172 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS ion," he said, "is our disease; or, shall I say, the absence of private opinion. Good nature is plentiful, but we want justice with heart of steel to fight down the proud. The private mind has the access to the totality of goodness and truth, that it may be a balance to a corrupt society ; and to stand for the private verdict against popular clamor is the office of the noble. If a humane measure is propounded in behalf of the slave, or of the Irishman, or the Catholic, or for the succor of the poor, that sentiment, that project, will have the homage of the hero. That is his nobility, his oath of knighthood, to succor the helpless and oppressed ; always to throw himself on the side of weakness, of youth, of hope, on the liberal, on the expansive side ; never on the conserving, the timorous, the lock-and-bolt system. More than our good-will we may not be able to give. We have our own affairs, our own genius, which chain us to our proper work. We cannot give our life to the cause of the debtor, of the slave, or the pauper, as another is doing ; but to one thing we are bound, not to blaspheme the sentiment and the work of that man, not to throw stumbling-blocks in the way of the abolitionist, the philanthropist, as the organs of influence and opinion are swift to do." Emerson had as much practical sagacity as genius ; when he spoke these words (in a lecture on "The Young American," in Boston, 1844) he had reached a commanding position, carrying with it gravest responsibilities ; the des- tinies of hundreds of young men and women were determined by his lectures. But with reference to the anti-slavery movement, he did more than he exacted from others, and recognized it as a far more important reform than others. When, in 1835, Harriet Martineau was nearly mobbed in Boston, personal vio- lence being threatened and no prominent citizen venturing to her side, Emerson and his brother Charles hastened to -her defence. " At the time of the hubbub against me in Boston," she writes in her autobiography, " Charles Emerson stood alone in a large company in defence of the right of free thought and speech, and declared that he had rather see Boston in ashes than that I, or anybody else, should be debarred in any way from perfectly free speech. His brother Waldo invited me to be his guest in the midst of my unpopularity." In 1844, when Massachusetts citizen negroes had been taken to prison from ships in southern ports, Emerson delivered an oration on the anniversary of West Indian emancipation, and spoke sternly on the matter. " If such a damnable outrage can be committed on the person of a citizen with impunity, let the Gov- ernor break the broad seal of the State ; he bears the sword in vain. The Gov- ernor of Massachusetts is a trifier, the State-House in Boston is a play-house ; the General Court is a dishonored body, if they make laws which they cannot exe- cute. The great-hearted Puritans have left no posterity." He demanded that the representatives of the State should demand of Congress the instant release, by force if necessary, of the imprisoned negro seamen, and their indemnification." As for dangers to the Union from such demands " the Union is already at an end when the first citizen of Massachusetts is thus outraged." This address was a bugle, and it filled the anti-slavery ranks with fresh courage. The Herald oj Freedom, reporting it at the time, says their eyes were filled with tears as this
