Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[216] they should imitate the example, as, with laughable ignorance, it avers, of the early Christians of Trajan's day, and meet in secret, if the “vanity” of the ladies would allow! The coward priest forgot, if he ever knew, that the early Christians met in secret beneath the pavements of Rome, only to pray for the martyrs whose crosses lined the highways, whose daring defied Paganism at its own altars, and whose humanity stopped the bloody games of Rome in the upper air; that they met beneath the ground, not so much to hide themselves, as to get strength for attacks on wicked laws and false altars.

Infamy, however, at that day, was not a monopoly of one sect. Hubbard Winslow, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, strictly Orthodox, a bigot in good and regular standing, shortly after this preached a sermon to illustrate and defend the doctrine, that no man, under a republican government, has a right to promulgate any opinion but such as “a majority of the brotherhood would allow and protect” ; and he is said to have boasted that Judge Story thanked him for such a discourse!

The Mayor played a most shuffling and dishonorable part. For some time previous, he had held private conferences with leading Abolitionists, urging them to discontinue their meetings, professing, all the while, entire friendship, and the most earnest determination to protect them in their rights at any cost. The Abolitionists treated him, in return, with the utmost confidence. They yielded to his wishes, so far as to consent to do nothing that would increase the public excitement, with this exception, that they insisted on holding meetings often enough to assert their right to meet. Yet, while they were thus honorably avoiding everything which would needlessly excite the public mind, going to the utmost verge of submission and silence that duty permitted,--while the Abolitionists, with rare moderation, were showing this magnanimous forbearance