The early efforts in England for the overthrow of the slave-trade were encountered by an enmity black as the bad passions of the crime itself.
Charles Sumner
The Public Record
Charles Sumner was an American lawyer and statesman who represented Massachusetts in the United States Senate from 1851 until his death in 1874. Before and during the American Civil War, he was a leading American advocate for the abolition of slavery, and after the war he was a key figure in the Reconstruction era, during which he and other Radical Republicans successfully fought to end slavery and ensure basic rights for Black Americans. He continued advocating for racial equality until his death, lobbying in his final days for a civil rights bill that served as a model for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Historians credit Sumner with coining the phrase "equality before the law," which he first used as part of an early attempt to integrate Boston's public school system.
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In all times and places it has persecuted the prophets and stoned the gifted messengers of truth.
Unhappily, this same bigotry,--conservatism, if you will,--which has blindly opposed improvement in physical comforts, sets its face more passionately still against those movements whose direct object is the elevation of the race.
There are too many in the world who by their efforts would cause the stream to flow back upon the fountain, and even make the mill-wheels revolve in a contrary direction.
As late as the close of the reign of Charles the Second, the streets of London, with a population of half a million, were not lighted at night, and, as a natural consequence, became the frequent scene of assassination and outrage…
This same undue tenacity to existing things and repugnance to what is new threw impediments in the way of successive improvements by which travel and intercourse among men are promoted.
This little story may admonish all who have passed that conservative line to be careful how they are inhospitable to any new truth.
Among the ancient Greeks, the wisdom which first assigned the natural cause of thunder and storm was condemned by conservative savages as impiety to the gods.
Out of this pernicious prejudice have proceeded that persecution and neglect which are the too frequent lot of the world's pioneers.
Nothing from Man's hands--nor laws, nor constitutions--can be perpetual.
How can they provide for the Infinite Future?
But is it not irrational to make this claim for any institutions of human device, and therefore finite?
It were well--and here all must agree--to exclaim of Truth, of Justice, of Peace, of Freedom, May it be perpetual!
Contrary to the Law of Progress, it plants itself upon ancient ways, and vainly exalts all that was done by our ancestors, as beyond addition and above amendment.
Such an influence is productive of disorder rather than order, and is destructive rather than justly conservative.
Child of indifference, of ignorance, of prejudice, of selfishness, it seeks to maintain things precisely as they are, deprecates every change, and, disregarding the transitory condition of all that is human, blindly prays for the…
But there is another Conservatism,--and its treatment belongs to this occasion,--of a different character, which performs no good office, and cannot secure respect.
It admonishes us also, while keeping the eye steadfast on the good we seek, to moderate our expectations, and be content when the day of triumph is postponed, for it cannot be always.
This consideration teaches candor and charity towards all who do not yet see the truth as we do.
Men grow and are trained in knowledge and virtue; but they cannot be compelled into this path.
Gradual change is a necessary condition of the Law of Progress.
It is slowly that we pass from infancy and imbecility to manhood and strength.
Nothing is accomplished except by time and exertion.
Much remains to be done; but the Creator did not speak in vain, when he blessed his earliest children, and bade them "multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it.
The mountains have not diminished in size; but Man has overcome the barriers they interpose.
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