“I was at the Springfield convention when Mr. Webster said, ‘Not another inch of slave territory;no, not one inch!’ By the aid of his remarks on that occasion, I was confirmed in the views which I had before entertained, and have as yet seen no reason to change them.“In 1847, I had the honor and pleasure of recording my ‘yea’ in favor of the resolves ‘concerning the existence and extension of slavery within the jurisdiction of the United States,’ and ‘concerning the Mexican war and the institution of slavery,’ which passed the legislature of last year; and had I been a member of that body at its last session, I should have given my support to the resolve ‘concerning slavery,’ which was then passed.“When I recorded my ‘yea,’ and advocated the resolves of 1847, I did not suppose them to beidle words, written out to be bandied about and declaimed upon in Massachusetts, and belaid snugly away, if ever I should depart the jurisdiction. I supposed them to involve great principles of human freedom, which were to be applied throughout the length and breadth of our country, whenever and wherever the time and place might present legitimate opportunities therefor.”
“I was at the Springfield convention when Mr. Webster said, ‘Not another inch of slave territory;no, not one inch!’ By the aid of his remarks on that occasion, I was confirmed in the views which I had before entertained, and have as yet seen no reason to change them.
“In 1847, I had the honor and pleasure of recording my ‘yea’ in favor of the resolves ‘concerning the existence and extension of slavery within the jurisdiction of the United States,’ and ‘concerning the Mexican war and the institution of slavery,’ which passed the legislature of last year; and had I been a member of that body at its last session, I should have given my support to the resolve ‘concerning slavery,’ which was then passed.
“When I recorded my ‘yea,’ and advocated the resolves of 1847, I did not suppose them to beidle words, written out to be bandied about and declaimed upon in Massachusetts, and belaid snugly away, if ever I should depart the jurisdiction. I supposed them to involve great principles of human freedom, which were to be applied throughout the length and breadth of our country, whenever and wherever the time and place might present legitimate opportunities therefor.”
At the Whig state convention held at Springfield in 1847, a resolution was submitted by Dr. Palfrey, “that the Whigs of Massachusetts will support no men for the offices of president and vice-president, but such as are known by their acts, or declared opinions, to be opposed to the extension of slavery;” and Mr. William Dwight, then of Springfield, is reported to have said, “You cannot vote for a candidate not known to be opposed to slavery extension;it would be guilt.”
But, fellow-citizens, I might go on citing authorities of this kind until sunset;—nay, until sunlight should come round again, and still leave the greater part of my resources untouched. I will refer you but to one more,—a resolution passed at the late Whig state convention, only a few days ago, which was as follows:—
“Resolved, That Massachusetts avows her unalterable determination to maintain all the principles and purposes shehas in times past affirmed, and reäffirmed, in relation to the extension of slavery; and the measure of success which has attended her exertions is a new incentive to continue and persevere in all constitutional efforts, till the great and good work shall be accomplished and perfected.”
“Resolved, That Massachusetts avows her unalterable determination to maintain all the principles and purposes shehas in times past affirmed, and reäffirmed, in relation to the extension of slavery; and the measure of success which has attended her exertions is a new incentive to continue and persevere in all constitutional efforts, till the great and good work shall be accomplished and perfected.”
And now, gentlemen, let me ask you whether my action has been in accordance with these sentiments, as expressed by the highest acts of the party and the most solemn resolutions of the state? [An acclamation of yeas.]
Here, fellow-citizens, I come to the test question: Did we, as true Whigs, and as honorable men, make all these declarations in sincerity, meaning to stand by them to the end; or was it done, from time to time, to beguile a portion of our fellow-citizens of their votes, on the vile doctrine that “all is fair in politics”? Were we frank and in earnest, or were we hollow and fraudulent?
I know very well what influences have been brought to bear upon us. I know we are a people intent on thriving, and on worldly prosperity. Every young man amongst us sets out in life determined to better his condition. This, to me, is no cause of regret, but of rejoicing. If the spirit of thrift does not transgress the limits of honor and duty, it is not only right but laudable. The animal wants of man must be supplied before he will develop his intellectual or moral powers. You may find individuals who will be virtuous amid want and privation,—heroes in virtue;—but a virtuous community in rags and hunger, you will never find. We must put society in a condition of physical comfort, before it will rise to mental excellence. I am an ardent advocate, therefore, of all measures tending to increase the wealth of the country; but on this ever-present and everlasting condition, that it is done without a sacrifice of principles. Any enlargement of business, any increase of profits, any augmentation ofwealth, gained by a community through a dereliction from principle, is as insecure and as ignominious as the gains of an individual through fraud, embezzlement, or peculation.
For the purpose of rewarding our native labor, therefore, I am for a protective tariff. Perhaps some persons may be here present who dissent from this opinion; but I came here to avow, and not to conceal my sentiments and acts. It has always seemed to me that we must protect our labor against foreign labor, or our laborers at home will fall to the condition of the pauper laborers abroad. In Manchester in England, and Glasgow in Scotland, and many other manufacturing towns in Great Britain, there are thousands of wretched, degraded female operatives, who earn scarcely a shilling a day. After their day’s work is done, they visit the dram-shops, roam the streets till midnight, and if not invited away by vicious men, they huddle by scores into filthy lodging-houses, where they sleep, men and women promiscuously, till morning summons them back to their tasks. Now where labor is so scantily paid, fabrics can be produced more cheaply; and if these fabrics can be sent into this country, free of duty, they will undersell ours, until the prices of our labor and the condition of our laborers are reduced to theirs. Nothing is left to protect our industry but the cheaper freight of the materials, and that is too trifling a compensation to be of any account. This is the whole philosophy of the matter, and to me it has always seemed unassailable.
It has been thought and said that if we would yield to the south on the slavery question, they would yield to us on the tariff question. We have surrendered the slavery question. Have we got the tariff? Have we got any thing but disgrace in the eyes of the civilized world? To me, it seems that our chance for a tariff is greatly diminished. For the majority which is necessaryto enable us to pass a tariff law, we must depend on our opponents. By our yielding to the south, their party discipline has been immensely strengthened, and it is now more difficult than ever to obtain their votes for any measure conducive to northern interests. Besides, they now say they will retain the tariff question as an open one, in order to keep us on our good behavior. What have those now to say for themselves, who beguiled a portion of our people into the delusion, that they might safely barter human rights for pecuniary advantages, and have left to their dupes both the loss of the advantages, and the disgrace of abandoning their principles!
But an appeal is made to us to ratify this surrender to the slave power, because of our love for the Union. And is our love for the Union always to be converted, or rather perverted, into a pro-slavery motive of action? I join you all most cordially, I join any one, in avowing my regard for the Union, and my resolution to stand by it. But the Union ought to be so used as to extend, and not to abridge human welfare. If, in order to maintain the Union, we must sacrifice all the great objects for which the Union was formed,—the establishment of justice, the promotion of the general welfare, and the securing of the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,—then the Union no longer represents a beneficent divinity but a foul Dagon, and is worthy to be broken in pieces. A Union which must be secured by such sacrifices as have been lately made in New York, in behalf of the so called “Union Meeting,” abolishes the benefits it was designed to secure. Eight thousand signatures were obtained for calling that meeting; but to procure them, whole streets were scoured, and men were threatened with the publication of their names, and the consequent loss of southern custom, if they refused to join in the call. Many were obliged to payhush moneyto prevent exposure.The New York idea is slavery and free trade. Here, it is slavery and tariff. Both cities cannot get the price of their surrender of principle.
No, fellow-citizens, the more we yield to the demands of the south in order to save the Union, the more we may and must. Their longing eyes are already fixed on Cuba. There is more probability and more danger to-day that Cuba will be annexed to this government within five years, than there was of Texan annexation five years before that event took place. I lately said to a Louisianian, “You will soon be for making a slave state of Cuba.” “No,” said he, “we mean to make two of that.”
Gentlemen, I have already occupied your attention too long. But I am constrained to make a few brief remarks on a subject I would gladly avoid. The occasion of your present meeting is known to all. Two years ago, I was nominated by the Whigs of this district as their candidate for the seat in Congress which I now hold. By the favor of my fellow-citizens of all parties, I received more than eleven thousand out of about thirteen thousand votes cast at that election. I felt assured at that time, that I agreed in all essential articles of political faith with those who gave me their support, otherwise I should not have accepted the office at their hands. I have endeavored faithfully, and according to the best of my ability, to carry out the wishes which they then expressed, and which they well knew that I held. Yet, during the last week, a Whig convention, (so called,) assembled in this place to nominate a candidate for the thirty-second Congress; and, after some close voting, they nominated as my successor, the Hon. Samuel H. Walley,—a gentleman, I am happy to say, towards whom I have always sustained relations of personal kindness. In the language of the day, that convention threw me overboard. Now it is known to my whole circle of private friends, that,as soon as Congress passed these pro-slavery measures to which I have adverted, my determination was formed not to be a candidate for reëlection. I resolved to return to the people, and labor at home instead of at Washington, in the cause of human freedom. But it was soon given out, in certain influential quarters, that I should not be returned to Congress again, and that I should be stigmatized by a rejection. Unsurpassed efforts, as you all know, have been made to carry out this threat; even the Secretary of State of the United States has made it the occasion for a practical contradiction of all he had ever said against bringing the influence of the government to bear upon the freedom of elections; and the proceedings of the last week’s convention were the first instalment of the penalty which I am to suffer for defending human rights and unmasking their betrayers. It is said that the convention of last week was a packed convention; that it did not represent the wishes of the people. Decorum forbidsmeto make any such charge, even though it were probably true. In a few days, this point will be settled by the sovereign of us all, at the ballot-box.[18]
But two or three points, to which I wish to call your attention, are contained in the address put forth by the meeting I have referred to. Let me premise, however, that I take no exception to the fact that my acts and opinions should be made the subject of examination and criticism by any body of men, or by any man. It is better that animadversion should be wrong than that it should not be free. Like Aristides, I would write the vote that should banish me, rather than to fetter or control the voter’s will. And now, having laid down these principles in favor of free speech for others, I proceed to exemplify them for myself.
The first charge preferred against me, in the address, is, that I said, in a letter dated on the 3d of May last, and addressed to a portion of my constituents,[19]that I “sympathized on different points with different parties, but was exclusively bound to none.” Upon this, the address remarks, “If we understand his meaning, it is ... that he cannot be our champion and defend our cause, as our true representative should, whenever and wherever called upon.” No, I reply to this, I will not promise beforehand to be any man’s “champion,” nor to defend any man’s “cause,” “whenever and wherever called upon.” This would be to proffer championship and allegiance to men and measures whether they were right or wrong. If any man offers to vote for me on such conditions, I deny him my assistance and disdain his support. Perhaps I do not know what I was made for; but one thing I certainly never was made for, and that is, to put principles on and off, at the dictation of a party, as a lackey changes his livery at his master’s command.
Another remark in the address is, that the compromise measures, so called, excepting the fugitive slave law, were “wise, and that they gave to the free states all they could reasonably ask.” What a stultification, my friends, is this, of ourselves, of our party, and of every department of our state government, for the last ten years. What have you been doing, but resolving, contending, and placing your words and deeds upon the historical records of the state and the nation, against the identical measures now declared to be “wise,” and all for which the free states “could reasonably ask”? I leave this point with a single remark. The address excepts the fugitive slave law from the measures it commends. Before another year is past, will not that most execrable act in modern legislation be palliated or adopted by those who voted for this address?
A third objection to my position is, that I regard the question of the extension of slavery into our territories as paramount to those questions of a pecuniary character, on which we desire to obtain the favorable action of the government. Let this objection against me have its full force. I admit it, in all its length and breadth. I do regard the question of human freedom for our wide-extended territories, with all the public and private consequences dependent upon it, both now and in all futurity, as first, foremost, chiefest among all the questions that have been before the government, or are likely to be before it. When temporary and commercial interests are put in competition with the enduring and unspeakably precious interests of freedom for a whole race, of liberty for a whole country, and of obedience to the will of the Creator, my answer is, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”
In an address delivered by Mr. Choate, in 1848, he declared the slavery question to be of “transcendent importance;” and for this sentiment he was universally applauded. Wherein does “paramountimportance” so differ from “transcendentimportance,” that the one is to be applauded while the other is condemned?
Let me call your attention to one other remark in the address, and I will leave it. It suggests that my course in Congress on the slavery questions has been unacceptable to the south, and that we ought to send a representative who will conciliate them and obtain their good will. Fellow-citizens, do you suppose that any man can be true to the memory of the Pilgrim fathers, and to the love of liberty they bequeathed us, and at the same time true to the spirit of the Cavaliers, and to the wishes of their slave-owning posterity? Eighteen hundred years ago, it was said that no mancan serve two masters; but the cupidity of modern times proposes the solution of a problem which Christ declared to be impossible. My opinion is, that the cause of all our present calamity, and of the enduring dishonor of the late measures, is this very desire to conciliate southern favor, instead of giving a manful defence to northern rights.
Finally, fellow-citizens, it is our fortune to live during a great historic crisis in the affairs of the world. This is the age of the useful arts; of discoveries and inventions, which are filling with wealth the garners and the coffers of men. It is the age of commerce, of profit, of finance. One part of our nature is intensely stimulated. Let us beware of the effect of this stimulus upon that nobler portion of our being, which no splendor of opulence nor profusion of luxuries can ever satisfy; which demands allegiance to God, and justice and humanity towards our fellow-men; and which must have them, or die the second death. We may be poor; but let us deprecate and forefend the most calamitous of all poverties,—a poverty of spirit. We may be subjected to great sacrifices; but let us sacrifice every thing else, nay, life itself, before we sacrifice our principles. I commend to you the language of the good Bishop Watson, who, when tempted to stifle the expression of his convictions through the hope of kingly patronage, replied, that it was “Better to seek a fortuitous sustenance from the drippings of the most barren rock in Switzerland, with freedom for his friend, than to batten as a slave at the most luxurious table of the greatest despot in the world.”
FOOTNOTES:[16]Mr. Wilson has since been rewarded by the administration with a lucrative office in California.[17]See, also,ante, p.256.[18]The people settled the question by electing Mr. Mann by a majority over all other candidates.—Publishers.[19]Seeante, p.237.
[16]Mr. Wilson has since been rewarded by the administration with a lucrative office in California.
[16]Mr. Wilson has since been rewarded by the administration with a lucrative office in California.
[17]See, also,ante, p.256.
[17]See, also,ante, p.256.
[18]The people settled the question by electing Mr. Mann by a majority over all other candidates.—Publishers.
[18]The people settled the question by electing Mr. Mann by a majority over all other candidates.—Publishers.
[19]Seeante, p.237.
[19]Seeante, p.237.