Year: 1859

answer to the question OF its moral obligation.


Now, have you any right to barter away tn
rights of your fellow.men, and can you barte
away your own obligation' Rcmemb Der, that wher
you make bargain that you will not protect Mar
tin kozta in the harbor of Smyrna, that you viii
not shield Kossuth from the myrmidons Of Aus
rra seeking him in the streets of Boston, that yor
will not shelter Garibaldi from the ministers o.
the Pope, you have not merely attempted to dives
yourselves of moral Obligation you have attem pit
ed to sell away that which docs not belong TO you
another mans rights. My right to be protected
here upon the soil of Massachusetts, Is a right
which God gave me, and not the Common W ealth oil
Massachusetts, Suppose that before the Pilgrims


landed from the MayAower upon Plymouth rock
and gave occasion for the lifting up of that high
strain of the English poet


What sought they thus afar


Bright jewels of the mine,


The wealth of seas. the spoils OF wars


They sought Faiths pure shrine,


Aye, call it holy ground,


K The spot where first they trod


They've left unstained what here they found,


Freedom to worship God -





was yet wilderness, untrodden by the white
mans foot-go back if you will, to a still ear!ier
period before the red man had come here from
the forests where he had chased his game, and
suppose that some wanderer from the civilized land
had been drifted to these shores by adverse gales
and had me. here, borne unwllingly,from some 9th
er region Of the civilized world, one like himself
a solitary refugee from the fury of the tempest,
what were their oblgationss Not constitutional


for they had made no Constitution not legal
for they had enacted no law not arising from any
compact, or covenaut,-for they had entered into
none. What were their mutual obligations p
When God wrote upon the soul of man the law OF
his social nature, put into him the power to feel
for and with his suffering and i'm 7erilled fellows,
then he wrote the mandate commanding him to
help the suffering and the endangered Now can
you repeal that Constitution OF God by any of your
man made compacts Can you rob that solitary
wanderer from England, we will say, of The right
to tho protection of his fellow wanderer from France
or Germany, by making bargain that it shall not
be given :? owe you debt can l cancel that
debt by simply writing under the obligation which
attests it that l shall not recognize it hencefor.
wardf Certainly not. Until then, you can cancel
the obligation of simple humanity to simple hui
manty, the obligation of kindness and mutual
benefit and protection. you cannot get any right
whereon to base your constitutional compact to
give up the runaway slave to his master. Ap.
plause. You come together, not two individuals,
drifting hither from oposite regions of the earth,
but multiplied to twenty millions, and yet every
one under this same obligation which God had
fixed upon the first individual man who set foot
upon these shores you come together, each
bound by that divine law, and can you any more
shake it off by the multitude of your concurrence
than could the individual effort of the single solita.
ry wanderer? IT house is built of blocks of
granite. it is granite house, no matter what in,
are muttered it, no matter what in.
scriptions you engrave upon its front. Whatever
is Inherent in the individual constituents of the
collective mass is inherent in the ITSELF and
therefore the obligation to protect every man who
sets his foot upon your soil, is perfect when you
have formed Union and Constitution, as it was
when one man by the side Of another stood IN need
OF help. when one man by the eide Of another had
power to help. You can never escape from that
obligation.


What is the making of a government Simply
this tho construction OF machine more effectu'
ally to do that work, the doing of which was every
mans duty before the government was made
Suppose owe man an obligation to reap his
harvest upon the prairies of Illinois, and when
20 to look at it, l find there s an immense range
OF territory covered by the grain, and | say-'Here
Is mighty obligation what shall / do? / can
never reap down that field with the old sickle my
grandfather used on the hills of New England i
can never lay that harvest even in the swarth with
The cradle used in my early manhood must
devise some other means TO accomplish it, So
sit down, and, tasking my Yankee ingenuity to the
utmost, build in the recesses of my mind reap.
ing machine, and then drag that reaping machine
'ut of the subtle chambers of the brain and incar
nate it in wood and iron, and there it stands pal.
pable and practical before me. Nov have re-
eased myself, forsooth. say our learned statesmen
md profound jurists, from my obligation because
have made a machine that can do in one day
what would have taken me six months to accom-
olish Do you believe thatf No; the making of
he machine is to be justified by the use to which
I 10 put and that use is the ful6lment OF my OBJ
igation. Government is made to protect the right
II the governed. That is not, think, one of the
modern, ultra, radical, anti'slavery, Garrisonian
obligations. / think we read it in document
once regarded of some authority, in this country.
It lsast-tbat the purpose of the institution of
government is to protect the rights OF the governed
Now, ask you, 10 the slave cne Of your governed