Volume I Part 16 (1/2)

I would retract nothing of what I have often said of that; but not long ago all this was worse; the particular statutes were often terribly unjust; the forms of trial afforded the accused but little chance of justice; the punishments were barbarous and terrible. The plebeian tyranny of the Lord Brethren in New England was not much lighter than the patrician despotism of the Lord Bishops in the old world, and was more insulting. Let me mention a few facts, to refresh the memories of those who think we are going to ruin, and can only save ourselves by holding to the customs of our fathers, and of the ”good old times.” In 1631, a man was fined forty pounds, whipped on the naked back, both his ears cut off, and then banished this colony, for uttering hard speeches against the government and the church at Salem. In the first century of the existence of this town, the magistrates could banish a woman because she did not like the preaching, nor all the ministers, and told the people why; they could whip women naked in the streets, because they spoke reproachfully of the magistrates; they could fine men twenty pounds, and then banish them, for comforting a man in jail before his trial; they could pull down, with legal formality, the house of a man they did not like; they could whip women at a cart's tail from Salem to Rhode Island, for fidelity to their conscience; they could beat, imprison, and banish men out of the land, simply for baptizing one another in a stream of water, instead of sprinkling them from a dish; they could crop the ears, and scourge the backs, and bore the tongues of men, for being Quakers; yes, they could shut them in jails, could banish them out of the colony, could sell them as slaves, could hang them on a gallows, solely for wors.h.i.+pping G.o.d after their own conscience; they could convulse the whole land, and hang some thirty or forty men for witchcraft, and do all this in the name of G.o.d, and then sing psalms, with most nasal tw.a.n.g, and pray by the hour, and preach--I will not say how long, nor what, nor how! It is not yet one hundred years since two slaves were judicially burnt alive, on Boston Neck, for poisoning their master.

But why talk of days so old? Some of you remember when the pillory and the whipping-post were a part of the public furniture of the law, and occupied a prominent place in the busiest street in town. Some of you have seen men and women scourged, naked, and bleeding, in State street; have seen men judicially branded in the forehead with a hot iron, their ears clipped off by the sheriff, and held up to teach humanity to the gaping crowd of idle boys and vulgar men. A magistrate was once brought into odium in Boston, for humanely giving back to his victim a part of the ear he had officially shorn off, that the mutilated member might be restored and made whole. How long is it since men sent their servants to the ”Workhouse,” to be beaten ”for disobedience,” at the discretion of the master? It is not long since the gallows was a public spectacle here in the midst of us, and a hanging made a holiday for the rabble of this city and the neighboring towns; even women came to see the death-struggle of a fellow-creature, and formed the larger part of the mob; many of you remember the procession of the condemned man sitting on his coffin, a procession from the jail to the gallows, from one end of the city to the other. I remember a public execution some fourteen or fifteen years ago, and some of the students of theology at Cambridge, of undoubted soundness in the Unitarian faith, came here to see men kill a fellow-man!

Who can think of these things, and not see that a great progress has been made in no long time. But if these things be not proof enough, then consider what has been done here in this century for the reformation of juvenile offenders; for the discharged convict; for the blind, the deaf, and the dumb; for the insane, and now even for the idiot. Think of the numerous Societies for the widows and orphans; for the seamen; the Temperance Societies; the Peace Societies; the Prison Discipline Society; the mighty movement against slavery, which, beginning with a few heroic men who took the roaring lion of public opinion by the beard, fearless of his roar, has gone on now, till neither the hardest nor the softest courage in the State dares openly defend the unholy inst.i.tution. A philanthropic female physician delivers gratuitous lectures on physiology to the poor of this city, to enable them to take better care of their houses and their bodies; an unpretending man, for years past, responsible to none but G.o.d, has devoted all his time and his toil to the most despised cla.s.s of men, and has saved hundreds from the jail, from crime and ruin at the last. Here are many men and women not known to the public, but known to the poor, who are daily ministering to the wants of the body and the mind. Consider all these things, and who can doubt that a great moral progress has been made? It is not many years since we had white slaves, and a Scotch boy was invoiced at fourteen pounds lawful money, in the inventory of an estate in Boston. In 1630, Governor Dudley complains that some of the founders of New England, in consequence of a famine, were obliged to set free one hundred and eighty servants, ”to our extreme loss,” for they had cost sixteen or twenty pounds apiece. Seventy years since, negro slavery prevailed in Ma.s.sachusetts, and men did not blush at the inst.i.tution.

Think of the treatment which the leaders of the anti-slavery reform met with but a few years ago, and you see what a progress has been made![43]

I have extenuated nothing of our condition; I have said the morals of trade are low morals, and the morals of the press are low; that poverty is a terrible evil to deal with, and we do not deal with it manfully; that intemperance is a mournful curse, all the more melancholy when rich men purposely encourage it; that here is an amount of crime which makes us shudder to think of; that the voice of human blood cries out of the ground against us. I disguise nothing of all this; let us confess the fact, and, ugly as it is, look it fairly in the face. Still, our moral condition is better than ever before. I know there are men who seem born with their eyes behind, their hopes all running into memory; some who wish they had been born long ago: they might as well; sure it is no fault of theirs that they were not. I hear what they have to tell us.

Still, on the whole, the aspect of things is most decidedly encouraging; for if so much has been done when men understood the matter less than we, both cause and cure, how much more can be done for the future?

What can we do to make things better?

I have so recently spoken of poverty that I shall say little now. A great change will doubtless take place before many years in the relations between capital and labor; a great change in the spirit of society. I do not believe the disparity now existing between the wealth of men has its origin in human nature, and therefore is to last for ever; I do not believe it is just and right that less than one twentieth of the people in the nation should own more than ten twentieths of the property of the nation, unless by their own head, or hands, or heart, they do actually create and earn that amount. I am not now blaming any cla.s.s of men; only stating a fact. There is a profound conviction in the hearts of many good men, rich as well as poor, that things are wrong; that there is an ideal right for the actual wrong; but I think no man yet has risen up with ability to point out for us the remedy of these evils, and deliver us from what has not badly been named the Feudalism of Capital. Still, without waiting for the great man to arise, we can do something with our littleness even now; the truant children may be s.n.a.t.c.hed from vagrancy, beggary, and ruin; tenements can be built for the poor, and rented at a reasonable rate. It seems to me that something more can be done in the way of providing employment for the poor, or helping them to employment.

In regard to intemperance, I will not say we can end it by direct efforts. So long as there is misery there will be continued provocation to that vice, if the means thereof are within reach. I do not believe there will be much more intemperance amongst well-bred men; among the poor and wretched it will doubtless long continue. But if we cannot end, we can diminish it, fast as we will. If rich men did not manufacture, nor import, nor sell; if they would not rent their buildings for the sale of intoxicating liquor for improper uses; if they did not by their example favor the improper use thereof, how long do you think your police would arrest and punish one thousand drunkards in the year? how long would twelve hundred rum-shops disgrace your town? Boston is far more sober, at least in appearance, than other large cities of America, but it is still the headquarters of intemperance for the State of Ma.s.sachusetts. In arresting intemperance, two thirds of the poverty, three fourths of the crime of this city would end at once, and an amount of misery and sin which I have not the skill to calculate. Do you say we cannot diminish intemperance, neither by law, nor by righteous efforts without law? Oh, fie upon such talk. Come, let us be honest, and say we do not wish to, not that we cannot. It is plain that in sixteen years we can build seven great railroads radiating out of Boston, three or four hundred miles long; that we can conquer the Connecticut and the Merrimack, and all the lesser streams of New England; can build up Lowell, and Chicopee, and Lawrence; why, in four years Ma.s.sachusetts can invest eight and fifty millions of dollars in railroads and manufactures, and cannot prevent intemperance; cannot diminish it in Boston! So there are no able men in this town! I am amazed at such talk, in such a place, full of such men, surrounded by such trophies of their work! When the churches preach and men believe that Mammon is not the only G.o.d we are practically to serve; that it is more reputable to keep men sober, temperate, comfortable, intelligent, and thriving, than it is to make money out of other men's misery; more Christian, than to sell and manufacture rum, to rent houses for the making of drunkards and criminals, then we shall set about this business with the energy that shows we are in earnest, and by a method which will do the work.

In the matter of crime, something can be done to give efficiency to the laws. No doubt a thorough change must be made in the idea of criminal legislation; vengeance must give way to justice, policemen become moral missionaries, and jails moral hospitals, that discharge no criminal until he is cured. It will take long to get the idea into men's minds.

You must encounter many a doubt, many a sneer, and expect many a failure, too. Men who think they ”know the world,” because they know that most men are selfish, will not believe you. We must wait for new facts to convince such men. After the idea is established, it will take long to organize it fittingly.

Much can be done for juvenile offenders, much for discharged convicts, even now. We can pull down the gallows, and with it that loathsome theological idea on which it rests,--the idea of a vindictive G.o.d. A remorseless court, and careful police, can do much to hinder crime;[44]

but they cannot remove the causes thereof.

Last year, a good man, to whom the State was deeply indebted before, suggested that a moral police should be appointed to look after offenders; to see why they committed their crime; and if only necessity compelled them, to seek out for them some employment, and so remove the causes of crime in detail. The thought was worthy of the age, and of the man. In the hands of a practical man, this thought might lead to good results. A beginning has already been made in the right direction, by establis.h.i.+ng the State Reform School for Boys. It will be easy to improve on this experiment, and conduct prisons for men on the same scheme of correction and cure, not merely of punishment, in the name of vengeance. But, after all, so long as poverty, misery, intemperance, and ignorance continue, no civil police, no moral police, can keep such causes from creating crime. What keeps you from a course of crime? Your morality, your religion? Is it? Take away your property, your home, your friends, the respect of respectable men; take away what you have received from education, intellectual, moral, and religious, and how much better would the best of us be than the men who will to-morrow be huddled off to jail, for crimes committed in a dram-shop to-day? The circ.u.mstances which have kept you temperate, industrious, respectable, would have made nine tenths of the men in jail as good men as you are.

It is not pleasant to think that there are no amus.e.m.e.nts which lie level to the poor, in this country. In Paris, Naples, Rome, Vienna, Berlin, there are cheap pleasures for poor men, which yet are not low pleasures.

Here there are amus.e.m.e.nts for the comfortable and the rich, not too numerous, rather too rare, perhaps, but none for the poor, save only the vice of drunkenness; that is hideously cheap; the inward temptation powerful; the outward occasion always at hand. Last summer, some benevolent men treated the poor children of the city to a day of suns.h.i.+ne, fresh air, and frolic in the fields. Once a year the children, gathered together by another benevolent man, have a floral procession in the streets; some of them have charitably been taught to dance. These things are beautiful to think of; signs of our progress, from ”The good old times,” and omens of a brighter day, when Christianity shall bear more abundantly flowers and fruit even yet more fair.

The morals of the current literature, of the daily press--you can change when you will. If there is not in us a demand for low morals, there will be no supply. The morals of trade, and of politics, the handmaid thereof, we can make better soon as we wish.

It has been my aim to give suggestions, rather than propose distinct plans of action; I do not know that I am capable of that. But some of you are rich men, some able men; many of you, I think, are good men. I appeal to you to do something to raise the moral character of this town.

All that has been done in fifty years, or a hundred and fifty, seems very little, while so much still remains to do; only a hint and an encouragement. You cannot do much, nor I much: that is true. But, after all, every thing must begin with individual men and women. You can at least give the example of what a good man ought to be and to do, to-day; to-morrow you will yourself be the better man for it. So far as that goes, you will have done something to mend the morals of Boston. You can tell of actual evils, and tell of your remedy for them; can keep clear from committing the evils yourself: that also is something.

Here are two things that are certain: We are all brothers, rich and poor, American and foreign; put here by the same G.o.d, for the same end, and journeying towards the same heaven, owing mutual help. Then, too, the wise men and good men are the natural guardians of society, and G.o.d will not hold them guiltless, if they leave their brothers to perish. I know our moral condition is a reproach to us; I will not deny that, nor try to abate the shame and grief we should feel. When I think of the poverty and misery in the midst of us, and all the consequences thereof, I hardly dare feel grateful for the princely fortunes some men have gathered together. Certainly it is not a Christian society, where such extremes exist; we are only in the process of conversion; proselytes of the gate, and not much more. There are n.o.ble men in this city, who have been made philanthropic, by the sight of wrong, of intemperance, and poverty, and crime. Let mankind honor great conquerors, who only rout armies, and ”plant fresh laurels where they kill;” I honor most the men who contend against misery, against crime and sin; men that are the soldiers of humanity, and in a low age, amidst the mean and sordid spirits of a great trading town, lift up their serene foreheads, and tell us of the right, the true, first good, first perfect, and first fair. From such men I hear the prophecy of the better time to come. In their example I see proofs of the final triumph of good over evil.

Angels are they, who keep the tree of life, not with flaming sword, repelling men, but, with friendly hand, plucking therefrom, and giving unto all the leaves, the flower, and the fruit of life, for the healing of the nations. A single good man, kindling his early flame, wakens the neighbors with his words of cheer; they, at his lamp, shall light their torch and household fire, antic.i.p.ating the beamy warmth of day. Soon it will be morning, warm and light; we shall be up and a-doing, and the lighted lamp, which seemed at first too much for eyes to bear, will look ridiculous, and cast no shadow in the noonday sun. A hundred years hence, men will stand here as I do now, and speak of the evils of these times as things past and gone, and wonder that able men could ever be appalled by our difficulties, and think them not to be surpa.s.sed. Still, all depends on the faithfulness of men--your faithfulness and mine.

The last election has shown us what resolute men can do on a trifling occasion, if they will. You know the efforts of the three parties--what meetings they held, what money they raised, what talent was employed, what speeches made, what ideas set forth: not a town was left unattempted; scarce a man who had wit to throw a vote, but his vote was solicited. You see the revolution which was wrought by that vigorous style of work. When such men set about reforming the evils of society, with such a determined soul, what evil can stand against mankind? We can leave nothing to the next generation worth so much as ideas of truth, justice, and religion, organized into fitting inst.i.tutions; such we can leave, and, if true men, such we shall.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Rev. John Pierpont

[37] This statement was made in 1849; subsequent events have shown that I was mistaken. It is now thought respectable and patriotic not only to engage in the slave-trade, but to kidnap men and women in Boston. Most of the prominent newspapers, and several of the most prominent clergy, defend the kidnapping. Attempts have repeatedly been made to kidnap my own paris.h.i.+oners. Kidnapping is not even a matter of church discipline in Boston in 1851.

[38] The conduct of public magistrates who are paid for serving the people, is not what it should be in respect to temperance. The city authorities allow the laws touching the sale of the great instrument of demoralization to be violated continually. There is no serious effort made to enforce these laws. Nor is this all: the shameless conduct of conspicuous men at the supper given in this city after the funeral of John Quincy Adams, and the debauchery on that occasion, are well known and will long be remembered.

At the next festival (in September, 1851), it is notorious, that the city authorities, at the expense of the citizens, provided a large quant.i.ty of intoxicating drink for the entertainment of our guests during the excursion in the harbor. It is also a matter of great notoriety, that many were drunk on that occasion. I need hardly add, that on board one of the crowded steamboats, three cheers were given for the ”Fugitive Slave Law,” by men who it is hoped will at length become sober enough to ”forget” it. When the magistrates of Boston do such deeds, and are not even officially friends of temperance, what shall we expect of the poor and the ignorant and the miserable? ”Cain, where is thy Brother?” may be asked here and now as well as in the Bible story.