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

[65] which seems to be too near that of the Scotchman, of whom Dr. Johnson said, that, if he saw a dollar on the other side of hell, he would make a spring for it at the risk of falling in. [Laughter.] Under correction of these great statesmen and divines, I cannot think this the beau ideal of human perfection. I do not care whether the schooners of Harwich, under slaveholding bunting, catch fish and keep them or not; I do not care whether the mills of Abbott Lawrence make him worth two millions or one, whether the iron and coal mines of Pennsylvania are profitable or not, if, in order to have them profitable, we must go down on our marrow-bones and thank Daniel Webster for saving his Union, call Mayor Bigelow an honorable man and Mayor, and acknowledge Francis Tukey as Chief Justice of the Commonwealth. I prefer hunger and the woods to the hopeless task of maintaining the sincerity of Daniel Webster, or bending under the chain of Francis Tukey. [Tremendous cheering.]

Sir, I have something to say of this old Commonwealth. I went up one day into the Senate-chamber of Massachusetts, in which the Otises, the Quincys, and the Adamses, Parsons and Sedgwick, Sewall and Strong, have sat and spoke in times gone by,--in which the noblest legislation in the world, on many great points of human concern, has made her the noblest State in the world,--the good old Commonwealth of Massachusetts,--and I stood there to see this impudent City Marshal tell the Senate of Massachusetts that he knew he was trampling on the laws of the Commonwealth, and that he intended to do so, as Mayors told him to! And there was not spirit enough in the Free Soil party,--no, nor in the Democratic party,--there was not self-respect enough in the very Senators who were sworn to maintain these laws, to defend them against this insolent boast of a city constable. Now, fellow-citizens, you may. and probably do, think