Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1854-09-07
The Transcript on WING Virtue.

The Transcript ON w mig
The Worcester Transcript, until about a
week ago, was distinguished for the sublimity
of its stupidity; now, it begins to be remark
able for the intensity of its cant. Whiggery
as formerly represented by the organ, was a
harmless ridiculous absurdity; whiggery as
now represented by the organ, is system of
impudent hypocrisy. Formerly, the political
ethics of the Transcript was subsidiary to the
gorgeous grandeur of its rhetoric; now, its
rhetoric is subordinate to its impudent pre-
tensions to political virtue. One would al
most suppose that the genius of the .Egis Of a
year ago, had made migration to the Tran
script Office.
The Transcript in its leader of Wednesday,
reviews the course of the Wing party in re-
lation to Slavery, since 1917; and it does so
almost as ENORMOUSLY as Mr.. Pecksniff was
wont to do when reviewing his own virtuous
course towards mankind in general. The
Transcript confesses that the Wing party pas
sed the Compromises, Fugitive Slave Law
and all; but it claims that the motive with
which the party acted. sanctioned and sancti-
fed its whole proceedings. The motive adduc-
ed by the Transcript is a novel one; however
valid it may be, we leave tito others to Judge.
They passed the Fugitive Slave Law coded
seventy thousand square miles of free territory
to slayeholding Texas; voted $l0,o00,0OO to
Texas in order to enable her to extend and
perpetuate Slavery, and finally voted at Balti-
more, that all laws sustaining Slavery were as
fixed and irrepealable as the laws of the Modes
and Persians-from what motive do you sup
pose: From conscientious belief, says the
Transcript, that their course would "square
with the true interests of freedom In order
'sthat the North and South might labor to-
gether, as brethren of one common household,
to remove the burthen of sin and shame which
the inprudence and sinful error of the Fathers
imposed upon us.
Our illustrious neighbor labors through a
column and half, in this strain, to prove that
the Wing party was, and is, cirtaous party,
however simple confding innocent, and trust
full it may have been. Ifitvoted an immense
tract of free territory to the Shareholders of
Texas, it was not that it might become Stare
territory that was not the n0tice. 1t be-
came part of a slave State, of course, and was
thus made subject to slave law but that was
of no consequence to the Wing party so long
as that immaculate party had the sweet con-
sciousness of feeling that the motive ithad, in
ceding that territory, was ''square with the
Slave Law was passed, opening every door in
the free North to the bloodhounds Of the south;
estimating the conscience of Yankee Q. S.
Commissioner at So; compelling every man
in the country to pay for the hunting of slaves;
and reducing the various State executives and
military organizations of the North into the
position of Southern vassals yet the Tran
script argues that these things cannot be charg-
ed to the Wings, because the motive Of
the Wings, in voting for the Fugitive Slave
Law, was $50 square with the truest interest
of Freedom"
Now, the question of motives, Independent
Of acts, is question in moral philosophy
which has involved great number of deer
Inlnkers IN perpleXlty. Inc transcript seems
to have settled it in its own mind; but al
though that paper has reputation for specu-
lative profundity and rhetorical originality
such as neither Des Cartes, Malebranche, nor
Locke ever dared to make pretensions to, it is
doubtful if its views on wing virtue, based
simply on " mpOtioe," will be generally accept
ed. The argument of the Transcript is an
additional inducement to us to be careful how
we trust the " aohig party" party which,
according to one of its own organs, was only
anti-slayery in motive; but yirulenty, in
tensely, aggressively pro-slayery in action, is
not, in our opinion, party which is entitled
to the confidence of those whose are both
anti-slavery in motive and action.