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

[333] their education never fitted them,--a common mistake of American life. There are thousands among us engaged in mechanical routine whose souls have large grasp, and take in the universe. Critical hours unveil the lustre of such spirits. Our self-made men are the glory of our institutions. But this is a case of men undertaking to join in public debate and preside over public meetings, whose souls are actually absorbed in pricing calico and adding up columns of figures. It is a singular sight. White men, having enjoyed the best book education, to see them struggling with two colored men, whose only education was oppression and the antislavery enterprise! But in that contest of parliamentary skill, the two colored men never made a mistake, while every step of their opponents was folly upon folly. Of course, upon the great question of moral right, there is no comparison. History gives us no closer parallel than the French Convention of Lafayette and Mirabeau assailed by the fish-women of the streets.

Let us turn now to the part of the City Government. Every man eligible to office,--but with a race like ours, fired with the love of material wealth, with a continent given us by God to subdue and crowd it with cities, to unite the oceans with rails,--in such an age and with such a race, trade must absorb all the keenest energies of each generation. The consequence is, that politics takes up with small men, men without grasp enough for large business; with leisure, therefore, on their hands; men popular because they have no positive opinions,--these are the men of politics. The result is, as Tocqueville has hinted, that our magistrates never have more education than we give to the mass, that they have no personal experience of their own. Such men do very well for ordinary occasions, when there is nothing to do. Common times only try common men. In a calm sea all boats alike show mastership in floating. On the