Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1863-07-16

rcMarKs on the very unamlaDlc anu acrimonious
temper habitually displayed by the men in New
England who pursue the vocation Of political re-
formers and social philanthropsts. Their hearts,
hs says, may overflow with an abundance of love
aud sympathy for the down-trodden and despised
race of Africans in and out of bondage, but their
mouths pepetualy full Of hard speeches against
all classes and conditions of white men who do not
share their peculiar views as to the elevation Of the
race and the development of humanity.
We had often remarked this popularity in the
conduct and language Of these professional philan-
thropists, and were at some loss to explain the sim
guarity of the phenomenon, as we had supposed
that true philanthropy taught its patrons and e1-
ponents to exemplify the graces of that charity
which suffereth long and is kind, which doth not
behave itself unseemly, is not easily provoked, and
thinketh no evil. This we know was the concep-
tion of the Apostle Paul. who, we take it, was al
most as good phianthropist as any we have seen
in these latter days; though his modern success
sors evidently do not share our opinion on this
point, and therefore diverge as widely as possible
from his precepts and example.
Words of wrath, malice, and uncharitabe-
ness compose their fsvorite vocabulary. The gall
of bitterness mingles with all their speech and
tAints all their thoughts. They cover themselves
with cursing as a garment. They dart forth clo-
ven tongues of fre-not such, however, as shed
their lambent radiance on the worshippers of Pen
tecost, but tongues which set on fire the course of
nature, because themselves, in the terrible dcton
Of the Scriptures, "set on fire Of hell" How SO
much Of hate can combine with SO much of Glove"
so much fmalignity with much of " compassion"
forms psychological parodox which may we'll in
vite inquiry as it certainly engages the observa-
tion of all who mark the outgivings of our modern
reformers on the rostrum or in the conventicle.
DIR. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the distinguished
essayist and medical savant, has sought, by illus
trations drawn from the analogies of nature, to
place this remarkable phenomenon within the cate
CORY of things conforinable to the harmony of the
universe. If professional reformers arc odious and
dsagreeable men, it is, he says, nothing more than
we should expect. They arc true to their nature
and Office in being ugly. To this effect he spoke
as follows in his eloquent Grafton delivered at the
public celebration of the 4th of July in Boston
1t is easy to understand the bitterness which is often
shown toward reformers They general favor
ties They apt to interfere with vested rights and
time haowed interests. They often wear an unlovely,
forbidding aspect Their Office corresponds to that Of
natures sanitary commission for the removal of material
nusances is not the butterfly but the beetle which she
employs for this duty 1t not the bird Of Paradise and
the nightingale but the fowl of dark pumage and
odous voice to which entrusted the sacred duty of
eliminating the substances that infect the air. And the
Crce Of obvious analogy teaches not to expect all the
qualities which please the general TASTE in those whose
Instincts lead them to attack the moral nuisances which
poison the atmosphere Of society. But whether they
please in oil their aspects not not the question
Like them not they must and will perform their Office,
and we cannot stop them They may be unwise violent
abusive. extravagsnt mpractcable but they alive at
any ae and 1t is their business to abuses soon
they dead and often to help them to de To quar-
rel with them because they beetles and not butterflies
M OG1 as roaSs s nsy grow none the
love 10 nestle between the stones of courtyard
you strike at Of their heads with the budgeon of the
law or of violence flies open like the seed capsule of
suapweed and fills the whole region with seminal thoughts
which will spring up in crop just like the original
martyr
This may be a satisfactory explanation both Of
the bitterness displayed by reformers in attacking
abuses and Of the bitterness visited upon them in
return. AT any rate we give it as the hypothesis
of one who has had ample opportunities of study
ing the phenomenon on which he generalizes.
While DIR. Holmes was thus discoursing in Bos-
ton on the unhappy necessity Gas he regards IT'D
which makes reformers liable to be q unvisc, vio-
lent, abusive, extravagant and impracticable" one
Of the class, Mr. Wendell Phillips, was giving at
Framington, in Massachusetts,, an illustration Of
this unfortunate proclivity Mr. Phillips delivered
at that place 4th of July oration, which is duly
reported in the columns Of the New York Tribune
the favorite journal of Reformcrs" from the ad-
vent Of Fourier down to the present day.
Mr.. Phillips, Of course, is very earnest in at
taoking slavery and the National Government It
is hard to tell whether he more hates slaveholders
and their conceived abettors or despises the civil
and military authorities who preside over the des
tnies Of the nation. He denounccs both in the same
breath, and with an emphasis and iteration which
seem to be borrowed from some formula Of MALE
diotion. Loyal citizens who remember that this
exemplary patriot was imported into our city year
or two ago to lecture on the crisis" and il pos
sble, thereby to raise the people Of Washington to
higher plane Of liberty and loyalty, will learn with
much satisfaction that Mr. Phillips places the Gov
ernmens At Washington on level with the insur-
gent authorities at Richmond in their hostility to the
cause Of liberty, which he holds is now tho cause
Of the country, that he who is false to the one