Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1859-08-15
THE MoRPHY SUPPER.
LETTER FROM WENDELL PHILLIPS.

CnuSellS, ana JAMES MALktR, IISSlucht VI
Harvard University
GENTLEMEN Now that the Press has
ceased its ridicule of your homage to Morphy
at the Revere Houses criticism OF little I'M
portance,-I wish to present the scene to you
in different light.
You, Mr.. Chief Justice, represent the ldV OF
the commonwealth; TO you, Mr.. President, is
committed the moral guardianship ofthe young
men of her University. Yet find you both
at table of Jewellers, under roof whose
chief support and profit come from the illegal
sale OF intoxicating drink, and which boasts
itself the champion and head of an organized,
fragrant and avowed contempt of the laws of
the commonwealth No onewas surprised to
see at your side a Mayor wh5 owes his office
to the votes of that disordGly band whose
chief is the Revere House. Few wondered at
the presence of a Professor placed by private
munficence to watch over the piety and NOR
ais of your College, Mr.. President; though
manly protest against fashionable vice might
do something to redeem the Office from SEEM
ing only an eaves-drupping SPY on the opln-
ions and manners of young mel
But you, Mr.. Chief justice, know that
three-quarters, if not tour-fftls, of all crime
result from habits of intoXicaton; that nlne-
tenths, at least, of all the murterers you have
sent to the gallows, had never been murderers
had they not first been drunklrds. You can
look round you and back for fifty years, and
see places at the bar and on the bench, once
filled by genius and hope, nov vacant-thelr
tenants IN drunkards' graves. You know how
fearful the peril which modern civilization and
specially popular institutions encounter from
the cheapness of liquor and the habits OF IN
diligence in all our great cities; you know the
long ana eornost labors of noble men, for fifty
years, IN both hemispheres, against this evil
and the momentous experiment they are try
ing of legal prohibition to arrest it resulting
here in stringent law against the sale
of intoxicating drinks. You know also
that the Revere House is the insolent leader
of that heartless and selfish faction which, de-
teated before the people, seeks by unblushng
defiance OF law to overbear position and stat
ute.
And you, Mr.. President, the moral guardian
OF the young men of our University, well
know its venerable statutes and unceasing eff
forts to prevent the use OF wine within its
walls. You know how many, often the bright
est, names on your catalogue, too early mark
ed with the asterisk of death, owe their I'M
timely end to wine. Both q you know that
the presence OF men holding such offices as
yours goes as far as recreant Office and reputa-
ton can to make bad roof respectable.
Yet find you both at a midnight revel do
ing your utmost to give chafacter to haunt
which boasts its open and constant defiance of
the moral sense OF the State, solemnly express
ed in its statutes
No one denies, gentlemen, your right to in
dulge social habits you please in the privacy
OF your own dwellings; or, in travelling, to
use the customary accommodations of an inn,
even though intoxicating drink is sold on its
premises. Few will care to criticise, if, choos-
ing some decent roof, you join your fellows
and mock the moral sentiment of the commun-
ity by public carousal. But while you hold
these high offices, we, the citizens of COM
monwealth whose character you represent
emphatically deny your right to appear at lille
gal reveis in gilded grog-shop, which but for
the sanction of such as you had long ago met
the Indictment it deserves. How can we ex-
pect the police to execute a law upon which
the Chief Justice pours contempt by his exam
pie? How shall the Grand Jury indict the
nuisance of which the Supreme Bench has for
an hour made part! We, the citizens, have
right to claim that should public opinion, by
our labors, reach the point of presenting these
gorgeous grog shops at the criminal bar, we
shall not find their trequenters on the Bench.
Again and again, Mr.. Chief Justice have
heard you, at critical moments, in a voice
whose earnest emotions half checked its utter
ance, remind your audience of the sacred du-
ty resting on each man to respect and obey
the law assuring us that the welfare ofsociety
was bound up in this individual submission to
existing law. How shall the prisoner at the bar
reconcile the grave sincerity Of the magistrate
| with this needless disregard by the man of
most important laws If again the times
should call you to bid us smother Justice and
humanity at the command of statutes, we may
remind you with what heartless indifference
you treated the law you are sworn and paid to
uphold, and one on which the hearts of the
best men in the State were most strongly set
Was it not enough that you let history paint
you bowling beneath slave-hunter's chain to
enter your own court room; but must you al
so present yourself in public lifting to your
lips the wine cup, which, by the laws Of the
State over whose courts you preside, it is an
lndlctable offence and nuisance to sell you?
And let me remind you, Mr.. President, that
| even your young men sometimes pause amid
| scenes of temptation or in our streets where
every tenth door opens to vice,-pause at some
| chance thought of home or rising regard for
the sentiment of the community And sir,
should such frail purpose of even one youth
talter before the sight of his President in a
| circle OF wine bibberS, and that first step lead
to an unhonored grave, you will be bound to
remember that in the check and example you
| promised and were expected, and set to hold
| upon him, you wholly failed that in the most
impressible moments Of his life he saw the
virtue Of the State struggling with its sensual
| indulgence, its lust of dishonorable gain its
base pandering to appetite, already too strong !;
and in that struggle he saw your weight ostenta-
tiously thrown into the scale of open and con-
temptuous disregard of the moral sense of the
| State. remember well when from a pulpit
constantly Boosting that its new creed had
thrown away formal and hollow faith, and
| brought in the wholesome doctrine of works,
| you painted SO wildly, how hard it is for
| young men to say "No." Is this. sir. the
method you choose to illustrate the practical
value OF the new faith, and this the help you
extend to the faltering virtue of your pupils ?
| giving the sanction of your character and
office to the prince of rum sellers and law
breakers, and tiinging insult on one of the
noblest reforms of the age!
Observe, gentlemen, do not now arragn
you for your private habit Of wine drinking.
| don't complain that a Judge, who sees so
much crime come from it, still gives it his
countenance that clergyman-the chief
apostle of whose faith declared he would eat
no meat while the world stood, if so doing
made his brother to offend-still throws that
stumbling block in the way of his pupils
But | arraign the CHIEF JUSTICE of Massa
chusetts, and the PRESIDENT OF HARVARD
UNIVERSITY, because when the rum interest
of the State is marshalling its strength to beat
down the law by gross, open and avowed dis
obedience, they are found lending their names
character and office to give responsibility to
the grog-shop whose wealth enables it to lead
that dishonorable and disloyal effort. AS q
citizen, claim that you disgraced your places
If not yourselves; and hope the day will
come when such insult by such high officers
to any statute of the Commonwealth, much
more to one representing its highest mora
| purpnea will ha d,op,a1 rouon annuch 20 80,