Speeches before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, January, 1852

Wendell Philips

Speech

All hail, Public Opinion! To be sure, it is a dangerous thing under which
to live. It rules to-day in the desire to obey all kinds of laws, and takes
your life. It rules again in the love of liberty, and rescues Shadrach from
Boston Court House. It rules to-morrow in the manhood of him who loads
the musket to shoot down, — God be praised ! — the man hunter, Gorsuch.
(Applause.)

It rules in Syracuse, and the Slave escapes to Canada. It is
our interest to educate this people in humanity, and in deep reverence for
the rights of the lowest and humblest individual that makes up our num-
bers. Each man here, in fact, holds his property and his life dependent on
the constant presence of an Agitation like this of Anti-Slavery.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — power is ever stealing from the many to tlie
few. The manna of popular hberty must be gathered each day, or it is
rotten.

The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday.

The hand entrusted with power becomes, cither from human depravity or esprit
du corps, the necessary enemy of the people.

Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot : only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.

All clouds, it is said, have sunshine behind them, and all evils have some good result ; so
Slavery, by the necessity of its abolition, has saved the freedom of the white
race from being melted in the luxury or buried beneath the gold of its own
success.

Never look, therefore, for an age when the people can be quiet
and safe.

At such times Despotism, like a shrouding mist, steals over the
mirror of Freedom. The Dutch, a thousand years ago, but against the
ocean their bulwarks of willow and mud. Do they trust to that ? No.
Each year the patient, industrious peasant gives so much time from the
cultivation of his soil and the care of his children, to stop the breaks and
replace the willow which insects have eaten, that he may keep the land
his fathers rescued from the water, and bid defiance to the waves that roar
above his head, as if demanding back the broad fields man has stolen from
their realm.

Some men suppose that, in order to the people's governing themselves,
it is only necessary, as Fisher Ames said, that the " Rights of Man be
printed, and that every citizen have a copy."

As the Epicureans, two thousand years ago, imagined God a being who arranged this marvellous machinery, set it going, and then sunk to sleep. Republics exist only on the
tenure of being constantly agitated. The Anti- Slavery Agitation is an important, nay, an essential part of the machinery of the State. It is not a disease nor a medicine. No; it is the normal state — the normal state of the Nation.

Never, to our latest posterity, can we afford to do without prophets, like Garrison, to stir up the monotony of wealth, and re-awake the people to the great ideas that are constantly fading out of their minds, to trouble the waters that there may be health in their flow.

Every government is always growing corrupt.

Every Secretary of State is, by the very necessity of his position, an apostate. (Hisses and cheers.) I mean what I say. He is an enemy to the people, of necessity, because the moment he joins the government, he gravitates against that popular Agitation which is
the life of a Republic.

A Republic is nothing but a constant overflow of lava.

The principles of Jefferson are not up to the principles of today.
It was well said of Webster, that he knows well the Hancock, and Adams
of 1776, but he does not know the Hancocks and Adamses of today.

The Republic that sinks to sleep, trusting to constitutions and machinery, to
politicians and statesmen for the safety of its liberties, never will have any.
The people are to be waked to a new effort, just as the Church has to be
regenerated, in each age.

The Anti-Slavery Agitation is a necessity of each age, to keep ever on the alert this faithful vigilance so constantly in danger of sleep. We must live like our Puritan fathers, who always went to Church, and sat down to dinner, when the Indians were in their neighborhood, with their musket-lock on the one side and a drawn sword on the
other.

If I had time or voice tonight, I might proceed to a further development
of this idea, and I trust I could make it clear, which I fear I have not yet
done. To my conviction, it is Gospel truth, that, instead of the Anti-
Slavery Agitation being an evil, or even the unwelcome cure of a disease in
this government, the youngest child that lives may lay his hand on the
youngest child that his gray hairs may see, and say:

" The Agitation was commenced when the Declaration of Independence was signed ; it took its second tide when the Anti-Slavery Declaration was signed in 1833 ; a move-
ment, not the cure but the diet of a free people ; not the homoeopathic or
the allopathic dose, to which a sick land has recourse, but the daily cold
water and the simple bread — the daily diet and absolute necessity — the manna
of a people wandering in the wilderness."

There is no Canaan in politics. As health lies in labor, and there is no royal road to it but through toil, so there is no republican road to safety but in constant distrust.

" In distrust," said Demosthenes, " are the nerves of the mind." Let us see to it that
these sentinel nerves are ever on the alert.

If the Alps, piled in cold and still sublimity, be the emblem of Despotism, the ever restless Ocean is ours, which, girt within the eternal laws of Gravitation, is pure only because never still. (Long continued applause.)





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