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!

  Covered with disgrace, the State has sat down coolly to try for
their lives and liberties the men who attempted to do its duty for it.
And this is called justice! They who have shown that they can behave
particularly well may perchance be put under bonds for their good
behavior. They whom truth requires at present to plead guilty are,
of all the inhabitants of the State, preeminently innocent. While
the Governor, and the Mayor, and countless officers of the
Commonwealth are at large, the champions of liberty are imprisoned.

  Only they are guiltless who commit the crime of contempt of such a
court. It behooves every man to see that his influence is on the
side of justice, and let the courts make their own characters. My
sympathies in this case are wholly with the accused, and wholly
against their accusers and judges. Justice is sweet and musical; but
injustice is harsh and discordant. The judge still sits grinding at
his organ, but it yields no music, and we hear only the sound of the
handle. He believes that all the music resides in the handle, and
the crowd toss him their coppers the same as before.

  Do you suppose that that Massachusetts which is now doing these
things- which hesitates to crown these men, some of whose lawyers, and
even judges, perchance, may be driven to take refuge in some poor
quibble, that they may not wholly outrage their instinctive sense of
justice- do you suppose that she is anything but base and servile?
that she is the champion of liberty?

  Show me a free state, and a court truly of justice, and I will fight
for them, if need be; but show me Massachusetts, and I refuse her my
allegiance, and express contempt for her courts.

  The effect of a good government is to make life more valuable- of
a bad one, to make it less valuable. We can afford that railroad and
all merely material stock should lose some of its value, for that only
compels us to live more simply and economically; but suppose that
the value of life itself should be diminished! How can we make a
less demand on man and nature, how live more economically in respect
to virtue and all noble qualities, than we do? I have lived for the
last month- and I think that every man in Massachusetts capable of the
sentiment of patriotism must have had a similar experience- with the
sense of having suffered a vast and indefinite loss. I did not know at
first what ailed me. At last it occurred to me that what I had lost
was a country. I had never respected the government near to which I
lived, but I had foolishly thought that I might manage to live here,
minding my private affairs, and forget it. For my part, my old and
worthiest pursuits have lost I cannot say how much of their
attraction, and I feel that my investment in life here is worth many
per cent less since Massachusetts last deliberately sent back an
innocent man, Anthony Burns, to slavery. I dwelt before, perhaps, in
the illusion that my life passed somewhere only between heaven and
hell, but now I cannot persuade myself that I do not dwell wholly
within hell. The site of that political organization called
Massachusetts is to me morally covered with volcanic scoriae and
cinders, such as Milton describes in the infernal regions. If there is
any hell more unprincipled than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I
feel curious to see it. Life itself being worth less, all things