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Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1, chapter 5 (search)
ork. He says, We are too much inclined to underrate the power of moral influence. Who is? Nobody but a Revere House statesman. We are too much inclined to underrate the power of moral influence, and the influence of public opinion, and the influence of the principles to which great men — the lights of the world and of the present age — have given their sanction. Who doubts that, in our struggle for liberty and independence, the majestic eloquence of Chatham, the profound reasoning of Burke, the burning satire and irony of Colonel Barre, had influences upon our fortunes here in America? They had influences both ways. They tended, in the first place, somewhat to diminish the confidence of the British ministry in their hopes of success, in attempting to subjugate an injured people. They had influence another way, because all along the coasts of the country-and all our people in that day lived upon the coast — there was not a reading man who did not feel stronger, bolder, and m<
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1, chapter 7 (search)
e question of slavery. I am willing to confess another article of my faith: that the Constitution and government of this country is worth nothing, except it is or can be made capable of grappling with the great question of slavery. I agree with Burke: I have no idea of a liberty unconnected with honesty and justice. Nor do I believe that any good constitutions of government or of freedom can find it necessary for their security to doom any part of the people to a permanent slavery. Such a cedom, if such can be, is in effect no more than another name for the tyranny of the strongest faction; and factions in republics have been and are full as capable as monarchs of the most cruel oppression and injustice. That is the language of Edmund Burke to the electors of Bristol; I agree with it! [Applause.] The greatest praise government can win is, that its citizens know their rights, and dare to maintain them. The best use of good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their fee
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1, Mobs and education. (search)
greatest, perhaps its only, danger. The planting of these states always amazed the casual observer, and has been a subject of the deepest interest to thoughtful men. The wildest theories of the human reason were reduced to practice by a community so humble that no statesman condescended to notice it, and a legislature without precedent was produced off-hand by the instincts of the people. The profoundest scholar of that day said, No man is wiser for his learning, --a sentiment which Edmund Burke almost echoed; and it seems as if our comparatively unlettered fathers proved it. They framed a government which, after two hundred years, is still the wonder and the study of statesmen. It was only another proof that governments are not made, they grow, that the heart is the best logician, that character, which is but cousin to instinct, is a better guide than philosophy. Wordsworth said, of a similar awakening: A few strong instincts, and a few plain rules, Among the herdsmen of the A
Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1, chapter 21 (search)
this government, and for twenty years you can never elect a Republican. Presidents must be so wholly without character or principle, that two angry parties, each hopeless of success, contemptuously tolerate them as neutrals. Now I am not exaggerating the moment. I can parallel it entirely. It is the same position that England held in the times of Eldon and Fox, when Holcroft and Montgomery, the poet, Horne Tooke and Frost and Hardy, went into dungeons, under laws which Pitt executed and Burke praised,--times when Fox said he despaired of English liberty but for the power of insurrection,--times which Sidney Smith said he remembered, when no man was entitled to an opinion who had not £ 8,000 a year. Why! there is no right — do I exaggerate when I say that there is no single right?-which government is scrupulous and finds itself able to protect, except the pretended right of a man to his slaves! Every other right has fallen now before the necessities of the hour. Understand me