The Labor enquirer., 1884-05-24


among his ssopponents. There was no foe
but wnthed under his bitter sarcasms
no friend, recreant to his own stern
sense of right and wrong but felt his
whitening rebuke. Many times these
were ill.judged and wrong but he saw
the foremost statesman of the ration
bidding manhood for Southern votes He
saw the slaye-power protected by the
highest law of the land, compelling free
Massachusetts, to return fugitive slave
to horrible bondage. He heard himself
and associates ridiculed and denounced
by churches whose leading tenet was
love for oppressed man, He could not
SO read his bible.
His religion was not love for God and
oppression for his weaker brother. Is it
wonderful, therefore, that at times indig-
nation got the better of Judgement? Is
it wonderful that his conscience could
not tolerate communion with those who
upheld the barter of human souls2 Is
it wonderful that he called the constitu-
ton league with hell? Is it wonderful
that, with his intense, fiery disposition
and habits of decisive action, even in
Lincoln's measures there seemed to be
an excess of caution and policy, and q
disposition to compromise with a foe
whom every compromise had made but
the stronger and the more insolent? We
may pardon his sharp criticisms and bit
ter denunciations of others, when we
remember that every yenomous shaft in
the quivers of the powers of evil had
pierced him and rankled in his proud,
sensitive nature. Ri ,l;s5.
His services in educating the people
to the needs Of, the hour, in sustaining
their courage during the darkest periods
of the war and in the elevation of the
freedmen, can never be over-estimated.
Nor when peace was declared and grim
visaged war had smoothed his wrinkled
front did Phillips rest with victories
won, but until death, every good cause
was re-enforced by his powerful pen and
still more powerful voice. He saw
beneath the rough degraded exterior OF
men, gems of true manhood and it was
his mission to cultivate their growth into
noble characters. If, sometimes in his
zeal to relieve the distressed. he led
where we could not follow, the party
errors serve but as foil to set off his
splendid philanthropy.
His private character was as pure as
his public life. His tender, almost
worshipful love for his invalid wife, his
genial hospitality and elegance of man.
ners marked him true gentleman. It
is true. he had faults. The sun has
spots but they do not prevent the earth
receiving the full benefit of Its fructify-
ing light and heat. So the spots on
Wendell Phillips character are so few,
so insignificant, that when we consider
the influence of his life upon the moral
advancement of the race, they are lost
in the full blazing light of his heoric
virtues. And now, after fifty years Of
toll, he has gone to his rest, and the tardy
justice of the world hastens to mete out
to him his merited reward. The hoot-
ing mobs of Yesterday silently return:
and shed tears of sorrow DER his grave.
The churches which once reviled him
now resound with his praises. The state
that once despized his temerity now
sends her governor and her law makers
and the city that once refused him pro,
lection her mayor and council, to join
the throng of mourners around his bier
"And ever the truth comes uppermost,
And ever is justice DONE"
Let the. Irishman come from his
Emerald Isle; and the negro from his
tropical home and the savage from his
western wild and the workingman from
his place of toll and the victim of vice
from his haunts of sin; and the op-
pressed from every nation and cline
and let them join the greatest of earth
at his tomb, and with their choicest
tributes of praise wreathe immorta
honor around the memory of their bene
factor, the citizen, the scholar, the states
man, the patriot, Wendell Phillips,