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

[337] his magistracy. But he lived,--he lived to repent; and later services did endear his name to the Commonwealth. There is no evidence that our more recent Mayors know even enough to be ashamed.

The men of that day lived to beg pardon of the very persons they had mobbed. All Boston glorified them that month; they walked State Street in pride. But you would think me cruel, to-day, if I gibbeted their names. The hour is near, it knocks at yonder door, when whoever reminds an audience that Richard S. Fay and Mayor Lincoln broke up an antislavery meeting will be considered, even by State Street and the Courier, bitter and uncharitable, [hisses,] as eminently unchristian, in reminding the disgraced and the forgotten of their sins.

What was the meeting thus assailed? It was a meeting met to discuss slavery,--a topic which makes the republic tremble, the settlement of which is identical with the surviving of our government,--a topic upon which every press, every legislature, every magistrate, south of Mason and Dixon's line, flings defiance at the Union, amid the plaudits of Mr. Fay and his friends. What day was it? The anniversary of the martyrdom of the only man whose name stirs the pulses of Europe in this generation. [Derisive laughter.] English statesmen confess never to have read a line of Webster. You may name Seward in Munich and Vienna, in Pesth or in Naples, and vacant eyes will ask you, “Who is he?” But all Europe, the leaders and the masses, spoke by the lips of Victor Hugo, when he said, “The death of Brown is more than Cain killing Abel; it is Washington slaying Spartacus.” [Laughter from some parts of the hall, and from others applause.]

What was the time of this meeting? An hour when our Senators and Representatives were vindicating the free speech of Massachusetts in Washington, in the face