood. Some misfortune, the ruin of a prodigal son perishing in quicksands of gold, will, by-and-by, convince him that riches is not the only thing in life.
II. Of the danger which comes from the Roman Catholic Church.
The Roman Catholic Church claims infallibility for itself, and denies spiritual freedom, liberty of mind or conscience, to its members. It is therefore the foe to all progress; it is deadly hostile to democracy. To mankind this is its first command—Submit to an external authority; subordinate your human nature to an element foreign and abhorrent thereto! It aims at absolute domination over the body and the spirit of man. The Catholic Church can never escape from the consequences of her first principle. She is the natural ally of tyrants, and the irreconcileable enemy of freedom. Individual Catholics in America, as elsewhere, are inconsistent, and favour the progress of mankind. Alas! such are exceptional; the Catholic Church has an iron logic, and consistently hates liberty in all its forms—free thought, free speech.
I quote the words of her own authors in America, recently uttered by the press. "Protestantism … has not and never can have any rights where Catholicity is triumphant." "We lose all the breath we expend in declaiming against bigotry and intolerance, and in favour of religious liberty." "Religious liberty [in America] is merely endured until the opposite caa be carried into execution without peril to the Catholic world." "Catholicity will one day rule in America, and then religious liberty "at an end." "The very name of Liberty… ought to be banished from the very domain of religion." "No man has a right to choose his religion." "Catholicism is the most intolerant of creeds. It is intolerance itself, for it is the truth itself."
The Catholic population is not great in numbers. In 1863, there were in America 1,712 churches, 1,574 priests, ​ 396 theological students, 32 bishops, 7 archbishops, church-property worth about $10,000,000, and 1,728,000 Catholics. But most of them are of the Celtic stock, which has never much favoured Protestantism or individual liberty in religion; and in this respect is widely distinguished from the Teutonic population, who have the strongest ethnological instinct for personal freedom.
Besides, the Catholics are governed with absolute rigour by their clergy, who are celibate priests, a social caste by themselves, not sympathizing with mankind, but emasculated of the natural humanities of our race. There are exceptional men amongst them, but such seems to be the rule with the class of Catholic priests in America. They are united into one compact body, with complete corporate unity of action, and ruled despotically by their bishops, archbishops, and Pope. The Catholic worshipper is not to think, but to believe and obey; the priest not to reason and consider, but to proclaim and command ; the voter is not to inquire and examine, but to deposit his ballot as the ecclesiastical authority directs. The better religious orders do not visit America; the Jesuits, the most subtle enemies of humanity, come in abundance ; some are known, others stealthily prowl about the land, all the more dangerous for their disguise. They all act under the direction of a single head. One shrewd Protestant minister may be equal to one Jesuit, but no ten or forty Protestant ministers is a match for a combination of ten Jesuits, bred to the business of deception, knowing no allegiance to truth or justice, consciously disregarding the higher law of God, with the notorious maxim that "the end justifies the means," bound to their order by the most stringent oath, and devoted to the worst purposes of the Catholic Church.
All these priests owe allegiance to a foreign head. It is not an American Church; it is Roman, not free, individual, but despotic; nay, in its designs not so much human as merely Papal.
The Catholic Church opposes everything which favours democracy and the natural rights of man. It hates our free churches, free press, and, above all, our free schools. No owl more shuns the light. It hates the rule of majorities, the voice of the people; it loves violence, force, and blood.
The Catholic clergy are on the side of Slavery. They ​ find it is the dominant power, and pay court thereto that they may rise by its help. They love Slavery itself; it is an institution thoroughly congenial to them, consistent with the first principles of their Church. Their Jesuit leaders think it is "an ulcer which will eat up the Republic," and so stimulate and foster it for the ruin of Democracy, the deadliest foe of the Roman hierarchy.
Besides, most of the Catholics are the victims of oppression,—poor, illiterate, oppressed, and often vicious. Their circumstances have ground the humanity out of them. No sect furnishes half so many criminals—victims of society before they become its foes; no sect has so little philanthropy; none is so greedy to oppress. All this is natural. The lower you go down the coarser and more cruel do you find the human being.
I am told there is not in all America a single Catholic newspaper hostile to Slavery; not one opposed to tyranny in general; not one that takes sides with the oppressed in Europe. There is not in America a man born and bred in the Catholic Church, who is eminent for philosophy, science, literature, or art; none distinguished for philanthropy! The water tastes of the fountain.
Catholic votes are in the market; the bishops can dispose of them—politicians will make their bid. Shall it be the sacrifice of the free schools? of other noble institutions? In some States it seems not unlikely.
I do not think our leading men see all this danger. But the baneful influence of the Church of the dark ages begins to show itself in the press, in the schools, and still more in the politics of America. Yet I am glad the Catholics come here. Let America be an asylum for the poor and the down-trodden of all lands; let the Irish ships, reeking with misery, land their human burdens in our harbours. The continent is wide enough for all. I rejoice that in America there is no national form of religion;—let the Jew, the Chinese Buddhist, the savage Indian, the Mormon, the Protestant, and the Catholic have free opportunity to be faithful each to his own conscience. Let the American Catholic have his bishops, his archbishops, and his Pope, his Jesuits, his convents, his nunneries, his celibate priestshood of hard drinkers, if he will. Let him oppose the public education of the people; oppose the press, the ​ meeting-house, and the ballot-box; nay, oppose temperance and religion, if he likes. If, with truth and justice on our side, the few Catholics can overcome the many Protestants, we deserve defeat. We should be false to the first principles of democratic theory, if we did not grant them their unalienable rights. Let there be no tyranny; let us pay the Catholics good for ill; and cast out Satan by the finger of God, not by the Prince of Devils. This peril is easily mastered. The Catholic Church has still many lessons to offer the Protestants.
III. Of the danger from the Idea that there is no Higher Law above the Statutes of Men.
Of late years, it has been industriously taught in America that there is no law of nature superior to the statutes which men enact; that politics are not amenable to conscience or to God. Accordingly, the American Congress knows no check in legislation but the Constitution of the United States and the will of the majority; none in the Constitution of the Universe and the will of God. The atheistic idea of the Jesuits, that the end justifies the means, is made the first principle in American politics. Hence it has been repeatedly declared by "prominent clergymen" that politics should not be treated of in the pulpit ; they are not amenable to religion; Christianity has nothing to do with making or administering the laws. When the Pharisees and Sadducees have silenced the prophet and the apostle, it is not difficult to make men believe that Machiavelli is a great saint, and Jesuitism the revealed religion of politics! Let the legislators make what wicked laws they will against the rights of man; the priest of commerce is to say nothing. Nay, the legislators themselves are never to refer to justice and the eternal right, only to the expediency of the hour.
Then when the statute is made, the magistrate is not to ask if it be just, he is only to execute it; the people are to obey and help enforce the wicked enactment, never asking if it be right. The highest virtue in the people is—"unquestioning submission to the Constitution;" or, when the statute violates their conscience, to do "a disagreeable duty!" Thus the political action of the people is exempted from the jurisdiction of God and His natural ​ moral law! "Christianity has nothing to do with politics!"
Within a few years this doctrine has been taught in a great variety of forms. At first it came in with evil laws, simply as the occasional support of a measure; at length it is announced as a principle. It has taken a deep hold on the educated classes of the community ; for our "superior education" is almost wholly of the intellect, and of only its humbler powers. It appears among the lawyers, the politicians, the editors, and the ministers. Some deny the natural distinction between right and wrong. "Justice," is a matter of convention; things are not "true," but "agreed upon;" not "right," only "assented to." There is no "moral obligation." Government rests on a compact, having its ultimate foundation on the caprice of men, not in their moral nature. What are called natural rights are only certain conveniences agreed upon amongst men; legal fictions—their recognition is their essence, they are the creatures of a compact. Property has no foundation in the nature of things; it may consist of whatever the legislature determines—land, cattle, food, clothing; or of men, women, and children. Dives may own Lazarus as well as the dogs who serve him at the gate. There is no political morality, only political economy.
This conclusion arises from the philosophy of Hobbes and Filmer; yes, from the first principles of Locke and Housseau. It is one of the worst results of materialism and practical atheism." It takes different forms in different nations. In a monarchy it has for its axiom, "The King can do no wrong; he is the Norm of Law—Vox Regis vox Dei" In a Democracy, "The majority can do no wrong; they are the Norm of Law—Vox Populi vox Dei" So the Statute becomes an idol; loyalty takes the place of religion, and despotism becomes euthroned on the necks of the people.
It is not surprising that this doctrine should be taught from the pulpit in Catholic countries —it is conformable to the general conduct of the Roman Church. It belongs also with the sensational philosophy which has yet done so much to break to pieces the theology of the Dark Ages;—and does not astonish one in the sects which build thereon, But at first sight it seems amazing that American Chris​ tians of the Puritanic stock, with a philosophy that transcends sensationalism, should prove false to the only principle which at once justifies the conduct of Jesus, of Luther, and the Puritans themselves. For certainly if obedience to the established law be the highest virtue, then the Patriots and Pilgrims of New England, the Reformers of the Church, the glorious company of the Apostles, the goodly fellowship of the Prophets, and the noble army of martyrs,—nay, Jesus himself,—were only criminals and traitors. To appreciate this denial of the first principle of all religion, it would be necessary to go deep into the theology of Christendom, and touch the fatal error of all the three parties just referred to. For that there is now no time.
One of the consequences of this atheistic denial of the natural foundation of human laws is, the preponderance of parties. An opinion before it becomes a law, while it is yet a tendency, becomes organized into a faction, or party. Members of the party feel the same loyalty thereto which narrow patriots feel for their nation, or bigots for their sect; they give up their mind and conscience to their party. So fidelity to their party, right or wrong, is deemed a great political virtue; the individual member is bound by the party opinion. Thus is the private conscience still further debauched by the second act in this atheistic popular tragedy.
Thus both national and party politics are taken out of the jurisdiction of morals, declared not amenable to conscience: in other words, are left to the control of political Jesuits. An American may read the natural result of such principles in the downfall of the Grecian and Italian Republics, or wait to behold it in his own land.
IV. Of the dangers from the Institution of Slavery which rests on this False Idea.
Slavery is the child of Violence and Atheism. Brute material force is its father: the atheistic idea that there is no law of God above the passions of men — that is the mother of it. I have lately spoken so long, so often, and with such publicity, both of speech and print, respecting the extent of Slavery in America, and its constant advance since 1788, that I shall pass over all that theme, and speak ​ more directly of the present danger it brings upon our freedom.
There can be no national welfare without national unity of action. That cannot take place unless there is national unity of idea in fundamentals. Without this a nation is a "house divided against itself;" of course it cannot stand. It is what mechanics call a figure without equilibrium; the different parts thereof do not balance.
Now, in the American State there are two distinct ideas—Freedom and Slavery.
The idea of freedom first got a national expression seventy-eight years ago next Tuesday. Here it is. I put it in a philosophic form. There are five points to it.
First. All men are endowed by their Creator with certain natural rights, amongst which is the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Second. These rights are unalienable; they can be alienated and forfeited only by the possessor thereof; the father cannot alienate them for the son, nor the son for the father; nor the husband for the wife, nor the wife for the husband; nor the strong for the weak, nor the weak for the strong; nor the few for the many, nor the many for the few; and so on.
Third. In respect to these all men are equal; the rich man has not more, and the poor less; the strong man has not more, and the weak man less:—all are exactly equal in these rights, however unequal in their powers.
Fourth. It is the function of government to secure these natural, unalienable, and equal rights to every man.
Fifth. Grovemment derives all its divine right from its conformity with these ideas, all its human sanction from the consent of the governed. That is the idea of Freedom. I used to call it "the American idea;" it was when I was younger than I am to-day. It is derived from human nature; it rests on the immutable laws of God; it is part of the natural religion of mankind. It demands a government after natural justice, which is the point common between the conscience of God and the conscience of mankind, the point common also between the interests of one man and of all men.
Now this government, just in its substance, in its form must be democratic: that is to say, the government of all. ​ by all, and for all. You see what consequences must follow from such an idea, and the attempt to re-enact the law of God into political institutions. There will follow the freedom of the people, respect for every natural right of all men, the rights of their body, and of their spirit—the rights of mind and conscience, heart and soul. There must be some restraint—as of children by their parents, as of bad men by good men; but it will be restraint for the joint good of all parties concerned; not restraint for the exclusive benefit of the restrainer. The ultimate consequence of this will be the material and spiritual welfare of all—riches, comfort, noble manhood, all desirable things.
That is the idea of Freedom. It appears in the Declaration of Independence; it re-appears in the Preamble to the American Constitution, which aims "to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty." That is a religious idea ; and when men pray for the "reign of justice" and the "kingdom of heaven," to come on earth politically, I suppose they mean that there may be a commonwealth where every man has his natural rights of mind, body, and estate.
Next is the idea of Slavery. Here it is. I put it also in a philosophic form. There are three points which I make.
First. There are no natural, unalienable, and equal rights, wherewith men are endowed by their Creator ; no natural, unalienable, and equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Second. There is a great diversity of powers, and in virtue thereof the strong man may rule and oppress, enslave and ruin the weak, for his interest and against theirs.
Third. There is no natural law of God to forbid the strong to oppress the weak, and enslave and ruin the weak.
That is the idea of Slavery. It has never got a national expression in America; it has never been laid down as a principle in any act of the American people, nor in any single State, so far as I know. AU profess the opposite; ​ but it is involved in the measures of both State and nation. This idea is founded in the selfishness of man; it is atheistic.
The idea must lead to a corresponding government; that will be unjust in its substance—for it will depend not on natural right, but on personal force; not on the constitution of the universe, but on the compact of men. It is the abnegation of God in the universe and of conscience in man. Its form will be despotism—the government of all by a part, for the sake of a part. It may be a single-headed despotism, or a despotism of many heads; but whether a Cyclops ora Hydra, is is alike "the abomination which maketh desolate." Its ultimate consequence is plain to foresee—poverty to a nation, misery, ruin.
At first Slavery came as a measure; nothing was said about it as a principle. But in a country full of school- masters, legislatures, newspapers, talking men—a measure without a principle to bear it up is like a single twig of willow cast out on a wooden floor ; there is nothing for it to grow by; it will die. So of late the principle has been boldly avowed. Mr. Calhoun denied the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence; denied the natural, unalienable, and equal rights of man. Many since have done the same — political, literary, and mercantile men, and, of course, ecclesiastical men; there are enough of them always in the market. All parts of the idea of Slavery have been affirmed by prominent men at the North and the South. It has been acted on in the formation of the constitution of every slave State, and in the passage of many of its laws. It lies at the basis of a great deal of national legislation.
Hear the opinions of some of our Southern patriots: "Slavery is coeval with society:" "It was commended by God's chosen theocracy, and sanctioned by His Apostles in the Christian Church." All ancient literature "is the literature of slaveholders;" "Rome and Greece owed their literary and national greatness exclusively to the institution of Slavery;" "Slavery is as necessary for the welfare of the Southern States as sxmshine is for the flowers of the prairies;" "A noble and necessary institution of God's creation." "Nature is the mother and protector of ​ Slavery;" "Domestic Slavery Is not only natural and necessary, but a great blessing." "Free society is a sad and signal failure;" "it does well enough in a new country." "Free society has become diseased by abolishing Slavery. It can only be restored to pristine health, happiness, and prosperity by re-instituting Slavery." "Slavery may be administered under a new name." "Free society is a monstrosity. Like all monsters it will be short-lived. We date and do vindicate Slavery in the abstract." The negro " needs a master to protect and govern him ; so do the ignorant poor in old countries."
"There is no moral wrong in Slavery;" it "is the normal condition of human society." "The benefits and advantages which so far have resulted from this institution we take as lights to guide us to the brighter truths of its future history." "We belong to that society of which Slavery is the distinguishing element, and we are not ashamed of it. We find it marked by every evidence of Divine approval."
These two ideas are now fairly on foot. They are hostile; they are both mutually invasive and destructive. They are in exact opposition to each other, and the nation which embodies these two is not a figure of equilibrium. As both are active forces in the minds of men, and as each idea tends to become a fact—a universal and exclusive fact—as men with these ideas organize into parties as a means to make their idea into a fact, it follows that there must not only be strife amongst philosophical men about these antagonistic principles and ideas, but a strife of practical men about corresponding facts and measures. So the quarrel, if not otherwise ended, will pass from words to what seems more serious ; and one will overcome the other.
So long as these two ideas exist in the nation as two political forces there is no national unity of idea, of course, no unity of action. For there is no centre of gravity common to Freedom and Slavery. They will not compose an equilibrious figure. You may cry, "Peace! peace!" ​ but SO long as these two antagonistic ideas remain, each seeking to organize itself and get exclusive power, there is no peace; there can be none.
The question before the nation to day is, Which shall prevail—the idea and fact of Freedom, or the idea and the fact of Slavery; Freedom, exclusive and universal, or Slavery, exclusive and universal? The question is not merely. Shall the African be bond or free? but shall America be a democracy or a despotism? For nothing is so remorseless as an idea, and no logic is so strong as the historical development of a national idea by millions of men. A measure is nothing without its principle. The idea which allows Slavery in South Carolina will establish it also in New England. The bondage of a black man in Alexandria imperils every white woman's daughter in Boston. You cannot escape the consequences of a first principle more than you can "take the leap of Niagara and stop when half-way down." The principle which recognises Slavery in the constitution of the United States would make all America a despotism; while the principle which made John Quincy Adams a free man would extirpate Slavery from Louisiana and Texas. It is plain America cannot long hold these two contradictions in the national consciousness. Equilibrium must come.
Now there are three possible ways of settling the quarrel between these two ideas; only three. The categories are exhaustive.
This is the first: The discord may rend the nation asunder and the two elements separate and become distinct nations—a despotism with the idea of Slavery, a democracy with the idea of Freedom. Then each will be an equilibrious figure. The Anglo-Saxon despotism may go to ruin on its own account, while the Anglo-Saxon democracy marches on to national welfare. That is the first hypothesis.
Or, second: The idea of Freedom may destroy Slavery, with all its accidents—attendant and consequent. Then the nation may have unity of idea, and so a unity of action, and become a harmonious whole, a unit of freedom, a great industrial democracy, re-enacting the laws of God, and pursuing its way, continually attaining greater degrees ​ of freedom and prosperity. That is the second hypothesis.
Here is the third: The idea of Slavery may destroy Freedom, with all its accidents—attendant and consequent. Then the nation will become an integer; only it will be a unit of despotism. This involves, of course, the destructive revolution of all our liberal institutions. State as well as national. Democracy must go down; the free press go down; the free church go down; the free school go down. There must be an industrial despotism, which will soon become a military despotism. Popular legislation must end; the Federal Congress will be a club of officials, like Nero's senate, which voted his horse first consul. The State legislature will be a knot of commissioners, tide-waiters, postmasters, district attorneys, deputy-marshals. The town-meeting will be a gang of government officers, like the "Marshal's Guard," revolvers in their pockets, soldiers at their back. The Habeas Corpus will be at an end; trial by jury never heard of, and open courts as common in America as in Spain or Bome. Commissioners Curtis, Loring, and Kane will not be exceptional men; there will be no other "judges;" all courts, courts of the kidnapper; all process summary ; all cases decided by the will of the Government; arbitrary force the only rule. The constable will disappear, the soldier come forth. All newspapers will be like the "Satanic press" of Boston and New York, like the journal of St. Petersburg, or the Diario Romano, which tell lies when the ruler commands, or teU truth when he insists upon it. Then the wicked will walk on every side, for the vilest of men will be exalted, and America, become the mock and scorn and hissing of the nations, will go down to worse shame than was ever heaped upon Sodom; for with her lust for wealth, land, and power, she will also have committed the crime against nature. Then America will be another Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, yea, like Gomorrah—for the Dead Sea will have settled down upon w with nothing living in its breast, and the rulers will proclaim peace where they have made solitude.
Which of these three hypotheses shall we take?
I. Will there be a separation of the two elements, and ​ a formation of two distinct States,—Freedom with democracy, and Slavery with a tendency to despotism P That may save one half the nation, and leave the other to voluntary ruin. Certainly it is better to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands and two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.
Now, I do not suppose it is possible for the Anglo-Saxons of America to remain as one nation for a great many years. Suppose we become harmonious and prosper abundantly: when there are a hundred millions on the Atlantic slope, another hundred millions in the Mississippi Valley, a third hundred millions on the Pacific slope, and a fourth hundred millions in South America,—it is not likely that all these will hold together. We shall be too wide spread. And, besides, it is not according to the disposition of the Teutonic family to aggregate into one great State any very large body of men; division, not conglomeration, is after the ethnologic instinct and the historical custom of the Teutonic family, and especially of its Anglo-Saxon tribe. We do not lie centralization of power, but have such strong individuality that we prefer local self-government; we are social, not gregarious like the Celtic family. I, therefore, do not look on the union of the States as a thing that is likely to last a great length of time, under any circumstances. I doubt if any part of the nation will desire it a hundred years hence.
True, there are causes which tend to keep us united: community of ethnologic origin—fifteen millions are Anglo-Saxon;—unity of language, literature, religion ; historic and legal traditions, and commercial interest. But all these may easily be overcome, and doubtless will be. So a dissolution of the great Anglo-Saxon State seems likely to take place, when the territory is spread so wide that there is a practical inconvenience in balancing the nation on a single governmental point; when the numbers are so great that we require many centres of legislative and administrative action in order to secure individual freedom of the parts, as well as national unity of the whole; or when the Federal Government shall become so corrupt that the trunk will not sustain the limbs. Then the branches which make up this great American banyan-tree will separate from the rotten primeval trunk, draw their sup​ port from their own local roots, and spread into great and independent trees. All this may take place without fighting. Massachusetts and Maine were once a single State; now friendly sisters.
​ From these two, with their mercantile and political selfishness, we are to expect no comprehensive morality, which will secure the rights of mankind; no comprehensive policy, which will secure expedient measures for a long time. Both will unite in what serves their apparent interest, brings money to the trader, power to the politician,—whatever be the consequence to the country. As things now are, the Union favours the schemes of both of these classes of men; thereby the politician gets power, the trader makes money.
If the Union were to be dissolved and a great Northern Commonwealth were to be organized, with the idea of freedom, three quarters of the politicians. Federal and State, would pass into contempt and oblivion; all that class of Northern demagogues who scoff at God's Law, such as filled the offices of the late Whig administration in its day of power, or as fill the offices of the Democratic administration to-day—they would drop down so deep that no plummet would ever reach them; you would never hear of them again.
Gratitude is not a very common virtue; but gratitude to the hand of Slavery, wmch feeds these creatures, is their sole and single moral excellence ; they have that form of gratitude. When the hand of Slavery is cut off, that class of men will perish just as caterpillars die when, some day in May, the farmer cuts off from the old tree a great branch to graft in a better fruit. The caterpillars will not vote for the grafting. That class of men will go for the Union while it serves them.
Look at the other class. Property is safe in America: and why? Because we have aimed to establish a government on natural rights, and property is a natural right; say oligarchic Blackstone and socialistic Proudhon what they may, property is not the mere creature of compact, or the child of robbery; it is founded in the nature of man. It has a very great and important function to perform. Nowhere in the world is it so much respected as here.
But there is one kind of property which is not safe just now:—Property in men. It is the only kind of property which is purely the creature of violence and law; it has no root in itself.
Now, the Union protects that "property." There are ​ three hundred thousand slave-holders, owning thirteen hundred millions of dollars invested in men. Their wealth depends on the Union; destroy that, and their unnatural property will take to itself legs and run ojBF, seeking liberty by night, or else stay at home and, like an Anglo-Saxon, take to itself firebrands and swords, and bum down the master's house and cut the master's throat. So the slave-holder wants the Union; he makes money by it. Slavery is unprofitable to the nation. No three millions earn so little as the three million slaves. It is costly to every State. But it enriches the owner of the slaves. The South is agricultural; that is all. She raises cotton, sugar, and com; she has no commerce, no manufactures, no mining. The North has mills, ships, mines, manufactures; buys and sells for the South, and makes money by what impoverishes the South. So all the great commercial centres of the North are in favour of Union, in favour of Slavery. The instinct of American trade just now is hostile to American freedom. The money power and the slave power go hand in hand. Of course such editors and ministers as are only the tools of the money power, or the slave power, will be fond of "Union at all hazards." They will sell their mothers to keep it. Now these are the controlling classes of men; these ministers and editors are the mouthpieces of these controlling classes of men; and as these classes make money and power out of the Union, for the present I think the Union will hold together. Yet I know very well that there are causes now at work which embitter the minds of men, and which, if much enforced, will so exasperate the North that we shall rend the Union asunder at a blow. That I think not likely to take place, for the South sees the peril and its own ruin.
II. The next hypothesis is. Freedom may triumph over Slavery. That was the expectation once, at the time of the Declaration of Independence; nay, at the formation of the Constitution. But only two national steps have been taken against Slavery since then—one the Ordinance of 1787, the other the abolition of the African Slave-Trade; really that was done in 1788, formally twenty years after. In the individual States, the white man's freedom enlarges every year; but the Federal Government becomes more and ​ more addicted to Slavery. This hypothesis does not seem very likely to be adopted.
III. Shall Slavery destroy Freedom? It looks very much like it. Here are nine great steps, openly taken since '87, in favour of Slavery. First, America put Slavery into the Constitution. Second, out of old soil she made four new slave States. Third, America, in 1793, adopted Slavery as a Federal institution, and guaranteed her protection for that kind of property as for no other. Fourth, America bought the Louisiana territory in 1803, and put Slavery into it. Fifth, she thence made Louisiana, Missouri, and then Arkansas slave States. Sixth, she made Slavery perpetual in Florida. Seventh, she annexed Texas. Eighth, she fought the Mexican war, and plundered a feeble sister republic of California, Utah, and New Mexico, to get more slave soil. Ninth, America gave ten millions of money to Texas to support Slavery, passed the Fugitive Slave Bill, and has since kidnapped men in "New England, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, in all the East, in all the West, in all the Middle States. All the great cities have kidnapped their own citizens. Professional slave-hunters are members of New England churches; kidnappers sit down at the Lord's table in the city of Cotton, Chauncey, and Mayhew. In this very year, before it is half through, America has taken two more steps for the destruction of Freedom. The repeal of the Missouri compromise and the enslavement of Nebraska : that is the tenth step. Here is the eleventh: The Mexican treaty, giving away ten millions of dollars and buying a little strip of worthless land, solely that it may serve the cause of Slavery.
Here are eleven great steps openly taken towards the ruin of liberty in America. Are these the worst? Very far from it! Yet more dangerous things have been done in secret.
I. Slavery has corrupted the mercantile class. Almost all the leading merchants of the North are pro-Slavery men. They hate freedom, hate your freedom and mine! This is the only Christian country in which commerce is hostile to freedom. ​ II. See the corruption of the political class. There axe forty thousand officers of the Federal Government. Look at them in Boston—their character is as well known as this Hall. Bead their journals in this city—do you catch a whisper of freedom in them? Slavery has sought its menial servants—men basely born and basely bred: it has corrupted them still further, and put them in office. America, like Russia, is the country for mean men to thrive in. Give him time and mire enough, a worm can crawl as high as an eagle flies. State rights are sacrificed at the North; centralization goes on with rapid strides; State laws are trodden under foot. The Northern President is all for Slavery. The Northern members of the Cabinet are for Slavery; in the Senate, fourteen Northern Democrats were for the enslavement of Nebraska; in the House of Representatives, forty-four Northern Democrats voted for the bill,—fourteen in the Senate, forty-four in the. House, fifty-eight Northern men voted against the conscience of the North and the law of God. Only eight men out of all the South could be found friendly to justice and false to their own local idea of injustice. The present administration, with its supple tools of tyranny, came into office while the cry of "No Higher Law" was echoing through the land!
III. Slavery has debauched the Press. How many leading journals of commerce and politics in the great cities do you know that are friendly to Freedom and opposed to Slavery? Out of the five large daily commercial papers in Boston, Whig or Democratic, I mow of only one that has spoken a word for freedom this great while. The American newspapers are poor defenders of American liberty. Listen to one of them, speaking of the last kidnapping in Boston: "We shall need to employ the same measures of coercion as are necessary in monarchical countries." There is always some one ready to do the basest deeds. Yet there are some noble journals— ​ political and commercial; such as the New York Tribune and Evening Post.
IV. Then our colleges and schools are corrupted by Slavery. I do not know of five colleges in all the North which publicly appear on the side of Freedom. What the hearts of the presidents and professors are, God knows, not I. The great crime against humanity, practical atheism, found ready support in Northern colleges, in 1850 and 1861. Once, the common reading books of our schools were full of noble words. Bead the school-books now made by Yankee pedlers of literature, and what liberal ideas do you find there? They are meant for the Southern market. Slavery must not be offended!
V. Slavery has corrupted the churches! There are twenty-eight thousand Protestant clergymen in the United States. There are noble hearts, true and just men among them, who have fearlessly borne witness to the truth. I need not mention their names. Alas! they are not very numerous; I should not have to go over my fingers many times to count them all. I honour these exceptional men. Some of them are old, far older than I am; older than my father need have been; some of them are far younger than I; nay, some of them younger than my children might be: and I honour these men for the fearless testimony which they have borne—the old, the middle-aged, and the young. But they are very exceptional men. Is there a minister in the South who preaches against Slavery? How few in all the North!
Look and see the condition of the Sunday schools. In 1853, the Episcopal Methodists had 9,438 Sunday schools; 102,732 Sunday school teachers; 525,008 scholars. There is not an anti-Slavery Sunday school in the compass of the Methodist Episcopal church. Last year, in New York, they issued, on an average, two thousand bound volumes every day in the year, not a line against Slavery in them. They printed also two thousand pamphlets every day; there is not a line in them aU against Slavery; they printed more than two hundred and forty million pages of Sunday school books, not a line against Slavery in them all; not a line showing that it is wicked to buy and sell a man, for ​ whom, according to the Methodist Episcopal Church, Christ died!
The Orthodox Sunday School Union spent last year $248,201; not a cent against Slavery, our great national, sin. They print books by the million. Only one of them contains a word against Slavery; that is Cowper's Task, which contains these words—my mother taught them to me when I was a little boy, and sat in her lap:—
"I would not have a slave to till my ground,
To carry me, to fan me when I sleep,
And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth
That sinews, bought and sold, have ever earned!"
You all know it: if you do not, you had better learn and teach it to your children. That is the only anti-Slavery work they print. Once they published a book written by Mr. Gallaudet, which related the story, I think, of the selling of Joseph; at any rate, it showed that Egyptian Slavery was wrong. A little girl in a Sunday school in one of the Southern States one day said to her teacher, "If it was wrong to make Joseph a slave, why is it not wrong to make Dinah, and Sambo, and Chloe slaves?" The Sunday school teacher and the church took the alarm, and complained of the Sunday School Union: "You are poisoning the South with your religion, telling the children that Slavery is wicked." It was a serious thing, "dissolution of the Union," "levying war," or at least, "misdemeanor," for aught I know, "obstructing an officer of the United States." What do you think the Sunday School Union did? It suppressed the book! It printed one Sunday school book which had a line against Egyptian Slavery and then suppressed it! and it cannot be had to-day. Amid all their million books, there is not a line against Slavery, save what Cowper simg. There are five million Sunday school scholars in the United States, and there is not a Sunday school manual which has got a word against Slavery in it.
You all know the American Tract Society. Last year the American Tract Society in Boston spent $79,983.46; it visited more than fourteen thousand families; it distributed 3,334,920 tracts—not a word against Slavery in them all. The American Tract Society in New York last year visited 568,000 families, containing three million ​ persons; it spent for home purposes $406,707; for foreign purposes $422,294; it distributed tracts in English, French, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, Hungarian, and Welsh—and it did not print one single line, nor whisper a single word against this great national sin of Slavery! Nay, worse:—if it finds English books which suit its general purpose, but containing matter adverse to Slavery, it strikes out all the anti-Slavery matter, then prints and circulates the book. Is the Tract Society also managed by Jesuits from the Homan Church?
At this day, 600,000 slaves are directly and personally owned by men who are called "professing Christians," "members in good fellowship" of the churches of this land; 80,000 owned by Presbyterians, 225,000 by Baptists, 250,000 owned by Methodists:—600,000 slaves in this land owned by men who profess themselves Christians, and in churches sit down to take the Lord's Supper, in the name of Christ and God! There are ministers who own their fellow-men—"bought with a price."
Does not this look as if Slavery were to triumph over Freedom?
VI. Slavery corrupts the judicial class. In America, especially in New England, no class of men has been so much respected as the judges; and for this reason: we have had wise, learned, excellent men for our judges; men who reverenced the higher law of God, and sought by human statutes to execute justice. You all know their venerable names, and how reverentially we have looked up to them. Many of them are dead ; some are still living, and their hoary hairs are a crown of glory on a judicial life, without judicial blot. But of late Slavery has put a different class of men on the benches of the Federal Courts—mere tools of the Government ; creatures which get their appointment as pajr for past political service, and as pay in advance for imquity not yet accomplished. You see the consequences. Note the zeal of the Federal Judges to execute iniquity by statute and destroy liberty. See how ready they are to support the Fugitive Slave Bill, which tramples on the spirit of the Constitution, and its letter too; which outrages justice and violates the most sacred principles and precepts of Christianity. Not a United States judge, circuit or district, has uttered one ​ word against that "bill of abominations." Nay, how greedy they are to get victims under it! No wolf loves better to rend a lamb into fragments than these judges to kidnap a Fugitive Slave, and punish any man who dares to speak against it. You know what has happened in Fugitive Slave Bill Courts^ You remember the "miraculous" rescue of Shadrach ; the peaceable snatching of a man from the hands of a cowardly kidnapper was "high treason;" it was "levying war." You remember the "trial" of the rescuers ! Judge Sprague's charge to the Grand Jury, that, if they thought the question was which they ought to obey, the law of man or the law of God, then they must "obey both I" serve God and Mammon, Christ and the devil, in the same act! You remember the "trial," the "ruling" of the Bench, the swearing on the stand, the witness coming back to alter and "enlarge his testimony" and have another gird at the prisoner! You have not forgotten the trials before Judge Kane at Philadelphia, and Judge Qrier at Christiana and Wilkesbarre.
These are natural results of causes well known. You cannot escape a principle. Enslave a negro, will you?—you doom to bondage your own sons and daughters, by your own act.
Do you forget the Union meeting in Faneuil Hall, November 26th, 1850, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving Day? It was called to indorse the Fugitive Slave Bill—a meeting to promote the stealing of men in Boston, of your fellow-worshippers aud my parishoners. Do you remember the Democratic Herods and Whig Pilates, who were made friends that day, melted into one unity of despotism, in order that they might enslave men? They had unity of idea and unity of action, that day. Do you remember the speeches of Mr. Curtis and Mr. Hallett; their yelp against the unalienable rights of men; their howl at God's Higher Law? The worser half of that platform is now the United States Court;—the Fugitive Slave Bill judge, the United States attorney. They got their offices for their political services past and for their character—very fitting reward to very fitting men! A man professes a fondness for kidnapping, hurrahs for it in Faneuil Hall:—give him the United States judgeship; make him United States attorney—fit to fit! When Slavery dispenses offices, ​ every service rendered to despotism is well paid. Men with foreheads of brass, with iron elbows, with consciences of gum elastic, whose chief commandment of their law, their prophets, and their gospel, is to
"—— crook the pregnant hinges of the knee,
Where thrift may follow fawning;"
verily they shall have their reward! They shall become Fugitive Slave Bill judges; yea, attorneys of the United States! In 1836, a poor slave girl named Med, who had been brought from Louisiana to Boston by her master, sued for her freedom in the courts of Massachusetts. Mr. Benjamin R. Curtis appeared as the slave-hunter's counsel, long, and stoutly, and learnedly contending that she should not receive her freedom by the laws, constitution, and usages of this Commonwealth, but should be sent back to eternal bondage. On the 7th of March, 1850, Mr. Webster made his speech against Freedom, so fatal to himself; but soon after found such a fire in his rear that he must return to Massachusetts to rescue his own popularity—then apparently in great peril. On the 29th of April, the same Mr. Curtis, faithful to his proclivities towards Slavery, made a public address to the apostate senator, at the Revere House, and expressed his "abounding gratitude for the ability and fidelity" which Mr. Webster had "brought to the defence of the Constitution and the Union;" praising him as "eminently vigilant, wise, and faithful to pur country, without shadow of turning." At the Union meeting in Faneuil Hall (Nov. 26th), Mr. Curtis declared the fugitive slaves "a class of foreigners," "with whose rights Massachusetts has nothing to do. It is enough for us that they have no right to be here." Other services, ​ similar or analogous, which he has rendered to the cause of inhumanity, I here pass by.
This is a world in which "men do nothing for nothing;" the workman is worthy of his hire; in due time Mr. Curtis received his reward.
He has lately (June 7th) "charged" the Grand Jury of the Circuit Court of the United States, pointing out their duty in respect to recent events in Boston. A federal enactment of 1790 provides that, if any person shall wilfully obstruct, resist, or oppose any officer of the United States in executing any legal writ or process thereof, he shall be imprisoned not more than twelve months, and fined not more than three hundred dollars. Mr. Curtis charges that the offence is "a misdemeanour:" to constitute the crime, it is "not necessary to prove the accused used or even threatened active violence." If a midtitude of persons should assemble, even in a public highway, with the design to stand together, and thus prevent the officer from passing freely along the way, … this would of itself, and without any active violence, be such an obstruction as is contemplated by this law."
So much for what constitutes the crime. Now see who are criminals: "All who are present and actually obstruct, resist, or oppose, are of course guilty. Bo are all who are present, leagued in the common design, and so situated as to be able, in case of need, to afford assistance to those actually engaged, though they do not actually obstruct, resist, or oppose." That is, they are guilty of a misdemeanour, because they are in the neighbourhood of such as oppose a constable of the United States, and are "able" "to afford assistance." "If they are present for the purpose of affording assistance, though no overt act is done by them, they are still guilty under this law." They are guilty of a misdemeanour, not merely as accessory before the fact, but as principals, for "in misdemeanours all are principals." "Not only those who are present, but those who, though absent when the offence was committed, did procure, counsel, command, or abet others to commit the offence, are indictable as principals." But what amounts to such counselling as constitutes a misdemeanour? "Evincing an express liking, approbation, or assent to another's criminal design," ​ "It need not appear that the precise time, or place, or means advised, were used." So all who evinced "an express liking, approbation, or assent" to the rescue of Mr. Burns are guilty of a misdemeanour; if they evinced "an express liking" that he should be rescued by a miracle wrought by Almighty God,—and some did express "approbation" of that "means,"—they are indictable, guilty of a "misdemeanour;" "it need not appear that the precise time, or place, or means advised, were used!" If any coloured woman, during the wicked week—which was ten days long—prayed that God would deliver Anthony, as it is said his angel delivered Peter, or said "amen" to such a prayer, she was "guilty of a misdemeanour:" to be indicted as a "principal."
So every man in Boston who, on that bad Friday, stood in the streets of Boston between Court Square and T Wharf, was "guilty of a misdemeanour," liable to a fine of three hundred dollars, and to gaoling for twelve months. All who at Faneuil Hall stirred up the minds of the people in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Bill; all who shouted, who clapped their hands at the words or the countenance of their favourites, or who expressed "approbation" by a whisper of "assent," are "guilty of misdemeanour." The very women who stood for four days at the street corners, and hissed the infamous slave-hunters and their coadjutors, they, too, ought to be punished by fine of three hundred dollars and imprisonment for a year! Well, there were fifteen thousand persons "assembled" "in the highway" of the City of Boston that day opposed to kidnapping; half the newspapers in the country towns of Massachusetts "evinced an express liking" for freedom, and opposed the kidnapping; they are all "guilty of a misdemeanour;" they are "principals." Nay, the few ministers all over the State, who preached that kidnapping was a sin; those who read brave words out of the Old Testament or the New; those who prayed that the victim might escape: they, likewise, were "guilty of a misdemeanour," liable to be fined three hundred dollars and gaoled for twelve months. Excellent Fugitive Slave Bill Judge! Mr. Webster did wisely in making that appointment! He chose an appropriate tool. The charge was worthy of the worst days of Jeffreys and the second James!
​ We all know against whom this judicial iniquity was directed—against men who at Faneuil Hall, under the pictured and sculptured eyes of John Hancock and the three Adamses, appealed to the spirit of humanity, not yet crushed out of your heart and mine, and lifted up their voices in favour of freedom and the eternal law of God. If he had called us by our names he could not have made the thing plainer. You know the zeal of the United States Attorney, you have heard of the swearing before the Grand Jury and at the Grand Jury. Did the Judge's lightning only glow with judicial ardour and zeal for the Fugitive Slave Bill?—or was it also red with personal malignity and family spleen? Judge you!
But, alas! there was a Grand Jury, and the Salmonean thunder of the Fugitive Slave Bill Judge fell harmless—quenched, conquered, disgraced, and brutal—to the ground. Poor Fugitive Slave Bill Court! it can only gnash its teeth against freedom of speech in Faneuil Hall; only bark and yelp against the unalienable rights of man, and howl against the Higher Law of God! it cannot bite! Poor imbecile, malignant Court! What a pity that the Fugitive Slave Bill Judge was not himself the Grand Jury, to order the indictment! what a shame that the Attorney was not a petty jury to convict! Then New England, like Old, might have had her " bloody assizes," and Boston streets might have streamed with the hearths gore of noble men and women; and himian heads might have decked the pinnacles all round the town; and Judge Curtis and Attorney Hallett might have had their place with Judge Jeffreys and John Boilman of old. What a pity that we have a Grand Jury and a traverse jury to stand between the malignant arm of the slave-hunter and the heart of you and me! Perhaps the Court will try again, and find a more pliant Grand Jury, easier to intimidate. Let me suggest to the Court, that the next time-it should pack its jurors om the Marshal's "guard." Then there will be unity of idea; of action, too—the Court a figure of equilibrium.
At a Fugitive Slave Bill meeting in Faneuil Hall, it is easy to ask a minister a question designed to be insulting, ​ and not dare listen to the proffered reply; easy to bark at justice, and howl at the unalienable rights of man ; easy to yelp out the vengeance of a corrupt administration of slave-hunters upon all who love the Higher Law of God; but He himself has so fashioned the hearts of men that we instinctively hate all tyranny, all oppression, all wrong; and the hand of history brands ineffaceable disgrace on the brass foreheads of all such as enact iniquity by statute, and execute wickedness as law. The memory of the wicked shall rot. Scroggs and Jeffreys also got their appointment as pay for their service and their character—fitting bloodhounds for a fitting king. For near two hundred years their names have been a stench in the face of the Anglo-Saxon tribe. Others as unscrupulous may take warning by their fate.
Thus has Slavery debauched the Federal Courts.
VII. Alas me! Slavery has not ended yet its long career of sin. Its corruption is seven-fold. It debauches the elected offices of our City, and even our State. In the Sims time of 1851, the laws of Massachusetts were violated nine days running, and the Free Soil Governor sat in the State House as idle as a feather in his chair. In the wicked week of 1854, the Whig Governor sat in the seat of his predecessor; Massachusetts was one of the inferior counties of Virginia, and a slave-hunter had eminent domain over the birthplace of Franklin and the burial-place of Hancock! Nay, against our own laws the Free Soil Mayor put the neck of Boston in the hands of a "train-band captain"—the people "wondering much to see how he did ride! "Boston was a suburb of Alexandria; the mayor a slave-catcher for our masters at the South! You and I were only fellow-slaves!
​ I.—The acquisition of Dominion—and then all Hayti—as new slave territory.
II.—The acquisition of Cuba, by purchase, or else by private fillibustering and public war,—as new slave territory.
III.—The re-establishment of Slavery in all the free States, by judicial "decision" or legislative enactment. Then the master of the North may "sit down with his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument!"
IV. The restoration of the African Slave-Trade, which is already seriously proposed and defended in the Southern journals. Nay, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations recommend the first step towards it—the withdrawal of our fleet from the coast of Africa. You cannot escape the consequence of your first principle: if Slavery is right, then the Slave-Trade is right; the traffic between Guinea and New Orleans is no worse than between Virginia and New Orleans; it is no worse to kidnap in Timbuctoo than in Boston.
V. A yet further quarrel must be sought with Mexico, and more slave territory be stolen from her.
Who shall oppose this five-fold wickedness? The Fugitive Slave Bill party;—the Nebraska Enslavement party? Northern servility has hitherto been ready to grant more than Southern arrogance dared to demand! All this looks as if the third hypothesis would be fulfilled, and Slavery triumph over Freedom; as if the nation would expunge the Dechiration of Independence from the scroll of Time, and, instead of honouring Hancock and the Adamses and "Washington, do homage to Kane and Grier and Curtis and Hallett and Loring. Then the preamble to our Constitution might read—to establish injustice, insure domestic strife, hinder the common defence, disturb the general welfare, and inflict the curse of bondage on ourselves and our posterity." Then we shall honour the Puritans no more, but their prelatical tormentors; nor reverence the great Reformers, only the inquisitors of Rome. Yea, we may tear the name of Jesus out of the American Bible; yes, God's name; worship the devil at our Lord's table, Iscariot for Redeemer!
See the steady triumph of despotism! Ten years more, ​ like the ten years past, and it will be all over with the liberties of America. Everything must go down, and the heel of the tyrant will be on our neck. It will be all over with the Rights of Man in America, and you and I most go to Austria, to Italy, or to Siberia for our freedom; or perish with the liberty which our fathers fought for and secured to themselves—not to their faithless sons! Shall America thus miserably perish? Such is the aspect of things to-day!
But are the people alarmed? No, they fear nothing—only the tightness in the money-market! Next Tuesday at sunrise every bell in Boston will ring joyously; every cannon will belch sulphurous welcome from its brazen throat. There will be processions,—the Mayor and the Aldermen and the Marshal and the Naval Officer, and, I suppose, the "Marshal's Guard," very appropriately taking their places. There is a chain on the common to-day—it is the same chain that was around the Court House in 1851—it is the chain that bound Sims; now it is a festal chain. There are mottoes about the common—"They mutually pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honour." I suppose it means that the Mayor and the kidnappers did this. "The spirit of '76 still lives." Lives, I suppose, in the Supreme Court of Fugitive Slave Bill judges. "Washington, Jefferson, and their compatriots!—their names are sacred in the heart of every American." That, I suppose, is the opinion of Thomas Sims and of Anthony Burns. And opposite the great Park Street Church, where a noble man is this day, trust, discoursing noble words, for he has never yet been found false to Freedom—"Liberty and independence, our fathers' legacy!—God forbid that we their sons should prove recreant to the trust!" It ought to read, "God forgive us that we their sons have proved so recreant to the trust! "So they will celebrate the 4th of July, and call it "Independence Day!" The foolish press of France, bought and beaten and trodden on by Napoleon the Crafty, is full of talk about the welfare of the "Great Nation!" Philip of Macedon was conquering the Athenian allies town by town; he destroyed and swept off two and thirty cities, selling their children as slaves. All the Cassandrian ​ eloquence of Demosthenes could not rouse degenerate Athens from her idle sleep. She also fell—the fairest of all free States; corrupted first—forgetful of God's higher law. Shall America thus perish, all immature!
So was it in the days of old: they ate, they drank, they planted, they builded, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Koah entered into the ark, and the flood came and devoured them all!
Well, is this to be the end? Was it for this the pilgrims came over the sea? Does Forefathers' Rock assent to it? Was it for this that the New England clergy prayed, and their prayers became the law of the land for a hundred years? Was it for this that Cotton planted in Boston a little branch of the Lord's vine, and Roger Williams and Higginson—he still lives in an undegenerate son—did the same in the city which they called of peace, Salem? Was it for this that Eliot carried the Gospel to the Indians? that Chauncey, and Edwards, and Hopkins, and Mayhew, and Channing, and Ware laboured and prayed? for this that our fathers fought—the Adamses, Washington, Hancock? for this that there was an eight years' war, and a thousand battle-fields? for this the little monument at Acton, Concord, Lexington, West Cambridge, Danvers, and the great one over there on the spot which our fathers' blood made so red? Shall America become Asia Minor? New England Italy? Boston such as Athens—dead and rotten? Yes I if we do not mend, and speedily mend. Ten years more, and the liberty of America is all gone. We shall fall, the laugh, the byword, the proverb, the scorn, the mock of the nations, who shall cry against us. Hell from beneath shall be moved to meet us at our coming, and in derision shall it welcome us:—
"The heir of all the ages, and the youngest born of time!"
We shall lie down with the unrepentant prodigals of old time, damned to everlasting infamy and shame.
Would you have it so? Shall it be?
To-day, America is a debauched young man, of good blood, fortune, and family, but the companion of gamesters and brawlers; reeking with wine; wasting his substance in riotous living; in the lap of harlots squandering the ​ life which his mother gave him. Shall he return? Shall he perish? One day may determine.
Shall America thus die? I look to the past,—Asia, Africa, Europe, and they answer, "Yes!" Where is the Hebrew Commonwealth; the Roman Republic; where is liberal Greece,—Athens, and many a far-famed Ionian town; where are the Commonwealths of Mediæval Italy; the Teutonic free cities—German, Dutch, or Swiss? They have all perished. Not one of them is left. Parian statues of liberty, sorely mutilated, still remain; but the Parian rock whence Liberty once hewed her sculptures out—it is all gone. Shall America thus perish? Greece and Italy both answer, "Yes!" I question the last fifty years of American history, and it says, "Yes." I look to the American pulpit, I ask the five miUion Sunday school scholars, and they say, "Yes." I ask the Federal court, the Democratic party, and the Whig, and the answer is still the same.
But I close my eyes on the eleven past missteps we have taken for Slavery; on that seven-fold clandestine corruption; I forget the Whig party; I forget the present administration; I forget the Judges of the Courts;—I remember the few noblest men that there are in society, Church and State; I remember the grave of my father, the lessons of my mother's life; I look to the spirit of this age—it is the nineteenth century, not the ninth;—I look to the history of the Anglo-Saxons in America, and the history of mankind; I remember the story and the song of Italian and German patriots; I recall the dear words of those great-minded Greeks—Ionian, Dorian, Ætolian; I remember the Romans who spoke, and sang, and fought for truth and right; I recollect those old Hebrew prophets, earth's nobler sons, poets and saints; I call to mind the greatest, noblest, purest soul that ever blossomed in this dusty world;—and I say, "No!" Truth shall triumph, justice shall be law! And, if America fail, though she is one fortieth of God's family, and it is a great loss, there are other nations behind us ; our truth shall not perish, even if we go down.
But we shall not fail! I look into your eyes—young men and women, thousands of you, and men and women far enough from young! I look into the eyes of fifty ​ thousand other men and women, whom, in the last eight months, I have spoken to, face to face, and they say, "No! America shall not fail!"
I remember the women, who were never found faithless when a sacrifice was to be offered to great principles; I look up to my God, and I look into my own heart, and I say, "We shall not fail! We shall not fail!"
This, at my side, it is the willow; it is the symbol of weeping:—but its leaves are deciduous; the autumn wind will strew them on the ground; and beneath, here is a perennial plant; it is green all the year through. When this willow branch is leafless, the other is green with hope, and its buds are in its bosom; its buds will blossom. So it is with America.
Did our fathers live? are we dead? Even in our ashes live their holy fires! Boston only sleeps; one day she will wake! Massachusetts will stir again! New England will rise and walk! the vanished North be found once more queenly and majestic! Then it will be seen that Slavery is weak and powerless in itself, only a phantom of the night.
Slavery is a "finality,"—is it? There shall be no "agitation,"—not the least,—shall there? There is a Hispaniola in the South, and the South knows it. She sits on a powder magazine, and then plays with fire, while humanity shoots rockets all round the world. To mutilate, to torture, to burn to death revolted Africans whom outrage has stung to crime—that is only to light the torches of San Domingo. This black bondage will be red freedom one day: nay, lust, vengeance, redder yet. I would not wait till that flood comes and devours all.
When the North stands up, manfully, united, we can tear down Slavery in a single twelvemonth; and, when we do unite, it must be not only to destroy Slavery in the territories, but to uproot every weed of Slavery throughout this whole wide land. Then leanness will depart from our souls; then the blessing of God will come upon us; we shall have a Commonwealth based on righteousness, which is the strength of any people, and shall stand longer than Egypt,—national fidelity to God our age-outlasting pyramid!
* ↑ The above, and many more similar declarations, may be found in a little pamphlet—"Familiar Letters to John B. Fitzpatrick, the Catholic Bishop of Boston, by an Independent Irishman." Boston, 1864.
* ↑ Richmond. Examiner for June 30, 1854.
* ↑ Richmomd Examiner, June 23, 1854.
* ↑ Charleston Standard (S. C.), June 21, 1854.
* ↑ While this volume is passing through the press, another example of this same corruption appears. The Senate passes a bill to protect United States officers engaged in kidnapping citizens of the free States, from the justice of the people. Such kidnappers are to be tried in the kidnappers' court.
* ↑ The girl was set free, and the principle laid down that slaves coming: to a free State with the consent of their masters, secured their freedom. An account of the case was published in the Boston Daily Advertiser of August 29, 1836, and introduced with the following editorial comment:—"In some of the States there is, we believe, legislative provision for cases of this sort [namely, allowing the master to bring and keep slaves in bondage], and it would seem that some such provision is necessary in this State, unless we would prohibit citizens of the slave-holding States from travelling in this State with their families, and unless we would permit such of them as wish to emancipate their slaves, to throw them at their pleasure upon the people of this State."
* ↑ The experiment was made; the brother-in-law of the Fugitive Slave Bill Judge was put on the jury, and indictments were found in October and November.
* ↑ Referring to the floral ornaments that day on the desk.