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Title: Slavery in Massachusetts Author: Henry David Thoreau Date: July 4, 1854 Language: en Topics: slavery, abolitionism, speech Source: Retrieved on 1st November 2020 from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/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 the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 must be repealed.”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this is not the reason why an iniquitous law should be repealed.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 19^(th) of April, 1775, but with shame of the events of the 12^(th)
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
Nymphaea 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.