SPEECH OF WENDELL PHILLIPS,

AT THE MELODEON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, JAN. 28, 1852.

[PHONOGRAPHICALLY REPORTED BY J. M. W. YERRINTON.]

MR. PRESIDENT': :- -I have been thinking, while sitting here, of the different situations of the Anti-Slavery cause now and one year ago, when the last anniversary of this Society was held. To some, it may seem that we had more sources of interest and of public excitement on that occasion than we have now. We had with us, during a portion, at least, of that session, the eloquent advocate of our cause on the other side of the water. We had the local excitement and the deep interest which the first horror of the Fugitive Slave Bill had aroused. We had, I believe, in our midst, some Fugitives, just arrived from the house of bondage. It may seem to many that, meeting as we do to-day robbed of all these, we must be content with a session more monotonous and less effectual in arousing the community. But, when we look over the whole land; when we look back upon the scenes which have transpired in our own Commonwealth, at Christiana, at Syracuse; at the passage through the country of the great Hungarian; at the present state of the public mind, it seems to me that no year, during the existence of the Society, has presented more encouraging aspects to the Abolitionists. The views which our friend (PARKER PILLSBURY) has just presented are those upon which, in our most sober calculation, we ought to rely. Give us time, and, as he has said, talk is all-powerful. We are apt to feel ourselves overshadowed in the presence of colossal institutions. We are apt, in coming up to a meeting of this kind, to ask what a few hundred or a few thousand persons can do against the weight of government, the mountainous odds of majorities, the influence of the press, the power of the pulpit, the organization of parties, the omnipotence of wealth. At times, to carry a favorite purpose, leading statesmen have endeavored to cajole the people into the idea that this age was like the past, and that a "rub-a-dub Agitation," as ours is contemptuously styled, was only to be despised. The time has been when, as our friend observed, from the steps of the Revere House - yes, and from the depots of New York railroads - Mr. WEBSTER has described this Anti-Slavery Movement as a succession of lectures in school houses the mere efforts of a few hundred men and women to talk together, excite each other, arouse the public, and its only result a little noise. He knew better. He knew better the times in which he lived. No matter where you meet a dozen earnest men pledged to a new idea - wherever you have met them, you have met the beginning of a Revolution. Revolutions

are not made, they come. A Revolution is as natural a growth as an oak. It comes out of the past. Its foundations are laid far back. The child feels; he grows into a man, and thinks; another, perhaps, speaks, and the world acts out the thought. And this is the history of modern society. Men undervalue the Anti-Slavery Movement, because they imagine you can always put your finger on some illustrious moment in history and say, here commenced the great change which has come over the nation. Not so. The beginning of great changes is like the rise of the Mississippi. A child must stoop and gather away the pebbles to find it. But soon it swells on broader and broader, bears on its ample bosom the navies of a mighty Republic, fills the Gulf, and divides a Continent.

I remember a story of Napoleon that illustrates my meaning. We are apt to trace his control of France to some noted victory, to the time when he camped in the Tuilleries, or when he dissolved the Assembly by the stamp of his foot. He reigned in fact when his hand was first felt on the helm of the vessel of state, and that was far back of the time when he had conquered in Italy, or his name had been echoed over two Continents. It was on the day when five hundred irresolute men were met in that Assembly which called itself, and pretended to be, the government of France. They heard that the mob of Paris was coming the next morning, thirty thousand strong, to turn them, as was usual in those days, out of doors. And where did this seemingly great power go for its support and refuge? They sent Tallien to seek out a boy lieutenant, the shadow of an officer, - so thin and pallid that when he was placed on the stand before them, the President of the Assembly, fearful, if the fate of France rested on the shrunken form, the ashy cheek before him, that all hope was gone, asked- Young man, can you protect the Assembly?" And the ashen lips of the Corsican boy parted only to reply "I always do what I undertake." Then and there Napoleon ascended his throne; and the next day, from the steps of St. Roche, thundered forth the cannon which taught the mob of Paris, for the first time, that it had a master. That was the commencement of the Empire. So the AntiSlavery Movement commenced unheeded in that "obscure hole" which Mayor OTIS could not find, occupied by a printer and a black boy.

In working these great changes, in such an age as ours, the so-called statesman has far less influence than the many little men who, at various points, are silently maturing a regeneration of public opinion. This is a reading and thinking age, and great interests at stake quicken the general intellect. Stagnant times have been when a great mind, anchored in error, might snag the slow-moving current of society. Such is not our era. 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. In our day, great questions about them have called forth all the energies of the common mind. Error suffers sad treatment in the shock of eager intellects. "Everybody," said Talleyrand, “is cleverer than anybody;" and any name, however illustrious, which links itself to abuses, is sure to be overwhelmed by the impetuous current of that society which, (thanks to the press and a reading public,) is potent, always, to clear its own channel. Thanks to the

Printing Press, the people now do their own thinking, and statesmen, as they are styled-men in office- have ceased to be either the leaders or the clogs of society.

This view is one that Mr. WEBSTER ridiculed in the depots of New York. The time has come when he is obliged to change his tone; when he is obliged to retrace his steps- to acknowledge the nature and the character of the age in which he lives. KOSSUTH comes to this country-penniless, and an exile; conquered on his own soil; flung out as a weed upon the waters; nothing but his voice left- and the Secretary of State must meet him. Now, let us see what he says of his "rub-a-dub Agitation," which consists of the voice only of the tongue, which our friend PILLSBURY has described. This is that "tongue" that the impudent statesman declared, from the drunken steps of the Revere House, ought to be silenced- this tongue, which was a "rub-a-dub Agitation" to be despised, when he spoke to the farmers of New York.

men

He says "We are too much inclined to underrate the power of moral influence." Who is? Nobody but a Revere House statesman. "We are too much inclined to underrate the power of moral influence, and the influence of public opinion, and the influence of the principles to which great the lights of the world and of the present age-have given their sanction. Who doubts, that in our struggle for liberty and independence, the majestic eloquence of CHATHAM, the profound reasoning of BURKE, the burning satire and irony of Col. BARRE, had influences upon our fortunes here in America? They had influences both ways. They tended, in the first place, somewhat to diminish the confidence of the British ministry in their hopes of success, in attempting to subjugate an injured people. They had influence another way, because all along the coasts of the countryand all our people in that day lived upon the coast- - there was not a reading man who did not feel stronger, bolder, and more determined in the assertion of his rights, when these exhilarating accents from the two Houses of Parliament reached him from beyond the seas."

"I thank thee, Jew!" This "rub-a-dub Agitation," then, has influence both ways. It diminishes the confidence of the Administration in its power to execute the Fugitive Slave Law, which it has imposed so insolently on the people. It acts on the reading men of the nation, and in that single fact is the whole story of the change. Wherever you have a reading people, there every tongue, every press is a power. Mr. WEBSTER, when he ridiculed in New York the Agitation of the Anti-Slavery body, supposed he was living in the old feudal times, when a statesman was an integral element in the State, an essential power in himself. He must have supposed himself speaking in those ages when a great man outweighed the masses. He finds now that he is living much later, in an age when the accumulated common sense of the people outweighs the greatest statesman or the most influential individual. Let me illustrate the difference of our times and the past in this matter, by their difference in another respect. The time has been when men cased in iron from head to foot, and disciplined by long years of careful instruction, went to battle. Those were the days of nobles and knights; and

in such times, ten knights, clad in steel, feared not a whole field of unarmed peasantry, and a hundred men at arms have conquered thousands of the common people, or held them at bay. Those were the times when WINKELRIED, the Swiss patriot, led his host against the Austrian phalanx, and, finding it impenetrable to the thousands of Swiss who threw themselves on the serried lances, gathered a dozen in his arms, and drawing them together, made thus an inlet into the close set ranks of the Austrians, and they were overborne by the actual mass of numbers. Gunpowder came, and then, any finger that could pull a trigger was equal to the highest born and the best disciplined; knightly armor, and horses clad in steel, went to the ground before the courage and strength that dwelt in the arm of the peasant, as well as that of the prince. What gunpowder did for war, the printing press has done for the mind, and the statesman is no longer clad in the steel of education, but every reading man is his judge. Every thoughtful man, the country through, that makes up an opinion, is his jury, to which he answers, and the tribunal to which he must bow. Mr. WEBSTER, therefore, does not overrate the power of this "rub-a-dub Agitation," which KosSUTH has now adopted, "stealing our thunder." (Laughter and applause.) He does

not overrate the power of this "rub-a-dub Agitation," when he says 66 'Another great mistake, gentlemen, is sometimes made. [Yes, in Bowdoin Square!] We think nothing powerful enough to stand before despotic power. There is something strong enough, quite strong enough; and if properly exerted, it will prove itself so; and that is, the power of intelligent public opinion." "I thank the, Jew!" That opinion is formed, not only in Congress, or on Hotel steps; it is made also in the school houses, in the town houses, at the hearth stones, in the railroad cars, on board the steamboats, in the social circle, in these Anti-Slavery gatherings which he despises. Mark you: There is nothing powerful enough to stand before it! It may be an almost divine institution; it may be the bank vaults of New England; it may be the mining interests of Pennsylvania; it may be the Harwich fishermen, whom he told to stand by the Union, because its bunting protected their decks; it may be the factory operative, whom he told to uphold the Union, because it made his cloth sell for half per cent. more a yard; it may be a parchment Constitution, or even a Fugitive Slave Bill signed by MILLARD FILLMORE!!! - no matter, all are dust on the threshing floor of a reading public, once roused to indignation. Remember this, when you would look down upon a meeting of a few hundreds in the one scale, and the fanatic violence of State Street in the other, that there is NOTHING, DANIEL WEBSTER being witness, strong enough to stand against public opinion, and if the tongue and the press are not parents of that, what is? Napoleon said, I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets." Mr. WEBSTER now is of the same opinion. "There is not a monarch on earth," he says, "whose throne is not liable to be shaken by the progress of opinion and the sentiment of the just and intelligent part of the people." "I thank thee, Jew!" We have been told often, that it was nothing but a morbid sentiment that was opposed to the Fugitive Slave Bill, — it was a sentiment of morbid philanthropy. Grant it all. But take care, Mr. Statesman; cure or change it in time, else it will beat all your dead institutions to

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dust. Hearts and sentiments are alive, and we all know that the gentlest of nature's growths will, in time, burst asunder or wear away the proudest dead-weight man can heap upon them. If this be the power of the gentlest growth, let the stoutest heart tremble before the tornado of a people roused. to terrible vengeance by the sight of long years of cowardly and merciless oppression, and oft-repeated instances of selfish and calculating apostacy. You may build your Capitol of granite, and pile it high as the Rocky Mountains, if it is founded on or mixed up with iniquity, the pulse of a girl will in time beat it down. "There is no monarch on earth whose throne is not liable to be shaken by the sentiment of the just and intelligent part of the people." What is this but a recantation? doing penance for the impudence uttered in Bowdoin Square? Surely this is the white sheet and lighted torch which the Scotch church imposed as penance on its erring members. Who would imagine, that the same man who said of the public discussion of the Slavery question that it must be put down, could have dictated this sentiment- -" It becomes us, in the station which we hold, to let that public opinion, so far as we form it, have free course?" What, then, is that echo that we heard from Bowdoin Square a year ago? "This agitation must be put down." "It becomes us, in the station which we hold, to let that public opinion have free course." Behold the great doughface cringing before the calm eye of KOSSUTH, who had nothing but "rub-a-dub agitation" with which to rescue Hungary from the bloody talons of the Austrian eagle! This is statesmanship! The statesmanship that says to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to-day, "smother those prejudices," and to-morrow, "there is no throne on the broad earth strong enough to stand up against the sentiment of justice." What is that but the "prejudices" of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts against man-hunting? And this is the man before whom the press and the pulpit of the country would have had the Abolitionists bow their heads, and lay their mouths in the dust, instead of holding fast to the eternal principles of justice and right!

It would be idle, to be sure, to base any argument on an opinion of Mr. WEBSTER'S. Like the chameleon he takes his hue, on these subjects, from the air he breathes. He has his "October Sun" opinions and his Faneuil Hall opinions. But the recantation here is at least noticeable; and his testimony to the power of the masses is more valuable as coming from an unwilling witness. The best of us are conscious of being, at times, somewhat awed by the colossal institutions about us, which seem to be opposing our progress. There are those who occasionally weary of this moral suasion, and sigh for something tangible; some power that they can feel, and see its operation. The advancing tide you cannot mark. The gem forms unseen. The granite increases and crumbles, and you can hardly mark either process. The great change in a nation's opinion is the same. We stand here to-day, and if we look back twenty years, we can see a change in public opinion; yes, we can see a great change. Then the great statesmen had pledged themselves not to talk on this subject. They have been made to talk. These hounds have been whipped into the traces of the nation's car, not by three newspapers, which Napoleon dreaded, but by one. (Cheers.) The great parties of the country have been broken to pieces and crumbled. The great sects have been broken to