Fellow-citizens, it has been asked why we are assembled here to-day, and not in the Hall consecrated to liberty. It is because the doors of that hall have been closed to Liberty knocking for admission. But there is a melancholy propriety in this. When the court house is in chains, Faneuil Hall may well be dumb. Those chains which girt the courts of justice are but typical of the chains which tyrannous men are striving to put upon our lips. This is not the first temple that has been unrighteously invaded and taken possession of by money changers and those who sold doves,—doves! doves!! No, not doves,—but men, women, and children. But I trust the time is not far distant when a better spirit shall enter their doors, and shall scourge out their invaders with cords, smaller or larger, as the exigencies of the case may require.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] This meeting was held pending the trial, before Mr. Commissioner Curtis, of Thomas Sims, an alleged fugitive slave from Georgia. During the trial, the Boston court house was surrounded by a large police force, and was enclosed in chains, beneath which the judges of the supreme court of Massachusetts bowed as they entered and retired.
SPEECH
Delivered at Worcester, September 16, 1851, on taking the Chair as President of the Free Soil State Convention.
Gentlemen of the Convention;
Accept my thanks. It would be an honor at any time to stand in this position before a body of men so large in their number and so influential by their respectability. But, gentlemen, at this hour of trial, at this time of peril to great principles, when the lights upon earth seem to be going out around us, and we must look for guidance to the lights above,—at this hour, I say, of trial and of peril, it is an especial honor to be called to a post of duty. The position of the friends of freedom at the present time reminds me of a beautiful sentiment expressed by one of the noblest of the old Roman philosophers, who said that those who were called to fill stations of danger and self-sacrifice should thank God for the honor of being deemed worthy of such a trust.[25]
Gentlemen, it was not until this morning, and since sunrise, that I was waited upon by a delegation from your state committee, requesting my presence on this occasion. They knew, and you all know, how strongly my heart throbs, even at the mention of the great principles for which you contend. They knew, as you all know, how happy I should be if I could do any thing to deepen or to diffuse a feeling of devotion to human freedom.
But, gentlemen, there were certain circumstances connected with my position which seemed to make it necessary for me to say to your delegation, that, if I should appear here to-day, it should be with an entire privilege to speak out my mind fully on any political subject, and to say in what relation I stand to the present condition of public affairs, both state and national.
I say, then, gentlemen, that I stand where I have always stood, holding the principles of human freedom first and foremost in my regards, and, after these, our pecuniary, or merely worldly interests; holding, according to the order in which they are mentioned in the constitution of the United States, “life and liberty” to be before “property.” I stand where I stood in 1848, when I was first elected to Congress; and where my recorded votes and speeches show me to have stood through all the struggles of 1849 and ’50. I stand on the same principles yet. If other men have seen fit to go off to the right hand or to the left, I remain where I was. And if any individual of any party,—Whig, Democrat, or by whatever other appellation he may be known,—shall ever return from his wanderings to the good old homestead of Massachusetts principles,—Free Soil, Free Speech, and Free Men,—there, in that immortal birthplace of human liberty, he will find me, early in the morning and late at night, hard at work, to maintain the honor of the Pilgrims and the principles of our revolutionary sires.