Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/98

 The Last Days of JoJui Brown. Zj They seem to have known nothing about living or dying for a principle. They all called him crazy then ; who calls him crazv now ? All through the excitement occasioned by his re- markable attempt and subsequent behavior, the Massa- chusetts Legislature, not taking any steps for the defence of her citizens who were likely to be carried to Virginia as witnesses and exposed to the violence of a slaveholding mob, was wholly absorbed in a liquor-agency question, and indulging in poor jokes on the word '^ extension/' Bad spirits occupied their thoughts. I am sure that no statesman up to the occasion could have attended to that question at all at that time — a very vulgar question to attend to at any time ! When I looked into a liturgy of the Church of England, printed near the end of the last century, in order to find a service applicable to the case of Brown, I found that the only martyr recognized and provided for by it was King 'Charles the First, an eminent scamp. Of all the inhabitants of England and of the world, he was the only one, according to this authority, whom that Church had made a martyr and saint of; and for more than a century- it had celebrated his martyrdom, so called, by an annual service. AVhat a satire on the Church is that ! Look not to legislatures and churches for your guid- ance, nor to any soulless incorporated bodies, but to inspirited or inspired ones.

What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, compared with wisdom and manhood ? To omit his other behavior, see what a work this compara- tively unread and unlettered man wrote within six weeks.

Where is our professor of helles-ldtres or of logic and