Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2

[144] seeing that they did not value their own principles, left them out in the cold. There are men enough here to govern this city. When you have convinced thinking men that it is right, and humane men that it is just, you will gain your cause. Men always lose half of what is gained by violence. What is gained by argument, is gained forever. Mass meetings like these amount to nothing. A political movement, saying, “We will have our rights,” is a mass meeting in perpetual session. Filtered through the ballot-box comes the will of the people, and statesmen bow to it. Go home, and say that the working-men of Massachusetts are a unit, and that they mean to stereotype their purpose on the statute-book.