Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 2

[63] name, and the great martyr for personal liberty can find no occasion but for eulogy! He came to a land, of the fundamental arrangement of whose government John Quincy Adams says: “It is not in the compass of human imagination to devise a more perfect exemplification of the art of committing the lamb to the custody of the wolf,” and to “call whose government a democracy would be to insult the understanding of mankind,” and the apostle of civil liberty sees only a “glorious republic, . . great, glorious, and free, . . . the pillar of freedom;” and all he prays for his own country is, that “she may be as free and as happy in the establishment of the same great principle” !!

He comes to a land where, according to the same indisputable authority, “a knot of slave-holders give the law and prescribe the policy of the country;” and the indignant foe of Austrian rule, “his eyes sharpened by a tempest-tossed life,” finds no occasion but for eulogy! He comes to a land where, says the same venerable statesman, “the preservation, propagation, and perpetuation of slavery is the vital and animating spirit of the National Government,” and where, since 1780, “slavery, slave-holding, slave-breeding, and slave-trading have formed the whole foundation of the policy of the Federal Government;” and “the sharpened eyes” of the European patriot, whose baptism of liberty was in the damps of an Austrian dungeon, sees only “a glorious country, . . . great, glorious, and free; . . . a glorious republic;” her “glorious flag the proud ensign of man's divine origin;” “the asylum of oppressed humanity ;” her welcome “the trumpet of resurrection for down-trodden humanity throughout the world;” her language “the language of liberty, and therefore the language of the people of the United States.” His confidence of ultimate success springs from the thought that “there is a God ”