of all the considerable men, whether of his State or of his Nation—­ideas which he illustrated through long years of his life and conduct.  The great debt that the Nation owes to him is this—­that he so ably and consistently advocated these needful opinions, that he made himself the head and the hand of the great party that carried these ideas into power, that put an end to all possibility of class-government, made naturalization easy, extended the suffrage and applied it to judicial office, opened a still wider and better education to all, and quietly inaugurated reforms, yet incomplete, of which we have the benefit to this day, and which, but for him, we might not have won against the party of Strong Government, except by a difficult and painful Revolution.

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=_Wendell Phillips,[51] 1811-._=

From “A Lecture delivered in December, 1861.”

=_172._= THE WAR FOR THE UNION.

I would have government announce to the world that we understand the evil which has troubled our peace for seventy years, thwarting the natural tendency of our institutions, sending ruin along our wharves and through our workshops every ten years, poisoning the national conscience.  We know well its character.  But democracy, unlike other governments, is strong enough to let evils work out their own death—­strong enough to face them when they reveal their proportions.  It was in this sublime consciousness of strength, not of weakness, that our fathers submitted to the well-known evil of slavery, and tolerated it until the viper we thought we could safely tread on, at the touch of disappointment, starts up a fiend whose stature reaches the sky.  But our cheeks do not blanch.  Democracy accepts the struggle.  After this forbearance of three generations, confident that she has yet power to execute her will, she sends her proclamation, down to the Gulf—­freedom to every man beneath the stars, and death to every institution that disturbs our peace, or threatens the future of the republic.

[Footnote 51:  A native of Massachusetts:  a vigorous thinker and speaker on the great moral and political topics of the day, and the most eloquent of the Anti-Slavery leaders.]

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From His “Speeches, Lectures.” &c.

=_173._= CHARACTER OF TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE.

Above the lust of gold, pure in private life, generous in the use of his power, it was against such a man that Napoleon sent his army, giving to General Leclerc,—­the husband of his beautiful sister Pauline,—­thirty thousand of his best troops, with orders to re-introduce slavery.  Among these soldiers came all of Toussaint’s old mulatto rivals and foes.

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