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Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1, chapter 5 (search)
t stake quicken the general intellect. Stagnant times have been when a great mind, anchored in error, might snag the slow-moving current of society. Such is not our era. Nothing but Freedom, Justice, and Truth is of any permanent advantage to the mass of mankind. To these society, left to itself, is always tending. In our day, great questions about them have called forth all the energies of the common mind. Error suffers sad treatment in the shock of eager intellects. Everybody, said Talleyrand, is cleverer than any body ; and any name, however illustrious, which links itself to abuses, is sure to be overwhelmed by the impetuous current of that society which (thanks to the press and a reading public) is potent, always, to clear its own channel. Thanks to the Printing-Press, the people now do their own thinking, and statesmen, as they are styled,--men in office,--have ceased to be either the leaders or the clogs of society. This view is one that Mr. Webster ridiculed in the de
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1, chapter 8 (search)
hord in that heart, the grandest growth of our soil and our institutions ? No He said, I made a mistake! Not, I was false in my stewardship of these great talents and this high position No I But on the chess-board of the political game, I made a bad move! I threw away my chances! A gambler, I did not understand my cards I And to whom does he offer this acknowledgment? To a clergyman I the representative of the moral sense of the community What a picture We laugh at the lack of heart in Talleyrand, when he says, It is worse than a crime, a blunder. Yet all our New-Englander can call this momentous crime of his life is — a mistake! Whether this statement be entirely true or not, we all know it is exactly the tone in which all about us talk of that speech. If the state ment be true, what an entire want of right feeling and moral sensibility is shows in Mr. Webster! If it be unfounded, still the welcome it has recelved, and the ready belief it has gained, show the popular appreci