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

[378] clew to success,--utter and exact justice: that he guarantees shall be always expediency. Deviate one hair's-breadth,--grant but a dozen slaves,--only the tiniest seed of concession,--you know not how “many and tall branches of mischief shall grow therefrom.” That handful of cotton-seed has perpetuated a system which, as Emerson says, “impoverishes the soil, depopulates the country, demoralizes the master, curses the victim, enrages the bystander, poisons the atmosphere, and hinders civilization.”

I need not go over the subsequent compromises in detail. They are always of the same kind: mere words, Northern men assured us,--barren concessions. “Physical geography and Asiatic scenery” hindered any harm. But the South was always specially anxious to have these barren “words,” and marvellously glad when she got them. Northern politicians, in each case, were either bullied or cheated, or feigned to be bullied, as they are about to do now. And the people were glad to have it so. I do not know that the politicians are a whit better now than then. I should not be willing to assert that Seward and Adams are any more honest than Webster and Winthrop, and certainly they have just as much spaniel II their make.

But the gain to-day is, we have a people. Under their vigilant eyes, mindful of their sturdy purpose, sustained by their determination, many of our politicians act much better. And out of this popular heart is growing a Constitution which will wholly supersede that of 1787.

A few years ago, while Pierce was President, the Republican party dared to refuse the appropriations for support of government,--the most daring act ever ventured in a land that holds Bunker Hill and Brandywine. They dared to persevere some twenty or thirty days. It seems a trifle; but it is a very significant straw. Then for weeks