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

[274] shores of the great lakes, on the other side of Mason and Dixon's line, thinks of this free hall in Boston, and thanks God that he has an advocate. Every unpopular truth remembers you, and takes courage; and the time will come when the dwarfed souls in these other buildings, who look up and are not fed, who dare not think, who dread their own intellect as a sin, will come to you and learn to live.

Whenever brutal prejudice tramples on right, here shall it find fitting rebuke. Whenever law, masking tyranny, drives weak men and wicked to some damned deed, here shall they see held up fearlessly their hideous image. When great interests clashing in a storm make stout hearts quail, and startled routine rushes blindly to some infamous submission, bartering right for safety; while all other desks are silent, and the vassal press gives no certain sound,--here shall the truth, the utter truth, rebuke low interest to its right place, lash the sin plated with gold, and plead the cause of justice against cruel and selfish gain. Against slave-hunters and mobs, against bigots and time-servers, against cravens and priests, against things wicked, only borne because old, against fashionable sins and profitable errors, we proclaim war. How necessary that the trade or bigot ridden city, in some hour of forced abasement, when honest hearts swell, silent but indignant, should feel, “Music Hall will file a true record and utter the fitting word.” This is our Faneuil Hall, now that patriotism means plunder; this is our college, now that only what is old and Greek is deemed true or safe.

The canvass of the last three months, how valuable it is! You are a canvass every seventh day, and on a higher standpoint, with no necessity to pander to the prejudices or evils of the time. God's unalloyed truth from pyery lip, welcome it! A church without a creed,