Moses.—The crowned king who broke his solemn promise
To let our tribes depart, might well have spar'd
A pointless sarcasm and unjust reproach
To human policy. If I have stoop'd
So far as not to tell thee all the truth,
Be sure it was to spare thy pride alone,
And naught beside. But glance thine eye around—
Behold our people helpless and unarm'd,
Beaten with stripes, o'erlabor'd, driven and watch'd
By spears of vigilant armies. Be thou judge
If that deliverance can be their achievement,
Or less than God can free them from thy hands;
Then say if purpos'd fraud can be a means
With him who wrought such wonders in the land.
Let us depart, great prince. The voice of Justice,
True wisdom's dictates, and thy prescient fears
Of greater evils yet befalling Egypt,
All speak one word; that word—Emancipation.
Pharaoh.—Setting aside thy magic, or the wrath,
If such it be, of Israel's God, what wisdom
Worthy a prince's thought, would be in this?
Moses.—The highest and the greatest—that which chooses
Nobly t' endure a smaller present evil,
And shun a distant great calamity.
As truly as the waves of distant ocean,
Chasing each other, rise by turns and fall—
As truly as the air, surcharged with heat,
Gendereth the thunderstorm which clears and cools it—
So surely, in the troubled sea of life,
Wrong wreaketh wrong, and evil followeth evil,
And moral tempests purge the crimes of nations.
When will the sons of men be taught this lesson?
What tears, what blood must flow, what lands be ravaged,
What empires overthrown, or peopled only
With widows and with orphans, ere they learn it?
The wrong is ours, but such redress we seek not;
God hath our quarrel taken in his hands:
Our fathers journey'd here, th' invited guests
Of Egypt's king, and were by him receiv'd
With hospitality and royal bounty,
Which well became a prince whom Joseph serv'd.
I need not tell thee of the slow encroachments
By which the alien guests became thy subjects,
Or call to mind the hard and stern decree
Which, in a day, transferr'd us from subjection
To chain'd and absolute bondage; or the edict
Which gave our sons to death as soon as born:
These things are fresh in memory—but oblivion
Shall cover all, if thou but set us free.
Pharaoh, to one of his Council.—Osirion, I have ever held thee wise;
Speak thy opinion of this man's petition.
Osirion.—Most gracious prince, as briefly as I may.
The past experience fully proves this truth,
That in all prosperous and happy lands
There is a chain of order and gradation.
Vicegerents, counsellors, governors, warlike chiefs,
Subservient leaders, freeborn subjects, slaves,
Link within link, each in its proper place,
And guided by the sovereign hand alone.
Who is not bound on earth? If any can
Be free from all control save that of heaven,
The greatest and the wisest only should. (Bowing to Pharoah.)
Another truth is this—that be a nation
Govern'd as though the Gods themselves were here,
And order'd all things that we do on earth,
There will be innovators—men who seek
For their own ends to break establish'd usage,
And raise a storm of discord and commotion,
No matter what it wreck, so they be wafted
To the point they have in view; and never yet
Have they begun their work at the fountain head
Of a nation's wisdom, but by base appeals
To the lowest passions of the vulgar herd,
Furious and blind as snakes in the summer heat.
This man, half hypocrite and half fanatic,
Nurtur'd from childhood by thy royal sister—
Rear'd in thy palaces, and stor'd with learning
The most profound that Egypt could afford—
In our religious mysteries deeply skill'd,
And taking rank among our wisest magi—
Bold, politic and crafty, aims no doubt
To organize and sway a faith and nation
Broadly distinct from all upon the earth.
What asks he at thy hands? Emancipation!
Claim'd too of right, with most rebellious threats,
Even to thy face, on thy presum'd refusal—
And with what justice, Pharaoh, thou mayst judge.
Israel hath sojourned here four hundred years—
Thriven on our soil—found refuge here from famine—
Had Goshen for a heritage—and shar'd
Peace and protection with thy native subjects;
Shall they not share the vassalage and toil?
Nor see I aught unjust that they should be
Bondmen to those who fed and guarded them.
Throughout the world there must be slaves and masters;
The features of these men, their creed, their language,
And barbarous right of circumcision, mark
Them as a race made to be known as slaves:
And whether it were just t' enthrall these tribes,
Pharaoh, concerns not thee or us. Our sires
Bequeath'd the heritage of sway to us,
And their's entail'd the slavery on their sons.
Never, I trust, will I behold the day
When, at the bidding of a God unseen
By us, and even by him who takes his name,
These slaves be yielded, and the broad foundation,
Our social fabric's base, be taken away.
True policy, the guide which, when a king
Forsakes his throne's security, is gone,
Cries loudly to detain them. Where will be
The public works which make thy name eternal,
And raise thy kingdom to the loftiest height
Of national glory, if these men be freed?
And where the quiet obedience of thy subjects,
When those who were their menials, and perform'd
All offices of drudgery, are gone?
Let these men be arrested, and their bodies
Detained as hostages for Egypt's safety.
Pharaoh to Moses.—Hear'st thou?
Moses.—I grieve that thou who hast beheld
God's visits unto Egypt mark'd with ruin,
Canst reason yet, and listen too to others,
As if it were with me, and not my Maker,
Thou had'st to deal. Do I not know these magi—
Their priestly craft and worthless jugglery?
Presume not too far on thy power t' oppress.
Though proof against remorse for what is past—
Though deaf unto the cries of slaves in bondage,
And dumb when words of freedom should be spoken,
Prince, be not blind to thine own dearest interests—
Stake not thy life, thy honor and thy crown,
Thy people's safety, and thy kingdom's strength,
Upon the words of the most shallow fools
That ever tempted man to his destruction.
Trust not their crooked policy, which bids thee
Prefer convenient wrong to truth and justice;
Do that thy conscience whispers thee is right,
And leave the rest to him who sent me hither.
The God of Israel is the God of Egypt,
And though unhonored, careth for her sons.
Pharaoh to Arbaces.—Arbaces, give thy counsel.
Arbaces.—King of Egypt,
The sharpest evils need the sharpest cures.
Here, in the very grasp of thy great power,
Stands open-mouth'd rebellion; all the chiefs
And advocates of Hebrew discontent
Are now before thee: speak but thou the word,
And ere an hour be past, their traitorous heads
Shall grace thy palace wall, and their torn limbs
Be sent through Goshen and the land of Egypt,
A dreadful warning—and my life shall answer
For peace hereafter, and most tame submission
From all thy Hebrew vassals.
Pharaoh, to Moses.—Hearest thou?