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

[26] seems to have a storm of its own; and the Whig party, especially, is just now scudding under the bare poles of despair! [Cheers.] For the first time within the memory of the oldest inhabitant, Boston has been hurled from its supremacy over the State. Cushioned in the luxurious seclusion of city life, party leaders began to believe the mass of the people as heartless as themselves. Willing themselves to be slave-catchers, they vainly thought there were many others like them, forgetting that God made the country, while man made the town. [Loud cheers.]

The unwelcome discovery that there were men outside the city, who existed for other purposes than merely to register the edicts of State Street, came with stunning suddenness upon them; and their cup was both so bitter and so full that it was perhaps cruel on our part to add a drop to its waters of penance, and especially so big and bitter a drop as George Thompson. [Cheers.] We should have chosen our time better. The child, robbed for the first time of its rattle, should have been allowed time to win over its petulance. I look upon the scene in Faneuil Hall as made up full as much of the last spasms of defeated Whiggery,--Webster Whiggery, I mean,--as of hatred for George Thompson. [Cheers.] And it is in connection, partly, with this point, that I hail these tokens of welcome extended to him here, and at Worcester, as of especial value. It is of great importance, just now, that the South and the nation should understand Massachusetts. Mr. Webster has been trying to persuade everybody that he is the State. Some leading presses have labored to show that Webster, Whigdom, and Massachusetts were identical. While things remained as they were, it was impossible to offer conclusive testimony to the contrary. Public meetings are here to-day, and gone to-morrow. Protests, the most