Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[251] into the land of spirit which has stirred the heart and roused the brain of the best men of all ages, and given to literature its soul. Does he give no heed to that profound maxim of Coleridge,--“There are errors which no wise man will treat with rudeness while there is a probability that they may be the refraction of some great truth still below the horizon” ?

Yes, this “Broad Church” !--humanity would weep if it ever came, for one of its doctrines is, that the statute-book is more binding than the Sermon on the Mount, and that the rights of private judgment are a curse. Save us from a Church not broad enough to cover woman and the slave, all the room being kept for the grog-shop and the theatre,--provided the one will keep sober enough to make the responses, and the other will lend its embroidered rags for this new baby-house. [Laughter and applause.]

The honors we grant mark how high we stand, and they educate the future. The men we honor, and the maxims we lay down in measuring our favorites, show the level and morals of the time. Two names have been in every one's mouth of late, and men have exhausted language in trying to express their admiration and their respect. The courts have covered the grave of Mr. Choate with eulogy. Let us see what is their idea of a great lawyer. We are told that “he worked hard,” “he never neglected his client,” “he flung over the discussions of the forum the grace of a rare scholarship,” ( “no pressure or emergency ever stirred him to an unkind word.” A ripe scholar, a profound lawyer, a faithful servant of his client, a gentleman. This is a good record surely. May he sleep in peace! What he earned, God grant he may have! But the bar that seeks to claim for such a one a place among great jurists must itself be weak indeed; for this is only to make him out the one-eyed