been found to tranquilize those fears and satisfy that jealousy. Fear and jealousy are watchful, and are rarely seen to accept a security short of their object, and less rarely to shape that security, of their own accord, in such a way as to make it no security at all. They always seek an explicit guaranty; and that this is not such a guaranty this debate has proved, if it has proved nothing else.20

WENDELL PHILLIPS,*

OF MASSACHUSETTS.1

(BORN 1811, DIED 1884.)

ON THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY; FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON, DECEMBER 8, 1837.2

MR. CHAIRMAN:

66

We have met for the freest discussion of these resolutions, and the events which gave rise to them. [Cries of "Question," "Hear him," Go on," "No gagging," etc.] I hope I shall be permitted to express my surprise at the sentiments of the last speaker, surprise not only at such sentiments from such a man, but at the applause they have received within these walls. A comparison has been drawn between the events of the Revolution and the tragedy at Alton. We have heard it asserted here, in Faneuil Hall, that Great Britain had a right to tax the colonies, and we have heard the mob at Alton, the drunken murderers of Lovejoy, compared to those patriot fathers who threw the

* For notes on Phillips, see Appendix, p. 366.

102

tea overboard!

Fellow citizens, is this Faneuil

Hall doctrine? ["No, no."]

The mob at Al

citizen his just We have been.

ton were met to wrest from a rights-met to resist the laws. told that our fathers did the same; and the glorious mantle of Revolutionary precedent has been thrown over the mobs of our day. To make out their title to such defence, the gentleman says that the British Parliament had a right to tax these colonies. It is manifest that, without this, his parallel falls to the ground, for Lovejoy had stationed himself within constitutional bulwarks. He was not only defending the freedom of the press, but he was under his own roof, in arms with the sanction of the civil authority. The men who assailed him went against and over the laws. The mob, as the gentleman terms it-mob, forsooth! certainly. we sons of the tea-spillers are a marvellously patient generation !—the "orderly mob" which assembled in the Old South to destroy the tea, were met to resist, not the laws, but illegal enactions. Shame on the American who calls the tea tax and stamp act laws! Our fathers resisted, not the King's prerogative, but the King's usurpation. To find any other account, you must read our Revolutionary history up

side down.

Our State archives are loaded with arguments of John Adams to prove the taxes laid by the British Parliament unconstitutional-beyond its power. It was not until this was made out that the men of New England rushed to arms. The arguments of the Council Chamber and the House of Representatives preceded and sanctioned the contest. To draw the conduct of our ancestors into a precedent for mobs, for a right to resist laws we ourselves have enacted, is an insult to their memory. The difference between the excitements of those days and our own, which the gentleman in kindness to the latter has overlooked, is simply this: the men of that day went for the right, as secured by the laws. They were the people rising to sustain the laws and constitution of the Province. The rioters of our days go for their own wills, right or wrong. Sir, when I heard the gentleman lay down principles which place the murderers of Alton side by side with Otis and Hancock, with Quincy and Adams, I thought those pictured lips [pointing to the portraits in the Hall] would have broken into voice to rebuke the recreant American-the slanderer of the dead. The gentleman said that he should sink

into insignificance if he dared to gainsay the principles of these resolutions. Sir, for the sentiments he has uttered, on soil consecrated by the prayers of Puritans and the blood of patriots, the earth should have yawned and swallowed him up.'

[By this time, the uproar in the Hall had risen so high that the speech was suspended for a short time. Applause and counter applause, cries of 'Take that back," Make him take back recreant,' "" 'He sha'n't go on till he takes it back," and counter cries of "Phillips or nobody," continued until the pleadings of well-known citizens had somewhat restored order, when Mr. Phillips resumed.]

Fellow citizens, I cannot take back my words. Surely the Attorney-General, so long and so well known here, needs not the aid of your hisses against one so young as I am—my voice never before heard within these walls! * * * *

I must find some fault with the statement which has been made of the events at Alton. It has been asked why Lovejoy and his friends did not appeal to the executivetrust their defence to the police of the city? It has been hinted that, from hasty and ill-judged excitement, the men within the building provoked a quarrel, and that he fell in the course of it, one mob resisting another. Recollect, sir, that they did act with the approbation and