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

Gentlemen, the petitioners have no feeling of revenge toward Mr. Edward G. Loring. Let the general government reward him with thousands, if it will. To us he is only an object of pity. There was an hour when one man trembled before him,--when one hapless victim, with more than life at stake, trembled before this man's want of humanity and ignorance of law. That hour has passed away. To-day he is but a weed on the great ocean of humanity. To us he is nothing; but we, with you, are the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; and for the honor of the State, for the sake of justice, in the name of humanity, we claim his removal. We have a right to a judiciary worthy of the respect of the community. We cannot respect him. Do not give us a man whose judicial character is made up of party bias, personal predilection, bad law, and a reckless disregard of human rights, and whose heart was too hard to melt before the mute eloquence of a hapless and terrified man,--do not commit to such a one the widows and orphans of the Commonwealth! Do not place such a man on a bench which only able and humane and Christian men have occupied before! Do not let him escape the deserved indignation of the community, by the technical construction of a statute! The Constitution has left you, as the representatives of the original sovereignty of the people, the power to remove a judge, when you think he has lost the confidence and respect of his constituents. Exercise it Say to the United States, “The Constitution allows the return of fugitive slaves. Find your agents where you will; you shall not find them on the Supreme or any inferior Bench of Massachusetts. You shall never gather round that infamous procedure any respectability derived from the magistracy of the Commonwealth. If it is to be done, let it be done by men whom it does not harm the honor or the interest of Massachusetts to have dishonored and made infamous I!”