Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1854-02-06


with kings and autocrats with John Mitchell fog
ging slaves through rice swamp, or along the
rows of cotton on his plantations!
The public wish TO know how ii happens, even
il slavery can be defended, that the defence Of
1t should be SO congenial task 10 MIR. Mitchell
There are some necessary tasks that honorable
men do not like to perform. If capital punish
ment be allowed, some one must be the hang
man. If the guotine must stand, some poor
caitiff must assist its functions. But what should
we think, # those very men that had spent their
lives in endeavors to abolish the gallows and put
away the barbarous ratting guillotne, should
rush into the first vacancy, and parade with vo.
cferous pride their elevation TO the dignity OF
hangman or an eAeculioner? There were men
enough to do the dirty work Of Slavery; men
born upon level with their tasks. We did not
expect TO see a great reiormer-a champion of
Human Rights, after an Industrious circumnaviga-
ton of the globe as martyr for freedom, using
his very first hours of liberty IN rubbing down the
sniff and spawned limbs of Slavery. Some other
man surely might have been found for such
function.
But we cannot continue in this painful strain.
The fall of such man as John Michel has been
thought to be, cannot excite only Indignation
There is pity, too. There is a strong and gener-
Gus uprising in every heart, protesting that it
shall not be! We instnctively feel that it is d
dream--one of those dreams of impossible dis
honor, that sometimes torment good men; and
stand waiting for ii to break, and the VISION
airy horror TO fly away back to the limbo of muir
ky folly, whence it issued
o Sir, had all this that has happened, passed
in dream, would you not have walked, bathed
in sweat, to say, shudderng, "What houid
nightmare has been astride of "my soul God
save me from even such visions of wrong!' That
which you would thus feel, we do feel for YOU
That which You would thus calculate TO God ,men
speak to each other. l tell you no news, Sir,
when say that you have fallen down in the
sight of the whole community, fom the place Of
a champion of Liberty to the servile office Of
creeping all the days of your life on your belly
for Slavery!
Once you stood like some great oak, whose
wide circumference was lifted up above all the
pastures, the glory of all beholders, and covert
for thousand tmid slnging-b birds. Now you lie
at full length along the ground with mighty rup-
tured roots, ragged and upturned TO heaven; with
broken boughs and despoiied leaves! Never again
shall Gods singing birds OF liberty come down
through all the heavenly air, TO rest themselves
on your waving top Fallen! Uprooted! Doomed
to the ak and the hearth!
cannot hide from myself that there yet re-
mains for you dismal age, desolate and cheer
less solitude Of infrmities Time, that would
have carried you onward, garlanded with achieve
ments worthy of a man living for men, and sur
rounded by The genial sympathies of loving hearts,
now will drift you to a polar solitude, without
love, or sympathy, or pity, or honor. You will
sweep coldly on upon a dark current like an ev-
enrolling iceberg, that, rolling and resounding
ever SO much, gains no rest by changing place.
But there is future beyond this, even on earth.
There is time promised, and already dawnng,
in which the human family shall be one great
Brotherhood, and Love shall be the law Of man.
In that golden age there shall be research made
for all the names that, since the world began,
have wrought and suffered for the good of their
kind. There will be memorable resurrection of
forgotten names. From the obscurity into which
Despoiism has flung all who dared to defy it,
from the shades and darkness of oblivion by
which oppressors would cover down the memory
of all who proclaimed human right and human
liberty, they will come forth shining like the sun,
and none be forgotten that iaborcd TO bring to
pzss the works freedom In that day, while
len thousand names shall be heard, in all their
number not one shall utter that gone and forgot.
ten name-John Mitchell.
But, come back TO US, John Mitchell; it is not
yet too late Our hearts and our hands shall help
you, if you will but stir yourself to break that
enchantment that some IDagn mischief, come
from the misty realm of cruel oppression, has
breathed upon you. The enchantnent and the
enchanter are dIspossessed when any bold hand
snaiches and reverseS his wand. Reverse your
utterances! You have been betrayed into saying
a great folly You have been betrayed into poor
and deceitful defense Of it. If you abide by it, it
will sink you out of the sight of all good men,
and forever. But recall it Reverse the rod
Say to US, 81 spake it in my anger, and l defend
ed il IN my wrath; but it is not worthy of me-
1t is not the truth of my heart or of my nature"
There is power of resurrection for you in these
few words as great as that of Gods final angel
1t will lift you up to our hearts again. 1t will
place you where Gods crown, with which he
will crown all true and noble souls shall rest un-
dimmed upon your brow!
But, if you will moi assert your better nature,
and achieve the noblest act of your life, victory
over yourself, then, sorrowIully, we must leave
you, like some false and hideous image, around
which, for the moment, chattering priests of op
preston have burned incense, but soon TO be cast
out, even by them, detected and desecrated
idol, forgotten Of men, and remembered only of
vermin-lizards that crawl darkling beneath the
twilight of poisonous weeds that grow and Irvine
abOut it.