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

“ [443] carved his epitaph.” As Mr. Garrison has told us, he withdrew long ago from office,--stood outside of the political machine. But when history records the struggling birth of those changes and ideas which make our epoch and city famous, whose name will she put before his? And God has graciously permitted him to see of the labor of his hands. These walls said to the wave that beat down all law and authority in Boston, in 1835, “Thus far, no farther.” That word of rebuke was the first faint sighing of the tempest that now sweeps over the continent, “scourging before it the lazy elements which had long stagnated into pestilence.” Some men would say he flung away the honors of life. No; who has reaped so many? The roar of the streets, the petty inefficiency of mayors, never turned him one hair's breadth from his path, or balked him of his purpose. Brave, calm, tirelessly at work, he outlived mayors and governors,--the mere drift-wood of this Niagara,--and wrote his will on the statute-books of States.

Three years ago he brought me five thousand dollars, to be used in securing the rights of women. The only charge he laid on me was to keep the name of the donor secret until what has now happened,--his death. Already that fund has essentially changed the statute-book of the Empire State, altered materially the laws of two other Commonwealths, and planted the seed .of radical reform in the young sovereignty of Kansas. This unseen hand moved the lever which, afar off, lifts the burdens of one half the people of great States. And you all know how every man, friend or foe, confidently expected to see his calm brow on every platform which advocated a humane and an unpopular idea. I remember, years ago, at the very first meeting ever held in this city to abolish the use of the whip in the navy, a timidly conservative merchant refused to attend, saying, “Why, ”