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

[548] honest, decent, educated, well-behaved, Christian mechanics, worthy to be the brothers of New England Yankees. [Applause.] That is the real problem. To that this generation should address itself. You know men take their floating capital, and fund it in a permanent investment. Now the floating virtue of forty thousand pulpits, the floating wealth of these nineteen millions of people, the floating result, big or little, of Tract Societies, is to be funded,--like sensible heat, is to be transformed into invisible, latent heat; it is to pass away into the Southern capacity of being educated. The water is to sink to its level. Harvard College, whose men can think,--though so often on the wrong side,--is to go down half way, and meet South Carolina, saying her A, B, C. That is what you are to do.

It will take time undoubtedly. The nation is able to do it. The vigor and good sense and strength of endurance of these Northern classes is equal to the achievement, if we can only have leaders; but we have none.

The government looks to the people for its initiative. Lord Lyons said (substantially) in his dispatch to Earl Russell: “The Republican government dare not initiate a policy; it looks outward and asks what its opponents will consent to.” That is now the condition of the government. Hence the necessity of outspoken, perpetual, constant education of public opinion. I do not believe in the government at Washington. I believe in the nation, I believe in events, I believe in the inevitable tendency of these coming ten years toward liberty and Union. But it is to be done as England did it in 1640, by getting rid gradually, man by man, of those who don't believe in Progress, but live and mean to live in the past. And as man by man of that class retires, and we bring to the front men who are earnest in the present, victory, strength, and peace are to be the result. Now, for the present, I believe