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But, more than in all this, the significance of Mr. Thompson's experience is to be found in the demonstration which it afforded of Southern control over Northern liberties.
None too soon it was discovered that this execrated Englishman's right to enjoy the immunities guaranteed, under the laws, to every inhabitant of the Union, could not be denied without involving the suppression of native freedom of speech, and the imperilling of every American's life who refused to be dumb on the subject of slavery.
Mr. Garrison's vicarious suffering for his foreign colleague proved that the assault of slavery was directed not against individuals or against nationalities, but against rights the most lawful, the most sacred, the most indispensable.
The liberties of the race at the North (at the South, after the ransacking of the mails with the connivance of the Federal Administration, they were completely extinguished) were now put upon the defensive in the persons of the despised abolitionists.
The struggle for the next decade, whatever its phases, was to turn upon the right to speak and to publish.
It was the necessary prelude to any attack upon slavery in its own domain, and had been foreseen by Mr. Garrison when he answered for himself the mocking question, ‘Why don't you go South?’
(after having been there), and went and set up his standard under the shadow of Bunker Hill.
It was precipitated, as it deserved to be, by Mr. Thompson's coming to America; and the debt of gratitude the North owed him for his instrumentality in arousing it to a sense of its own servitude,1 will only seem greater as time goes on.
1 For a lofty expression of the true Northern and American spirit,—‘the spirit of the Puritans and of the principles of ‘76,’ as John Farmer phrased it (Ms. Feb. 15, 1836),—one can never point to anything better than Francis Jackson's reply to S. J. May's letter conveying the thanks of the Massachusetts A. S. Society for his hospitality after the mob to the Female A. S. Society (Lib. 5: 191; “Right and Wrong in Boston,” 1836, [1] p. 98):
But in tendering them the use of my dwelling-house, sir, I not only had in view their accommodation, but also, according to my humble measure, to recover and perpetuate the right of free discussion, which has been shamefully trampled on. A great principle has been assailed-one which lies at the very foundation of our republican institutions. If a large majority of this community choose to turn a deaf ear to the wrongs which are inflicted upon their countrymen in other portions of the land—if they are content to turn away from the sight of oppression, and “pass by on the other side” —so it must be. But when they undertake in any way to impair or annul my right to speak, write, and publish upon any subject, and more especially upon enormities which are the common concern of every lover of his country and his kind—so it must not be—so it shall not be, if I for one can prevent it. Upon this great right let us hold on at all hazards. And should we, in its exercise, be driven from public halls to private dwellings, one house at least shall be consecrated to its preservation. And if, in defence of this sacred privilege, which man did not give me, and shall not (if I can help it) take from me, this roof and these walls shall be levelled to the earth, let them fall if they must; they cannot crumble in a better cause. They will appear of very little value to me after their owner shall have been whipt into silence. . . . Happily, one point seems already to be gaining universal assent, that slavery cannot long survive free discussion. Hence the efforts of the friends and apologists of slavery to break down this right. And hence the immense stake which the enemies of slavery hold, in behalf of freedom and mankind, in its preservation. The contest is therefore substantially between liberty and slavery. As slavery cannot exist with free discussion, so neither can liberty breathe without it. Losing this, we, too, shall be no longer freemen indeed, but little, if at all, superior to the millions we now seek to emancipate.
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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