Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1863-05-21

AACtllSs
Coming to their Senses.
Stree speech is our birthright; living we
will maintain it; dying we will assert it,"
shouted c. Godfrey Gunther- whoever he
may be e at the Vallandigham indignation
meeting in New York day or two ago, and
a mob, which has fought free speech for the
past thirty years, responded with laundering
cheers.
The persecution of the advocates of un-
popular opinions in this country has history
of singular uniformity and consistency. 1t
began in earnest when the first organized
anti-slayery effort took the form of strug-
gle for the right of petition, and continued,
with every change of the issue, much of the
time at high tide Of successful experiment,
till little more than two years ago-when
the northern pro-savery mobs won their last
triumph in Boston under mayor Wightman,
and southern pro-slavery mobs enlarged the
sphere Of operations and let loose the dogs
of war During nearly the whole of this pc
Rod anti-slavery men have held their conyic-
tons in the free states at the price of social
and political prescription, and have advocated
them at their personal peril. In the slave
states lynch law and murder have been the
invariable answer to the advocates of the
rights of man in the presence of a system
which denied and destroyed all human rights.
The mob in either case has drawn its support
from society, the worse classes rife for the
state prison and the gallows, generally crowd
ing to tine 'front.' while the respectability-
gentlemen OF property and standing -crouched
at their backs.
Times are changed, indeed, and men are
changed with them. The country has learn
ed that the hunted and prescribed ideas of the
last quarter of century were in the main
right, and that the mobs, that lived upon the
quasi encouragement of the majority, were in
the mass wrong. The heresies of the last
generation are the law of the present. The
stone which the builders rejected has become
the head of the corner. The gospel of anti
slavery truth, once driven to a stable attic in
Sudbury street, Boston, to escape the imposi-
ton OF violent hands, is approved by the high
est authority in the land, and no officer in the
public service dares to stand in its path. But
disloyal men, who have nothing to lose and
everything to gain by civil disorder and social
anarchy, have thrown their paper pellets at
the new order of things, and have grown furi-
Gus when it has ridden over them in triumph
Sharp hands have been here and there laid
that the blade they have sharpened Tor others
may have quite other uses than they design.
What right have they to complain? What
right have Vallandgham or any of his pro-
slavery and half-loyal gang of worshppers to
complain that as they have meted out to 9th
ers, even so it is now melted out to them?
Fine consistency, indeed, for these lifelong
violators of this divine. right to assume its
championship the moment their own example
returns in these latter days to plague them
Vallandigham claiming the robes of martyr
dom in the name of free speech! Seymour
denouncing Gen. Burnside and his court mar
tial as the fruit of despotism! Capt. Rynders
with his hands still bloody from his last mob,
shouting against invasions of personal liberty
c. Godfrey Gunther shouting like an oracle
''Free speech is our birth-rightl" Dick Tur-
pin calling in question the morality of high
way robbery Jack Shepard Indignantly de-
nouncing the habit of housed breaking! When
the devil was sick the devil a monk would be.
If it were advisable that he should ever return
to sanity and health unquestonably the rest
of the rhyme would follow true.
Rerenous a nos montons-i. e. to C. Cod
frey Gunther. 1t is refreshing to hear the
right doctrine even from such lips Truth
cannot always choose the instruments by
which it shall achieve success. But wise men
will not reject it if, instead of coming to its
Jerusalem in pomp and state, it rides now as
it has often ridden before, on the foal of an ass
II II