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

[264] accepted,--as Americans, we have never accepted our own civilization. We have held back from the inference which we ought to have drawn from the admitted principles which underlie our life. We have all the timidity of the Old World, when we think of the people; we shrink back, trying to save ourselves from the inevitable might of the thoughts of the millions. The idea on the other side of the water seems to be, that man is created to be taken care of by somebody else. God did not leave him fit to go alone; he is in everlasting pupilage to the wealthy and the educated. The religious or the comfortable classes are an ever-present probate court to take care of him. The Old World, therefore, has always distrusted the average conscience,--the common sense of the millions.

It seems to me the idea of our civilization, underlying all American life, is, that men do not need any guardian. We need no safeguard. Not only the inevitable, but the best power this side of the ocean, is the unfettered average common sense of the masses. Institutions, as we are accustomed to call them, are but pasteboard, and intended to be, against the thought of the street. Statutes are mere milestones, telling how far yesterday's thought had travelled; and the talk of the sidewalk to-day is the law of the land. You may regret this; but the fact stands; and if our fathers foresaw the full effect of their principles, they must have planned and expected it. With us, Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion. Let that die or grow indifferent, and statutes are waste paper, lack all executive force. You may frame them strong as language can make; but once change public feeling, and through them or over them rides the real wish of the people. The good sense and conscience of the masses are our only title-deeds and police force. The Temperance cause, the antislavery movement, and