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

[512] well; here stand the party that want something, and there stand the party that have something to sell. They have their votes to give. It is understood that they will give them to the man who will do the least to execute the Maine Law. The bargain is not acknowledged before a justice of the peace, nor recorded in the registry of deeds; but every sensible man in the city knows of its existence; and these men walk into office because those will that they shall. The liquor-dealers say, “This is the condition: shut your eyes upon us!” The consequence is, that both parties, all parties, are obliged to bow their necks to that yoke, and, with rare exceptions, there cannot be an Alderman nor a Mayor of the city elected, who is not understood to be willing to shut his eyes to that crime, and leave the law of the State unexecuted. It has been so, it always must be so while these elements of civic strength exist, and are thus tempted to exert themselves.

The reason why the law is not executed in favor of free speech is germane and sister to this; it is, that the men who are interested in these drinking-shops, and the men whose votes they can command, are of the class which hates progress and freedom,--is naturally antagonistic to them; and any designing leader can stir up such a mass, and fling it at virtue and order and liberty. Hence these consequences. Their agents, of their own natural bias, run greedily to do such agreeable work.

For the last ten or thirteen years, this has been the character of the city government. They have said to the State, “We will not execute your law.” Now, law consists of four things,--a statute, a policeman to arrest the offender, a jury to try him, and a judge to sentence him. The Constitution says, we shall have judges as “impartial as the lot of humanity admits.” We have them. Appointed, how? By the State. The other end