SLAVERY IN MASSACHUSETTS

The amount of it is, if the majority vote the Devil to be God, the
minority will live and behave accordingly- and obey the successful
candidate, trusting that, some time or other, by some Speaker's
casting-vote, perhaps, they may reinstate God. This is the highest
principle I can get out or invent for my neighbors. These men act as
if they believed that they could safely slide down a hill a little
way- or a good way- and would surely come to a place, by and by, where
they could begin to slide up again. This is expediency, or choosing
that course which offers the slightest obstacles to the feet, that is,
a downhill one. But there is no such thing as accomplishing a
righteous reform by the use of "expediency." There is no such thing as
sliding up hill. In morals the only sliders are backsliders.

Thus we steadily worship Mammon, both school and state and church,
and on the seventh day curse God with a tintamar from one end of the
Union to the other.

Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality- that it
never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient?
chooses the available candidate- who is invariably the Devil- and what
right have his constituents to be surprised, because the Devil does
not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of
policy, but of probity- who recognize a higher law than the
Constitution, or the decision of the majority. The fate of the country
does not depend on how you vote at the polls- the worst man is as
strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of
paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of
man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

What should concern Massachusetts is not the Nebraska Bill, nor
the Fugitive Slave Bill, but her own slaveholding and servility. Let
the State dissolve her union with the slaveholder. She may wriggle and
hesitate, and ask leave to read the Constitution once more; but she
can find no respectable law or precedent which sanctions the
continuance of such a union for an instant.

Let each inhabitant of the State dissolve his union with her, as
long as she delays to do her duty.

The events of the past month teach me to distrust Fame. I see that
she does not finely discriminate, but coarsely hurrahs. She
considers not the simple heroism of an action, but only as it is
connected with its apparent consequences. She praises till she is
hoarse the easy exploit of the Boston tea party, but will be
comparatively silent about the braver and more disinterestedly
heroic attack on the Boston Court-House, simply because it was
unsuccessful!