SPEECH

Delivered at Worcester, September 16, 1851, on taking the Chair as President of the Free Soil State Convention.

Gentlemen of the Convention;

Accept my thanks. It would be an honor at any time to stand in this position before a body of men so large in their number and so influential by their respectability. But, gentlemen, at this hour of trial, at this time of peril to great principles, when the lights upon earth seem to be going out around us, and we must look for guidance to the lights above,—at this hour, I say, of trial and of peril, it is an especial honor to be called to a post of duty. The position of the friends of freedom at the present time reminds me of a beautiful sentiment expressed by one of the noblest of the old Roman philosophers, who said that those who were called to fill stations of danger and self-sacrifice should thank God for the honor of being deemed worthy of such a trust.[25]

Gentlemen, it was not until this morning, and since sunrise, that I was waited upon by a delegation from your state committee, requesting my presence on this occasion. They knew, and you all know, how strongly my heart throbs, even at the mention of the great principles for which you contend. They knew, as you all know, how happy I should be if I could do any thing to deepen or to diffuse a feeling of devotion to human freedom.

But, gentlemen, there were certain circumstances connected with my position which seemed to make it necessary for me to say to your delegation, that, if I should appear here to-day, it should be with an entire privilege to speak out my mind fully on any political subject, and to say in what relation I stand to the present condition of public affairs, both state and national.

I say, then, gentlemen, that I stand where I have always stood, holding the principles of human freedom first and foremost in my regards, and, after these, our pecuniary, or merely worldly interests; holding, according to the order in which they are mentioned in the constitution of the United States, “life and liberty” to be before “property.” I stand where I stood in 1848, when I was first elected to Congress; and where my recorded votes and speeches show me to have stood through all the struggles of 1849 and ’50. I stand on the same principles yet. If other men have seen fit to go off to the right hand or to the left, I remain where I was. And if any individual of any party,—Whig, Democrat, or by whatever other appellation he may be known,—shall ever return from his wanderings to the good old homestead of Massachusetts principles,—Free Soil, Free Speech, and Free Men,—there, in that immortal birthplace of human liberty, he will find me, early in the morning and late at night, hard at work, to maintain the honor of the Pilgrims and the principles of our revolutionary sires.

Gentlemen, the perusal of the address and resolutions put forth by the Whig State Convention at Springfield, last week, brought me here. It seems to me that no true lover of human freedom can read that address and those resolutions intelligently, and understand their full scope and bearing, without being struck down by conviction, as suddenly as was St. Paul,—though the light and the voice come from an opposite quarter. Whatever the design of those papers may have been,their whole argument and office are to wheel the Whig party into line, to fight the battles of slavery.

Under these circumstances, I do not ask with a certain distinguished individual, on the prospective breaking up of parties, “Where am I togo?” I believe I do but echo the sentiments of thousands of as good and true Whigs as can be found in this commonwealth, (and there are none better any where,) when I say that, let others go where they will, here,here, on the old Whig platform of opposition to the extension of slavery, either into New Mexicoor into New England; of freedom for the District of Columbia; and in favor of the old guaranties ofhabeas corpusand trial by jury,—here I remain.

Gentlemen, the Free Soil party, as the name imports, is the party of freedom. The cardinal principle of theircreedis, that “all men are created free and equal,” and that they have an inalienable right to “life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.” Theirfaithconsists in the assurance that, in the good providence of God, the day will yet come when the blessedness of their creed will be realized among men; and by theirworksthey seek to hasten the advent of that glorious day.

A party of Freedom has existed in all ages of the world, but a mightier party of oppression has been arrayed against it. And though the lovers of human liberty have consisted of the greatest and best men who have ever lived, yet they have been overborne by violence, crushed and trampled upon by power, buried in dungeons, gibbeted on scaffolds, burnt at the stake! God, like the householder who sent servants to his vineyard from a far country, has, from age to age, sent great and mighty souls into the world to redeem it from oppression; but the oppressor has seized and mutilated and martyred them, with every form of ignominy towards the messengers themselves,and of impiety towards the Lord who sent them. The possessors of power and wealth seek to perpetuate these advantages in their families, their clan, or their caste; and over almost all the earth they have established dynasties for governments, landed or moneyed feudalisms for lords, and entails for individual families.

That we may see how fearful a thing this spirit of oppression is, not only for its cruelties, but for the tenacity of its malignant life, let it be remembered that the world had existed almost six thousand years before the principles of human liberty, civil and ecclesiastical, were clearly and fully set forth even on paper. This was first done by Mr. Jefferson, in 1776, in the Declaration of American Independence; and every body knows how intensely the same partisans who are now summoning their forces against the party of Freedom have hated him for his glorious efforts in favor of the freedom of man; how they pursued him with maledictions to his grave, and still break through the sanctity of the tomb to blacken his memory.

The immortal principles of the Declaration of Independence were partially embodied in the constitution of the United States. But, as the preëxisting metaphysics and mythology of the heathen nations mingled with the pure spirit of Christianity, and corrupted it, so the preëxisting laws and usages of oppression deformed to some extent the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence, and stamped some hideous features upon the otherwise fair face of the federal constitution. But such a preponderance of good did that instrument contain, that it was adopted by all the states. It was adopted, however, with the universal understanding that the healing influence of time would purge away the virus of the disease; and with no apprehension of the now undeniable fact, that the disease would be allowed to spread, like a gangrene, over the healthy parts. Had our fathers foreseen thatthe pro-slavery clauses in the constitution would prove a curse to whole classes and races of men entitled to protection under it, that they would be a shame to its administrators, and an opprobrium, throughout the civilized world, to the name of Republic,—it would be impious towards their memories to say they would ever have ratified it. But instead of the sounder parts diffusing healthful influences, and gradually eradicating the disease, the diseased parts have shot their infection through all the veins and organs of the body politic, until, from the heart to the extremities, there is not now to be found an uncontaminated spot.

Or to leave metaphor for literal speech: The constitution of the United States gave the most comprehensive and fundamental guaranties in favor of freedom, with here and there only an exception in behalf of slavery. It allowed “persons” who were held to service or labor and who should escape into other states to be retaken, but it also secured the trial by jury to every “person” who should claim it on any question of life or liberty, and on all questions of property even down to the paltry sum of twenty dollars. Yet there is not now, in the United States, a single spot, from ocean to ocean, where a free man is free from danger of being kidnapped and carried into horrible bondage for himself and his posterity forever; or,—what is as keenly torturing to every mind penetrated by the spirit and amenable to the precepts of the gospel,—of being called upon, under penalty of fines and fetters, to surrender his soul to this accursed work.

Now, as a true disciple of Christ ought to feel if he saw the imbruting dogmas and Moloch rites of heathenism returning to invade Christendom and to extinguish the lights of the gospel, so should every lover of liberty feel when he sees the fell spirit of slavery regaining its lost empire over the institutions of freedom.

The analogy between the present condition of this country and that of Europe is too striking not to attract attention. In 1848, there was a great uprising of the friends of liberty in both hemispheres. Thousands and tens of thousands sought to redress the wrongs of humanity,—by the cartridge box there, and by the ballot box here. The phalanx of tyranny and of mammon was unprepared for so sudden an onset, and for a moment their ranks were broken by the violence of the shock. But despotism and wealth have almost inconceivable advantages in a contest with the honest and toiling millions. In Europe, they have the military force,—a soulless machine, always ready to be turned against the people who are made to maintain it. They have also the whole ecclesiastical power, which leans upon the government for support, and fights with spiritual weapons for the masters whose plunder it shares.

In this country, owing to our different institutions, the means of quelling the spirit of liberty have been different. The administration have an immense amount of patronage at their disposal. They give contracts to the amount of millions, and select the contractors. Directly, or indirectly, they appoint some thirty thousand office-holders; and, by a lamentable reduplication of the powers of evil, they control twice or four times that number who are aspirants for office. Their influence bought over the slave power, by surrendering all our new territories to the invasion of slavery, and by giving fifty thousand square miles of free New Mexican territory to be turned into Texan slave territory, thus adding to the already enormous size of that slave-begotten state. Ten millions of dollars of almost worthless Texan stock were raised to par value by the signature of Millard Fillmore. During the whole pendency of the compromise measures, agents and brokers, reputed to be interested in thisstock, hovered about the purlieus of the national Capitol. The stock was transferred from hand to hand, without record and without daylight, so that, besides the accomplices, Heaven and Satan only know into whose possession it came. And, as though the means of patronage and seducement on so magnificent a scale were not sufficient, a private purse, almost up to the figure of fifty thousand dollars, was presented to the “foremost man of all this world” in his apostasy to the principles of human liberty. These, fellow-citizens, were among the agencies and seductions which caused the discomfiture of the friends of freedom in the national contest of 1850. The tyrants of Europe had no vacant lands, or Texas stocks, wherewith to put down humanity, and so they used gunpowder and bayonets. Our slave power and its northern allies, being debarred by the principles of our government from bullets and bayonets, accomplished their work by the Judas articles of scrip and “dotation.” To carry out these purposes, the generals Haynau and Radetsky were found there; the senators, Webster and Cass, here.

The origin and the present necessity of the Free Soil party may be briefly stated. Some years previous to the annexation of Texas, an apprehension existed that that great breach of the constitution and outrage upon northern principles and feelings were meditated. Mr. John Quincy Adams sounded the alarm; but men were so engrossed by their business, and by their paltry local and temporary political strifes, that even his voice, potent and prophetic as it was, passed by unheeded. Some respect, however, was due, at least from policy if not from principle, to the many humble but earnest opponents of so flagrant a wrong. Before the consummation of that iniquity, the Massachusetts legislature passed strong resolutions against it. The question was taken by yeas and nays, and all theWhigs and almost all the Democrats in the general court recorded their names on the side of the constitution and liberty. But the slave power then had possession of all the departments of the national government, and under the auspices of a slaveholding President, a breach was made in the walls of the constitution wide enough to let in a foreign government, with all its burden of slavery on its back. Yet, notwithstanding this perfidy to all the principles of a true democracy, such was the external pressure brought to bear upon the members of the Democratic party, that but few of them abandoned its ranks. They “acquiesced,” as the modern phrase is, when any thing specially iniquitous is to be sanctioned. They were told, as the Whigs are now told in regard to the compromise and the Fugitive Slave law, that the act wasdone and irrevocable. The merchants were told, as the Whig merchants now are, that the crime of extending slavery would at least be attended by increased profits of trade. The manufacturers were told, as the Whig manufacturers now are, that if the number of slaves were increased at the south, it must create an increased demand for whips and negro cloths. And the mere blind political partisans were told, as the same class of Whigs are now, that if God designed to stop the heaven-defying enormity of spreading slavery over this continent, he must do it in some way consistent with the integrity of the Democratic party. Precisely the arguments which were then used to seduce and corrupt the Democratic party into “acquiescence” are used by leading Whigs and Whig presses now for the same unhallowed purpose. They are alike, except that in the one case there was the crime of originality, and in the other, the meanness of plagiarism.

But from the fatal day of the annexation of Texas, thousands and thousands of honest and intelligent Democrats, though still remaining true to what theybelieved to be the principles of the party, became alienated from its leaders. From that day, the claims of the party lay lightly, but the sins of the party heavily, upon their souls; and some there were who, like Daniel of old, went into their chambers three times every day, and, throwing open the windows which looked towards the Jerusalem of liberty, prayed aloud to the true God, although within hearing of the wild beasts which had been prepared to devour them.

The Whig party at the north, and particularly in Massachusetts, flourished under the reäction of the Texas fraud. Some of its leaders, it is true, shouted a welcome to Texas, though yet afar off; and, even while she stood outside of the Union, they threw their arms around her blood-besmeared form, hideous as Milton’s picture of Sin, with all her hell-hound progeny of future slave states howling in her womb, and gave her a fraternal embrace; and when the time came, they were also ready to vote men and money,—human blood and human souls,—for the robber atrocities of the Mexican war, which a majority of the House of Representatives in Congress, on motion of Mr. Ashmun, of Massachusetts, declared to be “unnecessarily and unconstitutionally commenced.” My friends, in your observations of men, you will find there are some moral nonentities,—political availabilities though they may be,—who can listen most sanctimoniously to the Saint Stephens, when they prophesy, and then hold the clothes of the Lynchers who stone them to death.

During all this period, however, the managers and the presses of the Whig party discoursed and printed very edifying anti-slavery homilies. As the harvest months came on, an anti-slavery zeal became an epidemic among them; and sporadic cases happened at other times, depending upon the days and places appointed by the governor and council for special elections. Every body remembers how the BostonAtlasused to stir up the pure minds of the Democratic party by way of remembrance, by publishing,—periodically, as they say, and sometimes oftener,—the names of those Democratic senators or representatives in our general court who had voted for freedom and against Texas, in order to show their flagrant inconsistency in still adhering to a party that had been false to liberty. That paper has done some good service to our cause, especially in holding up for a long time the Fugitive Slave act to reprobation, while the other Whig presses in the city were daily striving to hide its atrocities from public view, and to defend what they could not hide. I trust the reluctant and struggling editors of that paper are not to be overcome by the mammon of slavery, whatever disguises it may assume or compulsion it may use. I trust the slave power will never be able to use towards them the language which hell’s portress addressed to Satan:—

“At first they called meSin, and for a signPortentous held me; but, familiar grown,I pleased, and with attractive graces wonThe most averse; thee chiefly.”

“At first they called meSin, and for a sign

Portentous held me; but, familiar grown,

I pleased, and with attractive graces won

The most averse; thee chiefly.”

Those prosperous days of the Massachusetts Whigs continued until 1848. They thrived in basket and in store, until, like Jeshurun, they waxed fat, and, at least in the fourth and fifth congressional districts, they performed some very hard kicking. Then came the nomination of General Taylor. General Taylor was a Louisiana slaveholder. He had been the hero of the Florida war,—as great an outrage against a race as ever Rome or Russia committed. He had been a prominent, and, as many believed, a willing instrument in spilling the innocent blood of a sister republic. Even should the executive divest him of military command, or he should grow too old for service, it was universally known that there was a full black battalionon his own plantation which he would always command. The south demanded his nomination absolutely. They would hear no terms, and would offer no terms. In the northern canvass it was strongly asserted that he had written a letter, saying in so many words that he would not veto the Wilmot proviso; but that letter was so warily kept in a certain unmentionable part of a Whig merchant’s wardrobe, that neither Mesmerizers nor spiritual rappers could read it aloud to the people.

Hence all omens foreboded evil. Those which we looked for on the earth augured ill to our earthly interests; and those which we looked for above were in the wrong quarter of the heavens. The character of many of General Taylor’s friends brought distrust upon himself. He owed his election far more to the repulsion which good men felt towards his opponent, [General Cass,] than to any attraction they had towards him.

It was an occasion that tried the sagacity and the discretion of honest men, and I have always felt great charity both for his advocates and his opponents;—each being able to make out so plausible a case. The course which the Connecticut clergyman took on that occasion always commended itself to me. He voted the Taylor electoral ticket, but indorsed a prayer on the back of his ballot, saying that he was painfully uncertain as to the course of duty, and imploring that his vote might be sanctified for the good of the country.

But I am happy to avail myself of this, and of all opportunities, to do justice to the name of General Taylor. He turned out a very different man from what his friends or his foes supposed him to be. I believe he desired freedom for all the territories; and, could he have been permitted to carry out his own plans, he would have secured not only the freedom of the territories, but would also have consummated allthe great national measures of the party that brought him into power. Mr. Clay threw the first stumbling-block in his way, by his compromise scheme. This, alone, might have been surmounted. But Mr. Webster’s apostasy, on the seventh of March, turned the tide of battle. It broke up General Taylor’s phalanx, both north and south. It roused the drooping and just yielding spirits of the slave power to frantic exertion. An enemy on the field General Taylor was always ready to meet; but he was not prepared for treachery in his own camp. Still, he maintained his ground resolutely, until struck down by the power that conquers the conquerors. There are many who believe it was Mr. Webster’s perfidy, with the nameless labors and anxieties that came in its train, which caused General Taylor’s death. It remains to be seen whether the political Macbeth shall succeed to the Banquo he spirited away, though all the “weird” brethren of the slave mart and of the “Union and Safety Committees” still tempt him onward by their incantations.

But it was under the circumstances of General Taylor’s nomination, and not of his death, that a portion of the Free Soilers parted company with the Whigs; as another portion did with the Democrats, because of General Cass’s avowed subserviency to the south,—and the conduct of all men is to be judged by the circumstances contemporary with their acts, and not subsequent to them.

If, however, there are those who judge of motives by results, this certainly can be said in vindication of the Free Soil party, that the now acting President of the United States, who came in on General Taylor’s ticket, and is now completing his presidential term, has done more for slavery than the Free Soil party ever predicted or feared would or could be done by the candidates whom they opposed. Even now, when the thirdyear of the presidential term is but half spent, the Whig administration, aided by many leaders in the Whig party, is carrying out, with a relentless hand, and a more relentless heart, worse pro-slavery measures than the Free Soil party ever charged upon them during the canvass, or ever believed or conceived they could commit.

Such was the position of affairs in Massachusetts in 1848, when, almost for the first time within the memory of man, the Whigs failed, at the polls, to elect electors of President and Vice President.

Let us dwell for a moment on that crisis. It was during the canvass of 1848 that the Whigs became so amorous towards the rank and file of the Free Soil party. No knight-errant ever protested more fidelity, or vowed to do more valorous deeds in his mistress’ cause. Than some of them, no dove ever cooed with a sweeter gurgle. Than others, no stag ever offended with a ranker breath. They wooed them by daylight, by moonlight, and by torchlight. They swore belief not only in all the Free Soil scriptures, but in the traditions of its rabbins. The Ordinance of ’87 they loved; the Wilmot proviso they loved better; and would the coy damsel of Free Soilism but consent to the affiance, the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia should gladden the espousals. Every Whig rally, from ward and school district meetings to monster mass meetings, resounded with Mr. Webster’sslogan, or war-cry, “No more slave states! No more slave representation in the Congress of the United States!” The Boston DailyAdvertiser, theCourier, and theJournal, which are now south of South Carolina, in the impiety of the grounds on which they defend the wrongs and the aggressions of slavery, and shout on slave hunts over Pilgrim burial grounds,—all gave back the cry, with three times three, “No more slave states! No more slave representation in the Congressof the United States!” At all their conventions, the Whigs “resolved and re-resolved,” and—but I hope we may not be compelled to finish the line. You were told there was no more need of a Free Soil party in Massachusetts than of two suns in the heavens. The Whigs were the true Free Soilers; they held Free Soilism as a hereditament, or as an heir-loom long possessed by the ancient family of the Whigs. Even Mr. Webster, who had very much withdrawn from public gaze after the Philadelphia convention, and who, like Achilles, sat “sulking in his tent” and musing over the lost Briseis of a nomination, was at last tempted, by a succession of brilliant retaining fees, to come forth and reason with these recusant and contumacious Free Soilers face to face. And what did he say? Addressing himself distinctively to Free Soilers, he said, “If, my friends, the term ‘Free Soil’ party, or ‘Free Soil’ men, is meant to designate one who has been fixed, unalterable, to-day, yesterday, and for some time past, in opposition to slavery extension, then I may claim to be, and may hold myself, as good a Free Soil man as any member of that Buffalo convention. I pray to know where is their soil freer than that on which I have stood? I pray to know what words they can use, or can dictate to me, freer than those which have dwelt upon my lips. I pray to know with what feelings they can inspire my breastmore resolute and firm in resisting slaveryEXTENSION OR ENCROACHMENTthan have inhabited my bosom since the first time I opened my mouth in public life.”

These, gentlemen, were his words, spoken at Marshfield, on the first day of September, 1848. If he were here to-day to address you, could he speak anywordsmore grateful to your ears? If only truth and a heart were in that language, could he speak any thing better?

It was by such false pretences as these that thousands,and I doubt not tens of thousands, of men wholly penetrated and imbued with Free Soil principles, were kept in the Whig ranks. I was one of them. I had faith in men; and I have it still,—with important exceptions however. The needle points to the pole; but if you bring a huge black mass of pig iron and place by its side, it trembles, yet deviates, like a man struggling to be virtuous before overwhelming temptations. Remove the disturbing force, and it returns to its fidelity. So, when the next presidential election is over, I believe the great body of the rank and file of the Whig party in Massachusetts will return to their duty; for I venture to say, that if the Whigs of Massachusetts, in November, 1848, could have foreseen the present position of their party, and the demoralization which its leaders have been able to work in it, not one third of them, no, not one quarter of them, could have been induced to vote the ticket that elected Mr. Fillmore, brought in the present cabinet, and brought on the present disastrous policy.

But, gentlemen, I am occupying too much of your time. I will add but a few more words. I said the address and resolutions of the Whig State Convention, held at Springfield, last week, brought me here. I have read them with profound sorrow. It was the first Whig convention that ever met in Massachusetts that did not at least put forth some noble doctrines in favor of freedom, whether they meant to stand by them or not. Yes, even the convention of 1850,—only one year ago,—passed the following:—

“Resolved, That Massachusetts avows her unalterable determination to maintain all the principles and purposes she has in times past affirmed and reäffirmed, in relation to the extension of slavery.”

And yet the late convention, the first one that has met since the resolution which I have just read wasadopted, has endorsed the present administration, which has done more to corrupt and deaden public sentiment at the north, as to the wrongs of slavery to the enslaved, and its injury to the free, and to aggrandize the pro-slavery south, and foster and encourage, ay, andrewardits aggressions;—has done more, I say, than any other administration that ever existed under this government. History will bear me out in this statement. Yet, at this crisis in human affairs, the one idea, the master purpose of the address and resolutions of that convention, seems to have been, to disparage and depreciate the great, eternal principles of freedom, and to bring odium and contempt upon the only party now organized for their support.

Gentlemen, the Whig leaders, in this respect, and in regard to this most important and paramount attribute of the Whig party, have lurched and lurched round, until they have got into the very trough of the pro-slavery sea. Its members, I admit, are free to follow them to their ruin, if they will; but free, too, I thank God, to go on in their old course, steering for the haven of honor and liberty. I give the great majority even of the Whig leaders the credit of having yielded to this pressure reluctantly, and under what they deemed a sort of political duress; for, gentlemen, a new and most alarming fact in the history of the Whig party of this country has been developed within the last two years. It is this: formerly, and universally, the Whig administration was supposed to be chosen to carry out the views of the Whig party; but the present administration, having abandoned the grounds on which it obtained power, and having, for its own purposes, taken new grounds, now demands of the Whig party to carry out,—not the old policy of the Whigs, but the new policy of the administration.

Fellow-citizens, could Mr. Fillmore by any possibility have been elected, in 1848; could he havegot so many as ten thousand votes among all the Whigs of the Northern States, had his present attitude on the subject of slavery been foreseen?

Was there ever an hour when Mr. Webster could have obtained one tenth part,—one fiftieth part,—of the votes of the Massachusetts legislature for the office of senator, had the curtain of the future been lifted up, and his present position been revealed? You know there never was. But, during the year 1850, without any initial change, or symptom of a change, on the part of northern Whigs, the administration, prompted by its own purposes, or yielding from its own weakness, faced square about; and ever since that time it has been striving, by all the lures of patronage and the terrors of denunciation, to force the Whigs of the north on to a kind of political turn-table, like those railroad turn-tables you see at a car-house, so that the whole party, too, should be faced square about, made to retrace their course, by going backward among the same people who had seen them go forward, shouting down all they had shouted up, and forswearing all the glorious doctrines of liberty to which the whole world had heard them swear. Gentlemen, if, in this stress of circumstances, any body asks me, “Where shall I go?” my reply is, Don’t get on to that political turn-table which the administration has prepared for the Whig party, and not the Whig party for the administration; for it will carry your country to ruin, and yourself to dishonor.

During the canvass last autumn for a member of Congress for the eighth district, when, as you all know, there were such “godlike” exertions made against my election, I was asked, as a test question, by numbers of most respectable members of the Whig party, what I thought of the Free Soil party, and their proposed coalition at that time. I replied to them in the following words, and my answer is now on record inthe hands of my constituents: “I say, as I have often said, that, if the Whigs will live up to their professions a hundred times made, I see no reason or warrant for separate organizations or coalitions. But if the great body of the Whigs mean to belie all their professions, and to persecute and punish all who remain faithful to the lessons which the Whig party itself has been teaching so strenuously for so many years, then what true Whig can blame any man for attempting to carry out what the Whigs themselves have promised to do, but have abandoned?”

But the Massachusetts Whig State Convention at that time passed the most pointed and emphatic resolution, affirming anew what they avowed themselves to have affirmed and reäffirmed so often before, on the subject of slavery. I reposed trust in their honesty; I believed in their veracity; and, as a consequence of my faith, I voted the entire Whig state ticket. Having read their last address and resolutions, I must now say, that if they desire any more votes of mine, they must revive my faith by some new evidence of their good works.

Let me advert to a few of the more salient points in that address. It labors to sustain a charge of coalition against the Free Soil party. Well, before I either approve or condemn a “coalition,” I must know by whom, and for what purpose, it was formed. A coalition, I suppose, like other acts, must be right or wrong according to the motive that prompts it.

But it is said the Free Soil party formed an alliance with those who, on some important points, had no sympathy with it. And where is this said? Why, in a land where our revolutionary fathers, fighting for freedom and for a republic, formed an alliance or coalition with monarchical and despotic France, and with monarchical and despotic Spain. What were the points of resemblance or unison between the AmericanConfederation on the one side, and France or Spain on the other? In government, in policy, in manners, in education, in religion, nothing could have been more different. In what did they agree? In hostility to Great Britain alone; but not in a single one of the reasons for that hostility, nor in but one of the objects to be accomplished by it,—the humiliation of a haughty and overbearing power.

At the same time, Great Britain formed coalitions with the North American savages, to extinguish the rising dawn of freedom. And in this they have been too faithfully imitated by the old hunkers of both parties;—imitated, I say, not only in the object and spirit of the coalition, but in the weapons with which the warfare is waged. Yes, fellow-citizens; for there is an attempt, and that attempt is to be followed up, to overwhelm the Free Soil party by obloquy and denunciation. There is to be a cry of “bargain and corruption” to put down the Free Soil party, just as the administration of Mr. John Quincy Adams was put down by the same cry. Who now believes any thing about the charge of “bargain and corruption” against Mr. Adams,—except that it was a villanous charge? I believe the same charge against the Free Soil party will have come, twenty years hence, to the same result,—that of conferring honor upon its object, and infamy upon its authors.

But it is said the Free Soil party have seized the offices and emoluments of the state. I was absent last January at the time of the organization of the state government; but I have heard that those who were distinctively called Free Soilers received only the office of secretary of state, and president of the senate, and two or three out of the nine councillors;—all of them nearly or quite without patronage. I suppose all their emoluments combined would not equal what is received by the Boston postmaster, or the collectorof the Boston port. Vast “ways and means” these for the corruption of the people! The whole of them would not suffice a cabinet officer for abonne boucheor a tidbit.

And now I suggest a further point. Was there a single Free Soiler who received an office last winter, on what is called thedivision of the spoils, which the people, when they voted for him at the polls, did not desire and mean that he should receive?

Now, I need not say that when men conspire or coalesce for a selfish purpose, whether that purpose be office, or emolument, or the profits of trade, or the increase of dividends, and especially if they sacrifice great principles of public utility, or morality, or religion, for the selfish end, I condemn the deed with my whole heart. So when representatives, or agents of any kind, are elected or appointed for special purposes, and by votes or influences without which they could not have obtained their posts, and then, for their own ambitious or mercenary objects,theycoalesce to defeat the will of their constituents, any severity of language, in holding up their conduct to reprobation, may be used with my full consent. Precisely of this nature was the coalition between Mr. Webster and General Cass, to carry through the compromise measures and the Fugitive Slave bill. Both were agents, both betrayed and violated the will of their principals. Could Mr. Eliot, of Boston, have been elected to Congress, had he avowed his intention to vote for the Fugitive Slave bill? Every body knows he could not. Yet he coalesced with the secessionists, Messrs. Clingman and Venable, of North Carolina, and with the whole South Carolina disunion delegation, in voting for the Fugitive Slave bill. For Massachusetts, it was said that the passage of that bill would raise the price of manufacturing stocks; as, for North Carolina, it would increase the profits of negro-breeding. Here,then, are cases of coalition between persons mutually hostile on other points; and all the northern members engaged in it, not to carry out, but to defeat, the will of their constituents.

But the coalition entered into by the Free Soil party in this state, last year, was a coalition planned, formed, sanctioned, and executed, as far as they could execute it, by the people themselves, acting in their original, sovereign capacity, at their primary meetings, and at the ballot box. It was not originated by representatives against the wishes of their constituents; but the representatives carried out what the people who chose them willed. What conclusively proves this to be so is, that the people who elected these representatives were satisfied with what they did; and, since the work has been done, have shown their approval of it in every practicable way.

There may be wrong motives prompting to the most useful and beneficent acts, as good motives sometimes lead to the most pernicious conduct; but I am speaking of these acts of alleged coalition which were instituted by the people themselves, discussed in their hearing at all the primary meetings and all the conventions, and afterwards ratified by their votes; and I say, to compare such a coalition with that which took place between Whigs and Democrats in the Senate of the United States, and between unionists and disunionists, slave-breeders and manufacturers, in the House, to carry through the compromise bills and the Fugitive Slave bill, seems to me illogical, preposterous, and absurd. But it is said that the bargain in the one case was open and public; and that its terms were reduced to writing, like a bond or covenant between individuals. Is it any the worse for that? Had you not as lief have an open bargain that you can see, as secret ones, like the Texas stock bargains, that you cannot see? I suppose that coalitions can beimpliedandunderstood, as well as contracts. Why, have you not seen such an implied coalition carried out in Faneuil Hall within a year, when the Hon. Benjamin F. Hallett led on his cohorts, and the Hon. Rufus Choate advanced his forces to join them; when Mr. Benjamin R. Curtis joined hands with Mr. David Henshaw, who was present by letter, if not in person,—honorable men all,—and formed one of the most loving and harmonious coalitions out of as heterogeneous and repulsive elements as ever chaos jumbled together,—a coalition not to lift the bleeding form of liberty up, but to crush it down.

The coalition entered into by the Free Soilers certainly did one thing which would atone for many errors. They elected Mr. Charles Sumner to the Senate of the United States. And I cannot believe there is a man to be found in any party so shameless and depraved as to charge Mr. Sumner with any dishonorable coalescing, or with being tainted, in a hair of his head or in a filament of his garments, with “bargain and corruption.” Mr. Sumner was not elected on any principle of availability, but on the principle of “Detur digniori,”—“Let it be given to the most worthy.” His lofty pedestal is too firm to be shaken by any such accusation. His character is not to be affected by any office which he shall hold, but only by whathe does, whether in office or out of it.

While defending, in this way, the principle of coalitions, when formed by the people themselves, no one, of course, could be understood as pledging himself to vote for all their measures. This would be the old and wicked partisan principle of standing by our party, right or wrong. I am also free to say that there is, in my opinion, aprima facieobjection against coalitions; but I cannot doubt the existence of cases where they are not only justifiable, but laudable. I lay down this great principle: I think the Free Soil partyshould act at any time, on any point, with any party through whom they can help the cause of freedom.

The Whig address remarks as follows: “We are now able to say, after the experience of nearly a twelvemonth, that it, [the administration,] has fully earned the confidence which we awarded to it in advance.The great interests of the country have been faithfully cared for!” I ask, What great interests of the country have been faithfully cared for? What interest of the Whig party, assuming to be the country, has been faithfully cared for? Have we got a tariff? Mr. Webster dissipated all chance of that for the present, and I fear for years to come, when he taught the south to threaten and prevail. Have we any river and harbor appropriations? Alas! northern capital and northern lives still go to the bottom on our western waters. Is the financial policy of the country changed? Let the condition of the money market for the last few months, and also its prospective condition, grinding the middle classes of tradesmen and manufacturers as between the upper and nether millstone, answer this question. A reform in all these particulars would doubtless have been affected but for Mr. Webster’s apostasy; but where are these reforms now? If they exist at all, they exist in some indefinite future. What interest of the country, then, has been faithfully cared for or secured? Not one! Not one! The most prominent member of the administration has been engaged in carrying out the policy of the south,—in visiting southern cities to pander to the slave power, and northern cities to stifle the spirit of freedom. Two armed expeditions have been fitted out in our own ports against the territory of a government with which we are at peace, resulting in the loss of hundreds of lives, while the President and his first secretary have been spending their time gayly at watering-places. When some ofour citizens, a few years ago, afforded some assistance to the “Liberals” of Canada, in favor of a movement which Canadians themselves had already set on foot, the government promptly and energetically interfered. But Canada and Cuba are wider apartpoliticallythan they aregeographically. Slavery makes the difference between them.

The only valorous exploit of this administration was the issuing of a proclamation, when one southern slave, from among three millions, escaped from the house of bondage, and found that protection under the British ensign which was denied to him by the American flag, and that right to a trial by jury under a monarchy which was denied to him by a republic. Or, if any other act should be added to the preceding, it was the President’s letter to Dr. Collins, of Georgia, offering the use of the army and navy of the United States to catch one poor white woman, Ellen Crafts, and her husband, and return them to bondage.

In another passage of the Whig address all disguise is cast off, and it is openly declared, that the giving of an extra slave state to Texas, with territory enough for half a dozen more as large as Massachusetts, and ten millions of dollars in addition to that, and the statutory permission that slavery may go into New Mexico and Utah, and even that abhorred enactment, the Fugitive Slave law, are only “factitious and imaginary” grounds of complaint. The Free Soil party is condemned because it takes any notice of such “factitious and imaginary” causes. A three-penny tax on tea was a real grievance,—one fit to be resisted unto blood, to be historically recorded, and to which we are not ashamed to refer when descanting upon the honor of our fathers. But such largesses to slavery as kings could not afford to give, and the robbery of an entire race of all its rights,—yes, and with authority, too, to make us help commit the robbery,—theseare “factitious and imaginary” causes of dissatisfaction. Men of Massachusetts! moral and religious men! lovers of freedom and of your country, were you prepared for this?

But the address goes still further. It goes into an elaborate palliation of the Fugitive Slave law itself. It first attempts to shift the question by asking the Free Soilers what they would do with regard to the constitutional provision respecting escaped slaves. The views of the Free Soil party on this point, and their purpose of fidelity to the constitution, have been set forth a hundred times. In further answer, therefore, to this question, I trust it is only necessary to remark, that the Free Soil partywill do what they say, and not pass ten long years in asserting, and protesting, and resolving, and calling Earth and Heaven to witness their devotion to Freedom, and then disavow all they had ever avowed, and forswear their oaths.

Let me read to you the disparaging and contemptuous remark of the address on that great palladium of human liberty, the trial by jury. “Is nothing meant,” it gravely asks, “but the substitution of the verdict of a jury for the decision of a judge.” Nothing but—what? “The verdict of a jury for the decision of a judge,” that is, of a commissioner! And are the persons who prepared that address so nearly stone blind as not to recognize the infinite difference between the verdict of a jury and the decisions of such commissioners as Messrs. Ingraham, Smith, and Nelson? Ingraham, of Philadelphia, sent a man into bondage whom the alleged claimant refused to receive as soon as he saw him, knowing that all his family, and all his slaves, and all his neighbors would see that he had no right to him. Smith, of Buffalo, gave a certificate to carry Daniel into slavery, when not a single item, or particle, or tittle of legal and admissible evidence was before him as proof, as was afterwardsshown by Judge Conkling, of the United States court. Nelson, of New York, forced the facts in Bolding’s case to bring them within the law which he himself had laid down, as much as ever a fraudulent book-keeper forced balances to cover an embezzlement. Sims, instead of having common-law notice and time to send for evidence, was seized at night on a false and trumped-up charge of stealing. Daniel was knocked down by the claimant’s agent with a club, tumbled and tortured upon a hot stove, his scalp torn open, and then compelled to go to trial, while, as described by an eye witness, “he sat dozing, unable to talk with his counsel, with the blood slowly oozing out of his mouth and nostrils.” Hamlet, Long, and Bolding were sprung upon as remorselessly as a tiger springs upon a lamb, and carried to trial without being allowed to go to their respective homes to bid farewell to their families. An alleged slave has lately been taken from Pennsylvania who was seized in the night, tried in the night, and carried away on the same night, without any opportunity for preparation, for counsel, or for defence. The kidnapper, Alberti, now lies in a Pennsylvania prison for carrying away a mother and her child; but the mother and the child are now groaning under the lash of a southern taskmaster. Had this villain, Alberti, and his accomplices been detected while the victims were still in their hands, I suppose he would have carried them before Mr. Commissioner Ingraham, and had the wronglegallyrectified,—the blackness of the crimejudiciallywashed white. These are but specimens of what the Fugitive Slave law has already done, before the public mind has become familiarized with its brutalities, and while there is yet some sensibility to the claims of justice and mercy left among us. And yet the writer of this address and the committee that offered it, ask us whether all we mean is the substitution of the verdictof a jury for the decision of a commissioner. I answer, that this difference which they so be-little and disparage will often be all the difference between freedom and bondage, between life and death, between honor and infamy, between happiness and perdition.

And now, fellow-citizens, if, in addition to having our northern freemen kidnapped in southern ports, and imprisoned and sold into bondage; if, in addition to fighting for foreign territory to be added to the domain of slavery; if, in addition to being taxed, in sums of millions and tens of millions, to fortify the slave power;—if, in addition to all this, we are to be deprived and defrauded of that noble and venerable institution, the trial by jury,—an institution sanctified by the blood of martyrs, hallowed by the prayers of sainted patriots, held sacred by all good men, and taught to their children like the living oracles of God;—if this attempt is to be made, as the late Whig address foreshadows,—then I say, a more flagrant case of apostasy is nowhere to be found on the records of any history, sacred or profane, since Satan broke into paradise andWebsterizedour first parents.

I shall advert to but one more point in the address. It speaks of the “pitiable humbug of ballot envelopes.” Now, gentlemen, I may be all wrong on this subject. My instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, may all mislead; but from the first time, now years ago, when I heard this subject broached, my instincts, reason, judgment, conscience, have all been in its favor. Why, fellow-citizens, the ballot is worse than useless, if it be notFREE! Better be debarred from the privilege of voting at all, than to be mocked with the form, while cheated of the substance. A southern slave stands higher, politically, than a northern laborer, if the latter must vote as his employer dictates. It may be very well for an opulent man, one of vast fortune, who is dependent on nobody, and so cares for nobody, whogoes quarterly and takes his thousands of dollars for rents or dividends; it may be very well for him to laugh at the secret ballot, and call it a “humbug;” but let us look at the other end of the scale. Let us look in the thousands of day-laborers, of workmen on corporation grounds, of dependent clerks, of subordinates at custom-houses and other public offices, and so forth, who have no capital but their industry, no resources but their daily earnings, who have an aged mother or dependent sisters to support, or a family of children to be fed, clothed, and educated; who may be turned out even of the humble tenements where they live, as winter is coming on; who may be refused promotion or advancement in their work and in their wages; and in regard to some of whom the wolf of hunger sits growling at the door; let us look at these, I say, and then answer the question, whether they ought not to be protected in voting according to their judgment and conscience. The liberty of voting includes all other liberties. The man of independent circumstances has this liberty; and no man’s circumstances, not even the poorest and the humblest, should be so dependent as to take it away.

I do not desire this secret ballot law for myself. I like to lay my ballot in the box, face upwards, looking heavenward; looking the Paul Prys who hover round, full in the eye; but I am willing and glad to put that ballot in an envelope, in order to protect my poor neighbor, the bread of whose mouth, the shelter of whose family, and the education of whose children, may depend upon the vote he gives. Ay, I go further. I should think that any high-minded man, any man having proper sensibilities respecting his relations to his social inferiors, would rejoice in such a law as this; because it would take away all ground of accusation or imputation that he would do so unrighteous anddastardly a deed as to invade a dependant’s right of voting as it might seem to him good.

Gentlemen, it is said, in one of the Springfield resolutions, that the last legislature cost the state an extra fifty thousand dollars. Whether it did or not is not of any very vast importance; though I confess I have a great respect for Poor Richard’s economy, and would save all that I could. But does not the very mention of this sum of fifty thousand remind one of another sum, almost precisely the same, which was spent last year on one of Mr. Sumner’s predecessors in the senatorial office? And if it cost fifty thousand dollars for a ticket to pass Mr. Webster out of the Senate, it was surely worth as much for a ticket to pass Mr. Sumner in.

Gentlemen, I close by remarking that it is in view of these great questions of human freedom,—in view of the solemn responsibility in which we stand to our country and to posterity, that we have assembled here to-day. May this meeting prove to be a concentration of rays of scattered light and wisdom, meeting and burning in a focus, and then sending back illumination and cheering to all the parts of our beloved commonwealth. If, in my humble way, I can do any thing to promote so glorious an object, my services are at your disposal.

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