Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2

[10] the day, for it lies with you, when the prophecy of our Randolph (himself a slave-holder) shall be fulfilled,--that the time would come when masters would fly their slaves, instead of slaves their masters, so valueless would be a slave's labor in comparison with his support To you, to the sunny plains of Hindostan, we shall owe it, that our beautiful prairies are unpolluted by the footsteps of a slave-holder; that the march of civilization westward will be changed from the progress of the manacled slave coffle, at the bidding of the lash, to the quiet step of families, carrying peace, intelligence, and religion as their household gods Mr. Clay has coolly calculated the value of sinews and muscles, of the bodies and souls of men, and then asked us whether we could reasonably expect the South to surrender 1,200,000,000 dollars at the bidding of abstract principles. Be just to India; waken that industry along her coast which oppression has kept landlocked and idle, break the spell which binds the genius of her fertile plains, and we shall see this property in man become like the gold in India's fairy tales,--dust in the slave-holder's grasp!

You cannot imagine, my dear brother, the impulse this new development of England's power will give the Antislavery cause in America. It is just what we need to touch a class of men who seem almost out of the pale of religious influence. Much as our efforts have been blessed, much as they have accomplished, though truth has often floated further on the shouts of a mob than our feeble voices could have carried it,--still our progress has served but to show us more clearly the Alps which lie beyond. The evil is so deep-rooted, the weight of interest and prejudice on its side so vast,--ambition clinging to political power, wealth to the means of further gain,--that we have sometimes feared they would be able to put off emancipation till the charter of