The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1884-04-19

qulXotlc, whimsical, or merely feigned To some OF
them even now he appears to have been only an elo-
quent demagogue. But his life is the reply. To no
act of his to private advantage sought gained to
of his mastery power except to promote pur-
poses which he believed be essential to the public
welfare could they ever point who charged him with
base motives or personal ends. NO man.
indeed, can take chief part in tunultuous national
controversy without encountering misjudgment and
reproaeh. and unmeasured condemnation But
it does not affect the lofty patriotism of the
American Revolution that Adam Smith believed it to
be stimulated by the vanity of colonial shopkeepers
1t does not dim the iustre of the Methodist revival of
religious sentiment in England that the bishops
branded it as vulgar and ignorant enthusiasm.
Wendell Phillips held with John Bright that the first
five hundred men who passed in the Strand would
make as good Parliament as that which sits at St
stephens. A student OF history and a close OBJ
of men, he rejected that fear of the multitude
which springs from the feeling that the many ig
norant while the few are wise; and he believed the
saying, too profound for Talleyrand to whom it is
ascribed, that everybody knows more than anybody
The great argument for popular cover nment
is not the essential righteousness of a majority
but the celestial law which subordnates the
brute force of numbers to intellectual and
moral ascendency the Unreasonable floods OF ocean
follow the moon. Undisturbed by the most rancor-
hostility in the meetings at the Music Hall in
this city IN the winter secession, he looked calmly at
the mob and behind the drunken Philip he saw Philip
the King.
The huge wrongs and crimes in the annals of the
race the that have wasted the world and desc
lated mankind he knew TO be the work of the crowned
and ruling minority not of the mass of the people.
The companion of his boyhood and his college class.
touch that gave beauty to the old heroic story,
had shown that not from the palace of Charles the
Fifth, not from luxurious Versailles, but from the
hus of Dutch islanders scattered along the hard coast
of the North Sea- the genius of liberty to
modern Europe from hopeless despotism. Nay,
with his eyes, saddened and
surprised Phillips saw that in the immediate pres
of monstrous and perilous wrong to human ma
ture, prosperous and comfortable America angrily
fused to hear and that while humanity lay bruised
and bleeding by the way the polished society of the
most enlightened city in the Union passed by disdain-
full on the other side.
HIS CONTEMPT FOR DES1AGoGY.
But while he cherished this profound faith in the
people, and because he cherished it, he attered
the mob nor hung upon its neck pandered to its
passion nor suffered its foamng hate its exultng
enthusiasm to touch the calm poise of his regnant
soul Those who were eager to insult, and deride,
and silence him. when he pleaded for the negro wept,
and shouted, and rapturously crowned him when he
paid homage to OConnell and made Connell's cause
his own. But the crowd did not follow him with huz-
zas. He moved in solitary majesty, and if from his
smooth speech lightning flash of satire of
struck cherished lie, honored
character, dogma of the party creed and the
crowd burst into furious tempest of dissent he beat
it into silence with uncompromisng iteration. If it
tried to drown his voice he turned to the reporters
and, the raging tuInult calmly said, Howl on;
speak to thirty millions here!"
There another power in his speech sharper than
in the speech of any other American orator an un-
TALLY iconoclastic and the method of reformer at
close quarters with mighty system of wrong not
be measured by the standards of cool and polite de-
bate. Phillips did not shrink from the sternest de-
nunciation. ridicule of those who seemed
to him recreant to freedom and humanity, however
enshrined they might be in public admiration with
whatever official dignity invested with whatever
softer graces of accomplishments endowed The idols
of purely conventional virtue he de-
lighted to shatter because public enemy
seemed to him more deadly than the American
who made moral cowardce respectable, He felt that
the complaccent conformity of Northern communi
ties was the strength of slavery, and the man who
would return fugitive slave, with all the re
sources of sophistry defend his return upon plea
of Constitutional obligation was in his view, a man
who would do an act of cruel wekedness to-day to
avoid vague and possible mischance hereafter. If
the plea sound in the of man. if one in
nocent to be outcast from protecting
laws, from effective sympathy, and from humanity
because he had been unspeakably wronged, then it
was sound in the of every such man, and the
Union and the Constitution rested upon three mllion
crimes. Was this endurable? Should ofense so
inhunan deliberate obedience to laws which com
PEELED man to do to another what he would not hest
tate, amid the applause of all men, to kill that
other for attempting to do himshould such oiense
be condoned by courteous sdmonition and hesitatng
doubt? Should the paralty of friendship should the
learning renown, or public service of the offender,
him from the plory of public scorng II Patrick
Henry made the country ring with the name OF the dis
honest contractor in the war should the of the
educated American who conspires with the slave
holders against the slave be too sacred for oboquyi
Noepthet is bstering for ohm Brown, who takes
his life in his hand that he may break the chain of the
slave. Shall the gentleman, whose compliance weak
ems the moral fibre of New England, and fastens the
slaves chains hopelessy, go unwhipped of
a single word of personal rebuke! Such questions he
did not ask but they ask themselves to-day we
turn the pages that still CULVER with his blasting
words and recall the mortal strife in which he stood
Doubtless his friends, who knew that well-spring of
sweet waters his heart, and who, like him, were
sealed to the service of emancipation, sometimes
grieved and recoied amazed from his terrible arrgn
ment. He knew the penalty of his course. He paid
it cheerfuly But history will record that the orator
H. 4IuAct ~
whipped by the aders and abettors of the crime
against humanity, made such completely in every
intelligent community infinitely more arduous, and so
served mankind, public virtue and the State q
HIS PLAINNEss OF SPEECH.
But more than this. The ayowed and open oppo-
nents of the antslavery agitation could not justly
complain of his relentless pursuit From them he
received the blows that in turn he did not spare.
But Others his friends, soldiers of the army,
although in other divisions and upon different route
marching against the foe did they, too, feel
those shafts of fret How many a Massachusetts
man. whose name the Commonwealth will canonize
with his, loyal with his fidelity TO the common
cause he sometimes tainted recreant and
scourged as laggard! How many leaders in other
States statesmen beloved and revered, who in other
ways than his fought the battle of liberty with rmness
in the right, God gave them to see the right and
who live in national gratitude and among the
great in history forevermore, did not those
dauntless lips seem sometimes cruelty to magn!
Blame not this plainness of speech" he said,
II have a hundred friends, as brave souls as
God ever made, whose hearths not safe
after honored make such speeches" He
knew that his ruthless words closed to him homes of
friendship and hearts of sympathy He saw the
amazement, he heard the condemnation but like the
great apostle preaching Christ he knew only humanity
and humanity crucifed Tongue of the dumb, eyes of
the blind feet of the impoent his voice alone among
the voices that everywhere heard and needed,
was sent by God to challenge every word or look, or
deed that seemed to him possibly to paae oppression
or to comfort the oppressor Divinely commissioned,
he not indeed, to do injustice bnt the human
heart is very patient with the hero who, in his strenu
clearly see and sometimes harshly judges yet in all
his unsparng assault, deals blow of malice,
nor of envy of personal gratfeaton-the warrior
who grasps at prize for which others strive,
and whose unsel6sh peace laurels of Mitiades
disturb
For quarter of a century this the career of