Henry David Thoreau
Slavery in Massachusetts
I lately attended a meeting of the citizens of Concord, expecting, as one
among many, to speak on the subject of slavery in Massachusetts; but I was
surprised and disappointed to find that what had called my townsmen together
was the destiny of Nebraska, and not of Massachusetts, and that what I had to
say would be entirely out of order. I had thought that the house was on fire,
and not the prairie; but though several of the citizens of Massachusetts are
now in prison for attempting to rescue a slave from her own clutches, not one
of the speakers at that meeting expressed regret for it, not one even referred
to it. It was only the disposition of some wild lands a thousand miles off
which appeared to concern them. The inhabitants of Concord are not prepared to
stand by one of their own bridges, but talk only of taking up a position on the
highlands beyond the Yellowstone River. Our Buttricks and Davises and Hosmers
are retreating thither, and I fear that they will leave no Lexington Common
between them and the enemy. There is not one slave in Nebraska; there are
perhaps a million slaves in Massachusetts.
They who have been bred in the school of politics fail now and always to
face the facts. Their measures are half measures and makeshifts merely. They
put off the day of settlement indefinitely, and meanwhile the debt accumulates.
Though the Fugitive Slave Law had not been the subject of discussion on that
occasion, it was at length faintly resolved by my townsmen, at an adjourned
meeting, as I learn, that the compromise compact of 1820 having been repudiated
by one of the parties, "Therefore,... the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 must be
repealed." But this is not the reason why an iniquitous law should be repealed.
The fact which the politician faces is merely that there is less honor among
thieves than was supposed, and not the fact that they are thieves.
As I had no opportunity to express my thoughts at that meeting, will you
allow me to do so here?
Again it happens that the Boston Court-House is full of armed men, holding
prisoner and trying a MAN, to find out if he is not really a SLAVE. Does any
one think that justice or God awaits Mr. Loring's decision? For him to sit
there deciding still, when this question is already decided from eternity to
eternity, and the unlettered slave himself and the multitude around have long
since heard and assented to the decision, is simply to make himself ridiculous.
We may be tempted to ask from whom he received his commission, and who he is
that received it; what novel statutes he obeys, and what precedents are to him
of authority. Such an arbiter's very existence is an impertinence. We do not
ask him to make up his mind, but to make up his pack.
I listen to hear the voice of a Governor, Commander-in-Chief of the forces
of Massachusetts. I hear only the creaking of crickets and the hum of insects
which now fill the summer air. The Governor's exploit is to review the troops
on muster days. I have seen him on horseback, with his hat off, listening to
a chaplain's prayer. It chances that that is all I have ever seen of
a Governor. I think that I could manage to get along without one. If he is not
of the least use to prevent my being kidnapped, pray of what important use is
he likely to be to me? When freedom is most endangered, he dwells in the
deepest obscurity. A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the
profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary
pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a Governor.
Three years ago, also, when the Sims tragedy was acted, I said to myself,
There is such an officer, if not such a man, as the Governor of Massachusetts -
what has he been about the last fortnight? Has he had as much as he could do to
keep on the fence during this moral earthquake? It seemed to me that no keener
satire could have been aimed at, no more cutting insult have been offered to
that man, than just what happened - the absence of all inquiry after him in
that crisis. The worst and the most I chance to know of him is that he did not
improve that opportunity to make himself known, and worthily known. He could at
least have resigned himself into fame. It appeared to be forgotten that there
was such a man or such an office. Yet no doubt he was endeavoring to fill the
gubernatorial chair all the while. He was no Governor of mine. He did not
govern me.
But at last, in the present case, the Governor was heard from. After he and
the United States government had perfectly succeeded in robbing a poor innocent
black man of his liberty for life, and, as far as they could, of his Creator's
likeness in his breast, he made a speech to his accomplices, at
a congratulatory supper!
I have read a recent law of this State, making it penal for any officer of
the "Commonwealth" to "detain or aid in the... detention," anywhere within its
limits, "of any person, for the reason that he is claimed as a fugitive slave."
Also, it was a matter of notoriety that a writ of replevin to take the fugitive
out of the custody of the United States Marshal could not be served for want of
sufficient force to aid the officer.
I had thought that the Governor was, in some sense, the executive officer
of the State; that it was his business, as a Governor, to see that the laws of
the State were executed; while, as a man, he took care that he did not, by so
doing, break the laws of humanity; but when there is any special important use
for him, he is useless, or worse than useless, and permits the laws of the
State to go unexecuted. Perhaps I do not know what are the duties of
a Governor; but if to be a Governor requires to subject one's self to so much
ignominy without remedy, if it is to put a restraint upon my manhood, I shall
take care never to be Governor of Massachusetts. I have not read far in the
statutes of this Commonwealth. It is not profitable reading. They do not always
say what is true; and they do not always mean what they say. What I am
concerned to know is, that that man's influence and authority were on the side
of the slaveholder, and not of the slave - of the guilty, and not of the
innocent - of injustice, and not of justice. I never saw him of whom I speak;
indeed, I did not know that he was Governor until this event occurred. I heard
of him and Anthony Burns at the same time, and thus, undoubtedly, most will
hear of him. So far am I from being governed by him. I do not mean that it was
anything to his discredit that I had not heard of him, only that I heard what I
did. The worst I shall say of him is, that he proved no better than the
majority of his constituents would be likely to prove. In my opinion, be was
not equal to the occasion.
The whole military force of the State is at the service of a Mr. Suttle,
a slaveholder from Virginia, to enable him to catch a man whom he calls his
property; but not a soldier is offered to save a citizen of Massachusetts from
being kidnapped! Is this what all these soldiers, all this training, have been
for these seventy-nine years past? Have they been trained merely to rob Mexico
and carry back fugitive slaves to their masters?
These very nights I heard the sound of a drum in our streets. There were
men training still; and for what? I could with an effort pardon the cockerels
of Concord for crowing still, for they, perchance, had not been beaten that
morning; but I could not excuse this rub-a-dub of the "trainers." The slave was
carried back by exactly such as these; i.e., by the soldier, of whom the best
you can say in this connection is that he is a fool made conspicuous by
a painted coat.
Three years ago, also, just a week after the authorities of Boston
assembled to carry back a perfectly innocent man, and one whom they knew to be
innocent, into slavery, the inhabitants of Concord caused the bells to be rung
and the cannons to be fired, to celebrate their liberty - and the courage and
love of liberty of their ancestors who fought at the bridge. As if those three
millions had fought for the right to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery
three million others. Nowadays, men wear a fool's-cap, and call it a liberty-
cap. I do not know but there are some who, if they were tied to a whipping-
post, and could but get one hand free, would use it to ring the bells and fire
the cannons to celebrate their liberty. So some of my townsmen took the liberty
to ring and fire. That was the extent of their freedom; and when the sound of
the bells died away, their liberty died away also; when the powder was all
expended, their liberty went off with the smoke.
The joke could be no broader if the inmates of the prisons were to
subscribe for all the powder to be used in such salutes, and hire the jailers
to do the firing and ringing for them, while they enjoyed it through the
grating.
This is what I thought about my neighbors.
Every humane and intelligent inhabitant of Concord, when he or she heard
those bells and those cannons, thought not with pride of the events of the 19th
of April, 1775, but with shame of the events of the 12th of April, 1851. But
now we have half buried that old shame under a new one.
Massachusetts sat waiting Mr. Loring's decision, as if it could in any way
affect her own criminality. Her crime, the most conspicuous and fatal crime of
all, was permitting him to be the umpire in such a case. It was really the
trial of Massachusetts. Every moment that she hesitated to set this man free -
every moment that she now hesitates to atone for her crime, she is convicted.
The Commissioner on her case is God; not Edward G. God, but simply God.
I wish my countrymen to consider, that whatever the human law may be,
neither an individual nor a nation can ever commit the least act of injustice
against the obscurest individual without having to pay the penalty for it.
A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at
length even become the laughing-stock of the world.
Much has been said about American slavery, but I think that we do not even
yet realize what slavery is. If I were seriously to propose to Congress to make
mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that most of the members would smile at
my proposition, and if any believed me to be in earnest, they would think that
I proposed something much worse than Congress had ever done. But if any of them
will tell me that to make a man into a sausage would be much worse - would be
any worse - than to make him into a slave - than it was to enact the Fugitive
Slave Law, I will accuse him of foolishness, of intellectual incapacity, of
making a distinction without a difference. The one is just as sensible
a proposition as the other.
I hear a good deal said about trampling this law under foot. Why, one need
not go out of his way to do that. This law rises not to the level of the head
or the reason; its natural habitat is in the dirt. It was born and bred, and
has its life, only in the dust and mire, on a level with the feet; and he who
walks with freedom, and does not with Hindoo mercy avoid treading on every
venomous reptile, will inevitably tread on it, and so trample it under foot -
and Webster, its maker, with it, like the dirt-bug and its ball.
Recent events will be valuable as a criticism on the administration of
justice in our midst, or, rather, as showing what are the true resources of
justice in any community. It has come to this, that the friends of liberty, the
friends of the slave, have shuddered when they have understood that his fate
was left to the legal tribunals of the country to be decided. Free men have no
faith that justice will be awarded in such a case. The judge may decide this
way or that; it is a kind of accident, at best. It is evident that he is not
a competent authority in so important a case. It is no time, then, to be
judging according to his precedents, but to establish a precedent for the
future. I would much rather trust to the sentiment of the people. In their vote
you would get something of some value, at least, however small; but in the
other case, only the trammeled judgment of an individual, of no significance,
be it which way it might.
It is to some extent fatal to the courts, when the people are compelled to
go behind them. I do not wish to believe that the courts were made for fair
weather, and for very civil cases merely; but think of leaving it to any court
in the land to decide whether more than three millions of people, in this case
a sixth part of a nation, have a right to be freemen or not! But it has been
left to the courts of justice, so called - to the Supreme Court of the land -
and, as you all know, recognizing no authority but the Constitution, it has
decided that the three millions are and shall continue to be slaves. Such
judges as these are merely the inspectors of a pick-lock and murderer's tools,
to tell him whether they are in working order or not, and there they think that
their responsibility ends. There was a prior case on the docket, which they, as
judges appointed by God, had no right to skip; which having been justly
settled, they would have been saved from this humiliation. It was the case of
the murderer himself.
The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law
free. They are the lovers of law and order who observe the law when the
government breaks it.
Among human beings, the judge whose words seal the fate of a man furthest
into eternity is not he who merely pronounces the verdict of the law, but he,
whoever he may be, who, from a love of truth, and unprejudiced by any custom or
enactment of men, utters a true opinion or sentence concerning him. He it is
that sentences him. Whoever can discern truth has received his commission from
a higher source than the chiefest justice in the world who can discern only
law. He finds himself constituted judge of the judge. Strange that it should be
necessary to state such simple truths!
I am more and more convinced that, with reference to any public question,
it is more important to know what the country thinks of it than what the city
thinks. The city does not think much. On any moral question, I would rather
have the opinion of Boxboro' than of Boston and New York put together. When the
former speaks, I feel as if somebody had spoken, as if humanity was yet, and
a reasonable being had asserted its rights - as if some unprejudiced men among
the country's hills had at length turned their attention to the subject, and by
a few sensible words redeemed the reputation of the race. When, in some obscure
country town, the farmers come together to a special town-meeting, to express
their opinion on some subject which is vexing the land, that, I think, is the
true Congress, and the most respectable one that is ever assembled in the
United States.
It is evident that there are, in this Commonwealth at least, two parties,
becoming more and more distinct - the party of the city, and the party of the
country. I know that the country is mean enough, but I am glad to believe that
there is a slight difference in her favor. But as yet she has few, if any
organs, through which to express herself. The editorials which she reads, like
the news, come from the seaboard. Let us, the inhabitants of the country,
cultivate self-respect. Let us not send to the city for aught more essential
than our broadcloths and groceries; or, if we read the opinions of the city,
let us entertain opinions of our own.
Among measures to be adopted, I would suggest to make as earnest and
vigorous an assault on the press as has already been made, and with effect, on
the church. The church has much improved within a few years; but the press is,
almost without exception, corrupt. I believe that in this country the press
exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than the church did in its
worst period. We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of
politicians. We do not care for the Bible, but we do care for the newspaper. At
any meeting of politicians - like that at Concord the other evening, for
instance - how impertinent it would be to quote from the Bible! how pertinent
to quote from a newspaper or from the Constitution! The newspaper is a Bible
which we read every morning and every afternoon, standing and sitting, riding
and walking. It is a Bible which every man carries in his pocket, which lies on
every table and counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are
continually dispersing. It is, in short, the only book which America has
printed and which America reads. So wide is its influence. The editor is
a preacher whom you voluntarily support. Your tax is commonly one cent daily,
and it costs nothing for pew hire. But how many of these preachers preach the
truth? I repeat the testimony of many an intelligent foreigner, as well as my
own convictions, when I say, that probably no country was ever rubled by so
mean a class of tyrants as, with a few noble exceptions, are the editors of the
periodical press in this country. And as they live and rule only by their
servility, and appealing to the worse, and not the better, nature of man, the
people who read them are in the condition of the dog that returns to his vomit.
The Liberator and the Commonwealth were the only papers in Boston, as far
as I know, which made themselves heard in condemnation of the cowardice and
meanness of the authorities of that city, as exhibited in '51. The other
journals, almost without exception, by their manner of referring to and
speaking of the Fugitive Slave Law, and the carrying back of the slave Sims,
insulted the common sense of the country, at least. And, for the most part,
they did this, one would say, because they thought so to secure the approbation
of their patrons, not being aware that a sounder sentiment prevailed to any
extent in the heart of the Commonwealth. I am told that some of them have
improved of late; but they are still eminently time-serving. Such is the
character they have won.
But, thank fortune, this preacher can be even more easily reached by the
weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest. The free men of New
England have only to refrain from purchasing and reading these sheets, have
only to withhold their cents, to kill a score of them at once. One whom
I respect told me that he purchased Mitchell's Citizen in the cars, and then
throw it out the window. But would not his contempt have been more fatally
expressed if he had not bought it?
Are they Americans? are they New Englanders? are they inhabitants of
Lexington and Concord and Framingham, who read and support the Boston Post,
Mail, Journal, Advertiser, Courier, and Times? Are these the Flags of our
Union? I am not a newspaper reader, and may omit to name the worst.
Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these journals
exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick, and make fouler
still with its slime? I do not know whether the Boston Herald is still in
existence, but I remember to have seen it about the streets when Sims was
carried off. Did it not act its part well-serve its master faithfully! How
could it have gone lower on its belly? How can a man stoop lower than he is
low? do more than put his extremities in the place of the head he has? than
make his head his lower extremity? When I have taken up this paper with my
cuffs turned up, I have heard the gurgling of the sewer through every column. I
have felt that I was handling a paper picked out of the public gutters, a leaf
from the gospel of the gambling-house, the groggery, and the brothel,
harmonizing with the gospel of the Merchants' Exchange.
The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East and West,
are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not send men to Congress on
errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters are being scourged
and hung for loving liberty, while - I might here insert all that slavery
implies and is - it is the mismanagement of wood and iron and stone and gold
which concerns them. Do what you will, O Government, with my wife and children,
my mother and brother, my father and sister, I will obey your commands to the
letter. It will indeed grieve me if you hurt them, if you deliver them to
overseers to be hunted by bounds or to be whipped to death; but, nevertheless,
I will peaceably pursue my chosen calling on this fair earth, until perchance,
one day, when I have put on mourning for them dead, I shall have persuaded you
to relent. Such is the attitude, such are the words of Massachusetts.
Rather than do thus, I need not say what match I would touch, what system
endeavor to blow up; but as I love my life, I would side with the light, and
let the dark earth roll from under me, calling my mother and my brother to
follow.
I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans
only at a late and convenient hour. No matter how valuable law may be to
protect your property, even to keep soul and body together, if it do not keep
you and humanity together.
I am sorry to say that I doubt if there is a judge in Massachusetts who is
prepared to resign his office, and get his living innocently, whenever it is
required of him to pass sentence under a law which is merely contrary to the
law of God. I am compelled to see that they put themselves, or rather are by
character, in this respect, exactly on a level with the marine who discharges
his musket in any direction he is ordered to. They are just as much tools, and
as little men. Certainly, they are not the more to be respected, because their
master enslaves their understandings and consciences, instead of their bodies.
The judges and lawyers - simply as such, I mean - and all men of
expediency, try this case by a very low and incompetent standard. They
consider, not whether the Fugitive Slave Law is right, but whether it is what
they call constitutional. Is virtue constitutional, or vice? Is equity
constitutional, or iniquity? In important moral and vital questions, like this,
it is just as impertinent to ask whether a law is constitutional or not, as to
ask whether it is profitable or not. They persist in being the servants of the
worst of men, and not the servants of humanity. The question is, not whether
you or your grandfather, seventy years ago, did not enter into an agreement to
serve the Devil, and that service is not accordingly now due; but whether you
will not now, for once and at last, serve God - in spite of your own past
recreancy, or that of your ancestor - by obeying that eternal and only just
CONSTITUTION, which He, and not any Jefferson or Adams, has written in your
being.
The amount of it is, if the majority vote the Devil to be God, the minority
will live and behave accordingly and obey the successful candidate, trusting
that, some time or other, by some Speaker's casting-vote, perhaps, they may
reinstate God. This is the highest principle I can get out or invent for my
neighbors. These men act as if they believed that they could safely slide down
a hill a little way - or a good way - and would surely come to a place, by and
by, where they could begin to slide up again. This is expediency, or choosing
that course which offers the slightest obstacles to the feet, that is,
a downhill one. But there is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform
by the use of "expediency." There is no such thing as sliding up hill. In
morals the only sliders are backsliders.
Thus we steadily worship Mammon, both school and state and church, and on
the seventh day curse God with a tintamar from one end of the Union to the
other.
Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality - that it never
secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the
available candidate - who is invariably the Devil - and what right have his
constituents to be surprised, because the Devil does not behave like an angel
of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity - who recognize
a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority. The fate
of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls - the worst man is
as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper
you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from
your chamber into the street every morning.
What should concern Massachusetts is not the Nebraska Bill, nor the
Fugitive Slave Bill, but her own slaveholding and servility. Let the State
dissolve her union with the slaveholder. She may wriggle and hesitate, and ask
leave to read the Constitution once more; but she can find no respectable law
or precedent which sanctions the continuance of such a union for an instant.
Let each inhabitant of the State dissolve his union with her, as long as
she delays to do her duty.
The events of the past month teach me to distrust Fame. I see that she does
not finely discriminate, but coarsely hurrahs. She considers not the simple
heroism of an action, but only as it is connected with its apparent
consequences. She praises till she is hoarse the easy exploit of the Boston tea
party, but will be comparatively silent about the braver and more
disinterestedly heroic attack on the Boston Court-House, simply because it was
unsuccessful!
Covered with disgrace, the State has sat down coolly to try for their lives
and liberties the men who attempted to do its duty for it. And this is called
justice! They who have shown that they can behave particularly well may
perchance be put under bonds for their good behavior. They whom truth requires
at present to plead guilty are, of all the inhabitants of the State,
preeminently innocent. While the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless
officers of the Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are
imprisoned.
Only they are guiltless who commit the crime of contempt of such a court.
It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the side of justice, and
let the courts make their own characters. My sympathies in this case are wholly
with the accused, and wholly against their accusers and judges. Justice is
sweet and musical; but injustice is harsh and discordant. The judge still sits
grinding at his organ, but it yields no music, and we hear only the sound of
the handle. He believes that all the music resides in the handle, and the crowd
toss him their coppers the same as before.
Do you suppose that that Massachusetts which is now doing these things -
which hesitates to crown these men, some of whose lawyers, and even judges,
perchance, may be driven to take refuge in some poor quibble, that they may not
wholly outrage their instinctive sense of justice - do you suppose that she is
anything but base and servile? that she is the champion of liberty?
Show me a free state, and a court truly of justice, and I will fight for
them, if need be; but show me Massachusetts, and I refuse her my allegiance,
and express contempt for her courts.
The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable - of a bad
one, to make it less valuable. We can afford that railroad and all merely
material stock should lose some of its value, for that only compels us to live
more simply and economically; but suppose that the value of life itself should
be diminished! How can we make a less demand on man and nature, how live more
economically in respect to virtue and all noble qualities, than we do? I have
lived for the last month - and I think that every man in Massachusetts capable
of the sentiment of patriotism must have had a similar experience - with the
sense of having suffered a vast and indefinite loss. I did not know at first
what ailed me. At last it occurred to me that what I had lost was a country.
I had never respected the government near to which I lived, but I had foolishly
thought that I might manage to live here, minding my private affairs, and
forget it. For my part, my old and worthiest pursuits have lost I cannot say
how much of their attraction, and I feel that my investment in life here is
worth many per cent less since Massachusetts last deliberately sent back an
innocent man, Anthony Burns, to slavery. I dwelt before, perhaps, in the
illusion that my life passed somewhere only between heaven and hell, but now
I cannot persuade myself that I do not dwell wholly within hell. The site of
that political organization called Massachusetts is to me morally covered with
volcanic scoriae and cinders, such as Milton describes in the infernal regions.
If there is any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled,
I feel curious to see it. Life itself being worth less, all things with it,
which minister to it, are worth less. Suppose you have a small library, with
pictures to adorn the walls - a garden laid out around - and contemplate
scientific and literary pursuits and discover all at once that your villa, with
all its contents is located in hell, and that the justice of the peace has
a cloven foot and a forked tail - do not these things suddenly lose their value
in your eyes?
I feel that, to some extent, the State has fatally interfered with my
lawful business. It has not only interrupted me in my passage through Court
Street on errands of trade, but it has interrupted me and every man on his
onward and upward path, on which he had trusted soon to leave Court Street far
behind. What right had it to remind me of Court Street? I have found that
hollow which even I had relied on for solid.
I am surprised to see men going about their business as if nothing had
happened. I say to myself, "Unfortunates! they have not heard the news." I am
surprised that the man whom I just met on horseback should be so earnest to
overtake his newly bought cows running away - since all property is insecure,
and if they do not run away again, they may be taken away from him when he gets
them. Fool! does he not know that his seed-corn is worth less this year - that
all beneficent harvests fail as you approach the empire of hell? No prudent man
will build a stone house under these circumstances, or engage in any peaceful
enterprise which it requires a long time to accomplish. Art is as long as ever,
but life is more interrupted and less available for a man's proper pursuits. It
is not an era of repose. We have used up all our inherited freedom. If we would
save our lives, we must fight for them.
I walk toward one of our ponds; but what signifies the beauty of nature
when men are base? We walk to lakes to see our serenity reflected in them; when
we are not serene, we go not to them. Who can be serene in a country where both
the rulers and the ruled are without principle? The remembrance of my country
spoils my walk. My thoughts are murder to the State, and involuntarily go
plotting against her.
But it chanced the other day that I scented a white water-lily, and
a season I had waited for had arrived. It is the emblem of purity. It bursts up
so pure and fair to the eye, and so sweet to the scent, as if to show us what
purity and sweetness reside in, and can be extracted from, the slime and muck
of earth. I think I have plucked the first one that has opened for a mile. What
confirmation of our hopes is in the fragrance of this flower! I shall not so
soon despair of the world for it, notwithstanding slavery, and the cowardice
and want of principle of Northern men. It suggests what kind of laws have
prevailed longest and widest, and still prevail, and that the time may come
when man's deeds will smell as sweet. Such is the odor which the plant emits.
If Nature can compound this fragrance still annually, I shall believe her still
young and full of vigor, her integrity and genius unimpaired, and that there is
virtue even in man, too, who is fitted to perceive and love it. It reminds me
that Nature has been partner to no Missouri Compromise. I scent no compromise
in the fragrance of the water-lily. It is not a Nymphoea Douglasii. In it, the
sweet, and pure, and innocent are wholly sundered from the obscene and baleful.
I do not scent in this the time-serving irresolution of a Massachusetts
Governor, nor of a Boston Mayor. So behave that the odor of your actions may
enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere, that when we behold or scent a
flower, we may not be reminded how inconsistent your deeds are with it; for all
odor is but one form of advertisement of a moral quality, and if fair actions
had not been performed, the lily would not smell sweet. The foul slime stands
for the sloth and vice of man, the decay of humanity; the fragrant flower that
springs from it, for the purity and courage which are immortal.
Slavery and servility have produced no sweet-scented flower annually, to
charm the senses of men, for they have no real life: they are merely a decaying
and a death, offensive to all healthy nostrils. We do not complain that they
live, but that they do not get buried. Let the living bury them: even they are
good for manure.
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uCoz