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

[2] to take part in the meeting, rose to reply. That portion of the assembly which sympathized with Mr. Austin now became so boisterous, that Mr. Phillips had difficulty for a while in getting the attention of the audience

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Mr. Chairman:--We have met for the freest discussion of these resolutions, and the events which gave rise to them. [Cries of “Question,” “Hear him,” “Go on,” “No gagging,” etc.] I hope I shall be permitted to express my surprise at the sentiments of the last speaker,--surprise not only at such sentiments from such a man, but at the applause they have received within these walls. A comparison has been drawn between the events of the Revolution and the tragedy at Alton. We have heard it asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain had a right to tax the Colonies, and we have heard the mob at Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot fathers who threw the tea overboard! [Great applause.] Fellow-citizens, is this Faneuil Hall doctrine? [ “No, no.” ] The mob at Alton were met to wrest from a citizen his just rights,--met to resist the laws. We have been told that our fathers did the same; and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary precedent has been thrown over the mobs of our day. To make out their title to such defence, the gentleman says that the British Parliament had a right to tax these Colonies. It is manifest that, without this, his parallel falls to the ground; for Lovejoy had stationed himself within constitutional bulwarks. He was not only defending the freedom of the press, but he was under his own roof, in arms with the sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed him went against and over the laws. The mob, as the gentleman terms it,--mob, forsooth certainly we sons of the tea-spillers are a marvellously patient -