Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-03-22
IN MEM0RIAM.

1t has been said that one of the chief penal
ties of great men, after they are dead, is to
have bawdy houses named after them. Ger
tain it is, that no man who has acquired a wor-
thy reputation is entirely safe from the praise
of flash men for many generations. The name
of Franklin covers the entrance to as many
dance houses and groggeries as to conservato-
iies of art and literature. But Franklin is not
to be blamed for it he is only to be pitied
Jefferson, his contemporary and friend, doesn't
fare quite as bad Yet if he could look down
from that sphere of light in which his spirit is
doubtless rejoicing, he would certainly beg to
be delivered. 1t is very cruel for Mr.. Hallett
and Mr.. Gushing, and Mr.. George B. Loring,
to meet, on his own birth day, for the specific
and deliberate purpose of praising Mr.. Jeffer-
son-the man who wrote the "gttering gen.
eralities" wrote them not as a flourish of his
revolutionary pen, but took them bodily from
the brilliant context of his life For if any
man, in those virtuous days of the Republic,
manifested consistent and unfaltering devo-
ton to the cause of human rights, under every
variety of circumstance and pressure, that
Iuau WIS lHOIndS JeHerSOH-
The occasion for this Democratic Sin me.
moriam" has not been clearly explained. The
call simply states that bis birthday will be eel
ebrated under the auspices of the Salem De.
mocracy on the LIST of April next, when eulo-
gies on the peerless statesman will be pro-
nounced by the gentlemen whom we have
named. The eulogists fifty enough train to-
gcther. They have passed through the same
political changes, differing only in shrewdness
and agility. Lovely in their lives, in their
deaths they will not be divided. Many of our
readers will remember when they were all alb
olitionists together But, for reasons which it
does not become us to fathom, and by ways
which are past finding out, they have become
apostles and martyrs of that peculiar Democ-
racy which thrives only on Massachusetts, soil.
Their political records are stained with aposta-
cy from those principles in establishing which
the man whom they propose to honor achieved
his greatest and purest fame. Yetas politicians
las representatives of that peculiar phase of
politics which is now TRANSPORTED in the bred
Scott decision, and which assumes, not that all
men are endowed with the same inalienable
rights, but that one class of men have no
rights which other men are bound to respect,
they meet to canonze anew the memory of the
first practical abolitionist in the country. We
do not believe their eulogies will be heard
above the clouds which brush against the tops
of the Naumkeag forests. The Democrats of
to-day are as far removed from that type of
II II. L. 1t,
spectacle, but immortal, as the bacchanals in
the vile cellars named after Ben Franklin are
from the man who took the sceptre from ty-
rants and rayished the lightning from heaven.
We could suggest text from almost every
page of the written works of Jefferson, and
deed from nearly every day of his life, which
could afford encouragement and satisfaction to
the friends of universal liberty. The first
phrase which strikes our eye as we open at
random the voluminous correspondence of the
departed patriot, reads, at were contrary to
feeling, and indeed ridiculous to suppose that a
man has less rights in himself than one of his
neighbors, or indeed all of them put together.
This would be slavery, and not that liberty
which the bill of rights made invioate, and for
the preservation OF which our government is
charged" The sentiment is one which he
acted upon during his whole life. 1t is the
sentiment on which every political anti-slavery
enterprise must rest. 1t is the sentiment
which, if accepted without mental reserva-
ton, will be an invincible argument in favor
of such personal liberty bill as that before our
own legislature, and which we trust is to be-
come the law of this State. But where in the
whole life of Jefferson, either Mr.. Gushing
or Mr.. Hallett or Mr.. Loring will find any
thing to applaud is beyond conception, unless,
like the Brahmins, when they backslide from
the faith, they propose to hold solemn, pen
itential feast, and atone for their late apostacy
by chanting their early songs.