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

[42] of Nature's growths or motions will, in time, burst asunder or wear away the proudest dead-weight man can heap upon them. If this be the power of the gentlest growth, let the stoutest heart tremble before the tornado of a people roused to terrible vengeance by the sight of long years of cowardly and merciless oppression, and oft-repeated instances of selfish and calculating apostasy. You may build your Capitol of granite, and pile it high as the Rocky Mountains; if it is founded on or mixed up with iniquity, the pulse of a girl will in time beat it down. , “There is no monarch on earth whose throne is not liable to be shaken by the sentiment of the just and intelligent part of the people.” What is this but a recantation,doing penance for the impudence uttered in Bowdoin Square? Surely this is the white sheet and lighted torch which the Scotch Church imposed as penance on its erring members. Who would imagine, that the same man who said of the public discussion of the Slavery question, that it must be put down, could have dictated this sentiment,--“It becomes us, in the station which we hold, to let that public opinion, so far as we form it, have free course” ? What was the haughty threat we heard from Bowdoin Square a year ago? “This agitation must be put down.” Now, “It becomes us, in the station which we hold, to let that public opinion have free course.” Behold the great doughface cringing before the calm eye of Kossuth, who had nothing but , “rub-a-dub agitation” with which to rescue Hungary from the bloody talons of the Austrian eagle!

This is statesmanship! The statesmanship that says to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to-day, “Smother those prejudices,” and to-morrow, “There is no throne on the broad earth strong enough to stand up against the sentiment of justice.” What is that but the “prejudices” of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts against