IX.Wendell Phillips

Nothing but Freedom, Justice, and Truth is of any permanent advantage to the mass of mankind. To these society, left to itself, is always tending. "The right to think, to know, and to utter," as John Milton said, is the dearest of all liberties. Without this right, there can be no liberty to any people; with it, there can be no slavery. When you have convinced thinking men that it is right, and humane men that it is just, you will gain your cause. Men always lose half of what is gained by violence. What is gained by argument, is gained forever. The manna of liberty must be gathered each day, or it is rotten. Only by unintermitted agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity. Let us believe that the whole of truth can never do harm to the whole of virtue; and remember that in order to get the whole of truth, you must allow every man, right or wrong, freely to utter his conscience, and protect him in so doing.

Entire unshackled freedom for every man's life, no matter what his doctrine—the safety of free discussion, no matter how wide its range. The community which dares not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. I have used strong words. But I was born in Boston, and Wendell Phillips 161 the good name of the old town is bound up with every fibre of my heart. I dare not trust myself to describe the insolence of men who undertake to dictate to you and me what we shall say on these grand old streets. But who can adequately tell the sacredness and the value of free speech? Who can fitly describe the enormity of the crime of its violation? Free speech, at once the instrument and the guaranty and the bright consummate flower of all liberty. Free speech in these streets, once trod by Henry Vane, its apostle and champion. Free speech, in that language which holds the dying words of Algernon Sidney, its martyr.

South Carolina said to Massachusetts in 1835, when Edward Everett was Governor, "Abolish free speech,—it is a nuisance." She is right,—from her standpoint it is. That is, it is not possible to preserve the quiet of South Carolina consistently with free speech; but you know the story Sir Walter Scott told of the Scotch laird, who said to his old butler, "Jock, you and I can't live under this roof." "And where does your honor think of going?" So free speech says to South Carolina today. How. shall we ever learn toleration for what we do not believe? The last lesson a man ever learns is, that liberty of thought and speech is the right for all mankind; that the man who denies every article of our creed is to be allowed to preach just as often and just as loud as we ourselves. We have learned this,— been taught it by persecution on the question of slavery. No matter whose the lips that would speak, they must be free and ungagged. Let us always remember that he does not really believe his own opinions, who dares not give free scope to his opponent. Persecution is really want of faith in our creed.

Let us see to it, my friends, Abolitionists, that we learn the lesson the whole circle round. Let us believe that the whole of truth can not do harm to the whole of virtue. Trust it. And remember, that, in order to get the whole of truth, you must allow every man, right or wrong, freely to utter his conscience, and protect him in so doing.

162 Liberty and the Great Libertarians I know what reform needs, and all it needs, in a land where discussion is free, the press untrammelled, and where public halls protect debate. There, as Emerson says, "What the tender and poetic youth dreams today, and conjures up with inarticulate speech, is tomorrow the vociferated result of public opinion, and the day after is the charter of nations." Lieber said, in 1870, "Bismarck proclaims to-day in the Diet the very principles for which we were hunted and exiled fifty years ago/' Submit to risk your daily bread, accept social ostracism, count on a mob now and then, "be in earnest, don't equivocate, don't excuse, don't retreat a single inch," and you will finally be heard. Church.—I would never join one of those petty despotisms which usurp in our day the name of a Christian Church. I would never put my neck in that yoke of ignorance and superstition led by a Yankee Pope, and give my good name as a football for their spleen and bigotry. That lesson I learned of my father long before boyhood ceased.

Our enterprise is pledged to nothing but the abolition of slavery. When we set out,we said we would do our work under the government and under the Church. We tried it. We found that we could not work in either way; we found it necessary to denounce the Church and withdraw from the government. We did what we could to work through both. We saw that it was expedient to work through them both, if we could. Finding it impossible, we let experience dictate our measures. I am willing to confess my faith. It is this: that the Christianity of this country is worth nothing, except it is or can be made capable of dealing with the question of slavery. I am willing to confess another article of my faith: that the Constitution and government of this country is worth nothing, except it is or can be made capable of grappling with the great question of slavery. I agree with Burke: "I have no idea of a liberty unconnected with honesty and justice. Nor do I Wendell Phillips 163 believe that any good constitutions of government or of freedom can find it necessary for their security to doom any part of the people to a permanent slavery. Such a constitution of freedom, if such can be, is in effect no more than another name for the tyranny of the strongest faction; and factions in republics have been and are full as capable as monarchs of the most cruel oppression and injustice." That is the language of Edmund Burke to the electors of Bristol; I agree with it. The greatest praise government can win is, that its citizens know their rights, and dare to maintain them. The best use of good laws is to teach men to trample bad laws under their feet.

Harriet Martineau, instead of lingering in the camps of the Philistines, could, with courage, declare, "I will go among the Abolitionists, and see for myself." Shortly after the time of the State-street mob she came to Cambridge; and her hosts there begged her not to put her hand into their quarrels. The Abolitionists held a meeting there. The only hall of that day open to them was owned by infidels. Think of that, ye friends of Christianity! And yet the infidelity of that day is the Christianity of today. To this meeting in this hall Miss Martineau went, to express her entire sympathy with the occasion. As a result of her words and deeds, such was the lawlessness of that time that she had to turn back from her intended journey to the West, and was assured that she would be lynched if she dared set foot in Ohio. She gave up her journey, but not her principles. Government.—Law has always been wrong. Government is the fundamental ism of the soldier, bigot, and priest.

It is easy to be independent when all behind you agree with you, but the difficulty comes when nine hundred and ninetynine of your friends think you wrong. I think little of the direct influence of governments. I think, with Guizot, that "it is a gross delusion to believe in the sovereign power of political machinery." To hear some men talk of the government, you would suppose that Congress was the 164 Liberty and the Great Libertarians law of gravitation, and kept the planets in their places. Let History close the record. Let her allow that "on the side of the oppressor there was power,"—power "to frame mischief by a law;" that on that side were all the forms of law, and behind those forms, most of the elements of control: wealth, greedy of increase, and anxious for order, at any sacrifice of principle,—priests prophesying smooth things, and arrogating to themselves the name of Christianity,—ambition, baptizing itself statesmanship,—and that unthinking patriotism, child of habit and not of reason, which mistakes government for liberty and law for justice.

Did you ever read the fable of the wolf and the house-dog? The one was fat, the other gaunt and famine-struck. The wolf said to the dog, "You are very fat." "Yes," replied the dog, "I get along very well at home." "Well," said the wolf, "could you take me home?" "0, certainly." So they trotted along together; but as they neared the house, the wolf caught sight of several ugly scars on the neck of the dog, and stopping, cried, "Where did you get those scars on your neck? they look very sore and bloody." "O," said the dog, "they tie me up at night, and I have rather an inconvenient iron collar on my neck. But that's a small matter; they feed me well." "On the whole," said the wolf, "taking the food and the collar together, I prefer to remain in the woods." The time has been when it was the duty of the reformer to show cause why he appeared to disturb the quiet of the world. But during the discussion of the many reforms that have been advocated, and which have more or less succeeded, one after another,—freedom of the lower classes, freedom of food, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, reform in penal legislation, and a thousand other matters,—it seems to me to have proved conclusively, that government commenced in usurpation and oppression; that liberty and civilization, at present, are nothing else than the fragments of rights which the scaffold and the stake have wrung from the strong hands of the usurpers.

Wendell Phillips 165 Every step of progress the world has made has been from scaffold to scaffold, and from stake to stake. It would hardly be exaggeration to say, that all the great truths relating to society and government have been first heard in the solemn protests of martyred patriotism, or the loud cries of crushed and starving labor. The law has been always wrong. Government began in tyranny and force, began in the feudalism of the soldier and bigotry of the priest; and the ideas of justice and humanity have been fighting their way, like a thunder storm, against the organized selfishness of human nature. And this is the last great protest against the wrong of ages. It is no argument to my mind, therefore, that the old social fabric of the past is against us. Labor.—I rejoice at every effort workingmen make to organize; I do not care on what basis they do it. Men sometimes say to me, "Are you an Internationalist?" I say, "I do not know what an Internationalist is;" but they tell me it is a system by which the working men from London to Gibraltar, from Moscow to Paris, can clasp hands. Then I say, God speed to that or any similar movement.

So I welcome organization. I do not care whether it calls itself Trades-union, Crispin, International, *or Commune, anything that masses up the units in order that they may put in a united force to face the organization of capital, anything that does that, I say amen to it. One hundred thousand men! It is an immense army. I do not care whether it considers chiefly the industrial or the political questions; it can control the nation if it is in earnest. The reason why the Abolitionists brought the nation down to fighting their battle is that they were really in earnest, knew what they wanted, and were determined to have it. Therefore they got it. The leading statesmen and orators of the day said they would never urge abolition; but a determined man in a printing office said that they should, and they did it. Only organize, and stand together. Claim something to166 Liberty and the Great Libertarians gether, and at once; let the nation hear a united demand from the laboring voice, and then, when you have got that, go on after another; but get something.

If there is any one feature which we can distinguish in all Christendom, under different names—trades unions, cooperation, and internationals—under all flags, there is one great movement. It is for the people peacably to take possession of their own. No reform, moral or intellectual, ever came from the upper class of society. Each and all came from the protest of martyr and victim. The emancipation of the working people must be achieved by the working people themselves. We affirm, as a fundamental principle, that labor, the creator of wealth, is entitled to all it creates. Affirming this, we avow ourselves willing to accept the final results of the operation of a principle so radical—such as the overthrow of the whole profit-making system, the extinction of all monopolies, the abolition of privileged classes, universal education and fraternity, perfect freedom of exchange, and, best and grandest of all, the final obliteration of that foul stigma upon our so-called Christian civilization—the poverty of the masses. . . . Therefore, Resolved, That we declare war with the wages system, which demoralizes the life of the hirer and the hired, cheats both, and enslaves the workingman; war with the present system of finance, which robs labor, and gorges capital, makes the rich richer and the poor poorer, and turns a republic into an aristocracy of capital; war with these lavish grants of the public lands to speculating companies, and whenever in power we pledge ourselves to use every just and legal means to resume all such grants heretofore made; war with the system of enriching capitalists by the creation and increase of public interest-bearing debts.

We demand that every facility, and all encouragement, shall be given by law to cooperation in all branches of industry and Wendell Phillips 167 trade, and that the same aid be given to cooperative efforts that has heretofore been given to railroads and other enterprises.—At the Labor-Reform Convention, at Worcester, Mass., Sept. 4, 1870. Address to Boys.—Now, boys, this is my lesson to you today. You cannot be as good as your fathers, unless you are better. You have your fathers' example,—the opportunities and advantages they have accumulated,—and to be only as good is not enough. You must be better, You must copy only the spirit of your fathers, and not their imperfections. There was an old Boston merchant, years ago, who wanted a set of china made in Pekin. You know that Boston men sixty years ago looked at both sides of a cent before they spent it, and if they earned twelve cents they would save eleven. He could not spare a whole plate, so he sent a cracked one, and when he received the set, there was a crack in every piece. The Chinese had imitated the pattern exactly.

Now, boys, do not imitate us, or there will be a great many cracks. Be better than we. We have invented a telegraph, but what of that? I expect, if I live forty years, to see a telegraph that will send messages without wire, both ways at the same time. If you do not invent it, you are not so good as we are. You are bound to go ahead of us.