Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child
John Greenleaf Whittier, Wendell Phillips, Harriet Winslow Sewall, Ed.

To the same.

In your last letter you charge democracy with being the mother of evil. I do not wonder at it; for [18] these are times when its best friends have need of faith. But I believe the difficulty ever is in a lack of republicanism. The aristocratic principle, unable to act openly, disguises itself, and sends its poison from under a mask. What is the root of the difficulty on this great question of abolition? It is not with the farmers, it is not with the mechanics. The majority of their voices would be on the right side if the question were fairly brought before them ; and the consciousness that such would be the result creates the earnest desire to stop discussion. No, no! It is not these who are to blame for the persecution suffered by abolitionists. Manufacturers who supply the South, merchants who trade with the South, politicians who trade with the South, ministers settled at the South, and editors patronized by the South, are the ones who really promote mobs. Withdraw the aristocratic influence, and I should be perfectly easy to trust the cause to the good feeling of the people. But, you will say, democracies must always be thus acted upon ; and here, I grant, is the great stumbling-block. The impediments continually in the way of bringing good principles into their appropriate forms are almost disheartening; and would be quite so, were it not for the belief in One who is brooding over this moral chaos with vivifying and regenerating power. What can be more beautiful than the spirit of love in the Christian religion? Yet where shall we find Moslem or pagan more fierce and unrelenting than Christians toward each other.