Page:The White Slave, or Memoirs of a Fugitive.djvu/300

 politicians are stimulated, by hopes of currying southern favor, to put themselves at the head of anti-abolition mobs, and northern merchants, by the hope of securing southern customers, to hold public meetings to call upon the state legislatures to pass laws to restrict the liberty of the press. That very thing I see has just been done in the degenerate city of Philadelphia; and Boston and New York are very loudly called upon to imitate the disgraceful example. Yes, Mr Moore, seasonably or unseasonably the great battle has begun, the great struggle on which the future fate of America is to depend. The slavery or the freedom of our colored inhabitants is an interesting question; that, however, has already become but a merely subordinate one. The first great question is, Shall not merely the political, but the intellectual, moral, and religious control of this country pass into the hands of the upholders of perpetual slavery? or shall our old American notions that all men are equal before God, and ought to be equal before the law, continue to circulate? Shall the control, not only of our politics and legislation, but of our newspapers, our churches, our literature, our public sentiment, pass into the hands of the hard, the cruel, the tyrants by nature, the mercenary, the scoffers at justice and human rights, the sleek, comfortable time-servers, equally ready, for a consideration, to read prayers to God or to the devil? or shall the votaries of human advancement, the friends of man, the true servants of the God of love, have liberty to live, speak, and labor among us? The first question is about our own liberty, and that not alone the liberty of acting, but the mere liberty even of writing, reading, talking, and thinking."

Warming with his subject, and striding up and down the room, Mr Mason had uttered all the latter part of this long discourse, not without many gesticulations, and in a tone of voice rising at times a little above the ordinary key. But he suddenly checked himself, and added, in a subdued tone, "I, for my