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Page 21
WENDELL PHILLIPS,
OF MASSACHUSETTS. (BORN 1811, DIED 1884.)
ON THE MURDER OF LOVEJOY;
FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON, DECEMBER 8, 1837
MR. CHAIRMAN:
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 tea overboard! Fellow
citizens, is this Faneuil Hall doctrine? ["No, no."] The mob at Alton
were met to wrest from a citizen his just rights--met to resist the
laws. We have been 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 upside 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 executive--trust 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 sanction of the Mayor. In strict truth, there was
no executive to appeal to for protection. The Mayor acknowledged that
he could not protect them. They asked him if it was lawful for them to
defend themselves. He told them it was, and sanctioned their assembling
in arms to do so. They were not, then, a mob; they were not merely
citizens defending their own property; they were in some sense the
_posse comitatus_, adopted for the occasion into the police of the city,
acting under the order of a magistrate. It was civil authority resisting
lawless violence. Where, then, was the imprudence? Is the doctrine to
be sustained here that it is imprudent for men to aid magistrates in
executing the laws?
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