The question has been extensively, and I think very naturally raised, why these anti-agitation gentlemen do not keep silent themselves. For, strange as it may seem, this perilous topic is the very one which most of all appears to occupy their thoughts too, and is ever uppermost when they undertake to speak of the affairs of the country. They are in the predicament of the poor man in the Eastern fable, who, being forbidden, on pain of the genie’s wrath, to utter another cabalistic syllable, found, to his horror, that he could never after open his lips without their beginning perversely to frame the tabooed articulation. But not, as in his case, does fear chain up their organs. They speak it boldly out, proclaim it “the corner-stone” of their political creed, and do their best in every way, by speeches and articles, Union-safety pamphlets and National Convention platforms, to “keep it before the people.” And the object always is, to keep the people quiet! Surely, if the Union is not strong enough to bear agitations, the special friends of the Union have chosen a singular way to save it.
I would by no means infer, that they are altogether insecure in their professions of anxiety. The truth appears to be, however, that in so far as these professions are not a sheer pretence, got up by political men for political effect, our estimable fellow citizens have, all unwittingly, been obeying a higher law than that which they would impose on their neighbours,—a law, written in the very nature of the free soul. On this, the subject of the age, they must think, and cannot refrain from uttering their thoughts. “They believe, and therefore have they spoken.” And it is a sufficient reply to their unanswerable demand for silence on the other side. “We also believe, and therefore speak.” Pray, why not?
A certain ardent conservative friend of mine, to whom I once proposed this inquiry, made a short answer to it after this fashion:—“The abolitionists are all fools and fanatics. Whenever the idea of anti-slavery gets hold of a man, he takes leave of his common sense, and is thenceforth as one possessed. I would put a padlock on every such crazy fellow’s mouth.” My friend’s rule, it will be seen, is a very broad one; stopping the mouths of all who speak foolishly. Who will undertake to see it fairly applied? or who could feel quite free from nervousness in view of its possible operation? Under an infallible administration, I apprehend, many—some, perhaps, even of the most strenuous advocates of the law—might find themselves uncomfortably implicated, who at present hardly suspect the danger. “By’rlakin, a parlous fear! my masters, you ought to consider with yourselves!” I am constrained to confess, that in the very midst of my friend’s aforesaid patriotic diatribe against folly and fanaticism, and his plea for a summary fool-act, I could not keep out of my mind some wicked recollections of Horace’s lines:
Communi sensu plane caret, inquimus. Eheu!
Quam temere in nosmet legem sancimus iniquam!
It must in all candour be confessed, that there is something in the subject of slavery which, when fairly looked at and realized, is a little trying to one’s sanity. Even such intellects as John Wesley’s and Thomas Jefferson’s seem to stagger a little under a view of the appalling sum of iniquity and wretchedness which the word represents, and vent their excitement in terms not particularly measured. What wonder, then, if men of simpler minds should now and then be thrown quite off the balance, and think and say some things that are really unwise. I think, indeed, it will have to be confessed, that we have had fools and fanatics on both sides of the slavery question; and it is altogether among the probabilities, that such will continue to be the case hereafter. Still, until we have some infallible criterion to distinguish actual folly from that which foolish people merely think such, I fancy we must forego the convenience of my friend’s summary process, and, giving leave to every man to speak his mind, leave it to Time—great sifter of men and opinions—to separate between the precious and the vile.
It may be the kindness bred of a fellow feeling, but I must confess to a warm side towards my brethren of the motley tribe. While on the one hand I firmly hold with Elihu—who seems to have represented young Uz among the friends of Job—that “great men are not always wise.” I rejoice on the other hand in the concession of Polonius,—chief old Fogy of the court of Denmark,—that there is “a happiness which madness often hits on, that reason and sanity could not so prosperously be delivered of.” Folly and craziness, quotha! Did it, then, never occur to you, O Worldly Wiseman, that even your wisdom might be bettered by a dash of that which you thus contemptuously brand? Or does the apostle seem to you as one that driveleth, when he says, “If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise?”
I have often admired the sagacity of our mediæval forefathers, in the treatment of their (so called) fools. They gave them a special licence of the tongue; for they justly estimated the advantages which the truly wise know how to draw from the untrammelled utterances of any honest mind, especially of minds which, refusing to run tamely in the oiled grooves of prescriptive and fashionable orthodoxy, are the more likely, now and then, (where if only by accident,) to hit upon truths which others missed. Hence they maintained an “Independent Order” of the motley, whose only business it was freely to think and freely speak their minds. “I must have liberty withal,” says Jaques, aspiring to this dignity,
—“as free a charter as the wind,
To blow on whom I please: for so fools have.”