When He
Spoke As He Did Of Virginia, Ridiculing The Idea Of Her Sacred
Soil, Even I, Englishman As I Am, Could Not But Think Of
Washington, Of Jefferson, Of Randolph, And Of Madison.
He should
not have spoken of Virginia as he did speak; for no man could have
known better Virginia's difficulties.
But Virginia was at a
discount in Boston, and Mr. Everett was speaking to a Boston
audience. And then he referred to England and to Europe. Mr.
Everett has been minister to England, and knows the people. He is
a student of history, and must, I think, know that England's career
has not been unhappy or unprosperous. But England also was at a
discount in Boston, and Mr. Everett was speaking to a Boston
audience. They are sending us their advice across the water, said
Mr. Everett. And what is their advice to us? That we should come
down from the high place we have built for ourselves, and be even
as they are. They screech at us from the low depths in which they
are wallowng in their misery, and call on us to join them in their
wretchedness. I am not quoting Mr. Everett's very words, for I
have not them by me; but I am not making them stronger, nor so
strong as he made them. As I thought of Mr. Everett's reputation,
and of his years of study, of his long political life and
unsurpassed sources of information, I could not but grieve heartily
when I heard such words fall from him. I could not but ask myself
whether it were impossible that under the present circumstances of
her constitution this great nation of America should produce an
honest, high-minded statesman. When Lincoln and Hamlin, the
existing President and Vice-President of the States, were in 1860
as yet but the candidates of the Republican party, Bell and Everett
also were the candidates of the old Whig, conservative party.
Their express theory was this - that the question of slavery should
not be touched. Their purpose was to crush agitation and restore
harmony by an impartial balance between the North and South: a fine
purpose - the finest of all purposes, had it been practicable. But
such a course of compromise was now at a discount in Boston, and
Mr. Everett was speaking to a Boston audience. As an orator, Mr.
Everett's excellence is, I think, not to be questioned; but as a
politician I cannot give him a high rank.
After that I heard Mr. Wendell Phillips. Of him, too, as an
orator, all the world of Massachusetts speaks with great
admiration, and I have no doubt so speaks with justice. He is,
however, known as the hottest and most impassioned advocate of
abolition. Not many months since the cause of abolition, as
advocated by him, was so unpopular in Boston, that Mr. Phillips was
compelled to address his audience surrounded by a guard of
policemen. Of this gentleman I may at any rate say that he is
consistent, devoted, and disinterested.
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