The Biglow Papers Part 8

Let us allow, even to richly deserved misfortune, our commiseration, and be not overhasty meanwhile in our censure of the French people, left for the first time to govern themselves, remembering that wise sentence of aeschylus,--

?pa? d? t?a??? ?st?? ?? ???? ??at?. H. W.

No. V.

THE DEBATE IN THE SENNIT

SOT TO A NUSRY RHYME.

[The incident which gave rise to the debate satirized in the following verses was the unsuccessful attempt of Drayton and Sayres to give freedom to seventy men and women, fellow-beings and fellow-Christians.

Had Tripoli, instead of Was.h.i.+ngton, been the scene of this undertaking, the unhappy leaders in it would have been as secure of the theoretic as they now are of the practical part of martyrdom. I question whether the Dey of Tripoli is blessed with a District Attorney so benighted as ours at the seat of government. Very fitly is he named Key, who would allow himself to be made the instrument of locking the door of hope against sufferers in such a cause. Not all the waters of the ocean can cleanse the vile s.m.u.tch of the jailer's fingers from off that little Key.

_Ahenea clavis_, a brazen Key indeed!

Mr. Calhoun, who is made the chief speaker in this burlesque, seems to think that the light of the nineteenth century is to be put out as soon as he tinkles his little cow-bell curfew. Whenever slavery is touched, he sets up his scarecrow of dissolving the Union. This may do for the North, but I should conjecture that something more than a pumpkin-lantern is required to scare manifest and irretrievable Destiny out of her path. Mr. Calhoun cannot let go the ap.r.o.n-string of the Past.

The Past is a good nurse, but we must be weaned from her sooner or later, even though, like Plotinus, we should run home from school to ask the breast, after we are tolerably well-grown youths. It will not do for us to hide our faces in her lap, whenever the strange Future holds out her arms and asks us to come to her.

But we are all alike. We have all heard it said, often enough, that little boys must not play with fire; and yet, if the matches be taken away from us and put out of reach upon the shelf, we must needs get into our little corner, and scowl and stamp and threaten the dire revenge of going to bed without our supper. The world shall stop till we get our dangerous plaything again. Dame Earth, meanwhile, who has more than enough household matters to mind, goes bustling hither and thither as a hiss or a sputter tells her that this or that kettle of hers is boiling over, and before bedtime we are glad to eat our porridge cold, and gulp down our dignity along with it.

Mr. Calhoun has somehow acquired the name of a great statesman, and, if it be great statesmans.h.i.+p to put lance in rest and run a tilt at the Spirit of the Age with the certainty of being next moment hurled neck and heels into the dust amid universal laughter, he deserves the t.i.tle.

He is the Sir Kay of our modern chivalry. He should remember the old Scandinavian mythus. Thor was the strongest of G.o.ds, but he could not wrestle with Time, nor so much as lift up a fold of the great snake which knit the universe together; and when he smote the Earth, though with his terrible mallet, it was but as if a leaf had fallen. Yet all the while it seemed to Thor that he had only been wrestling with an old woman, striving to lift a cat, and striking a stupid giant on the head.

And in old times, doubtless, the giants _were_ stupid, and there was no better sport for the Sir Launcelots and Sir Gawains than to go about cutting off their great blundering heads with enchanted swords. But things have wonderfully changed. It is the giants, now-a-days, that have the science and the intelligence, while the chivalrous Don Quixotes of Conservatism still c.u.mber themselves with the clumsy armour of a by-gone age. On whirls the restless globe through unsounded time, with its cities and its silences, its births and funerals, half light, half shade, but never wholly dark, and sure to swing round into the happy morning at last. With an involuntary smile, one sees Mr. Calhoun letting slip his pack-thread cable with a crooked pin at the end of it to anchor South Carolina upon the bank and shoal of the Past.--H. W.]

TO MR. BUCKENAM.

MR. EDITER, As i wuz kinder prunin round, in a little nussry sot out a year or 2 a go, the Dbait in the sennit c.u.m inter my mine An so i took & Sot it to wut I call a nussry rime. I hev made sum onnable Gentlemun speak that dident speak in a Kind uv Poetikul lie sense the seeson is dreffle backerd up This way

ewers as ushul

HOSEA BIGLOW.

"Here we stan' on the Const.i.tution, by thunder!

It 's a fact o' wich ther 's bus.h.i.+ls o' proofs; Fer how could we trample on 't so, I wonder, Ef't worn't thet it 's oilers under our hoofs?"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he; "Human rights haint no more Right to come on this floor, No more 'n the man in the moon," sez he.

"The North haint no kind o' bisness with nothin', An' you 've no idee how much bother it saves; We aint none riled by their frettin' an' frothin', We 're _used_ to layin' the string on our slaves,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Mister Foote, "I should like to shoot The holl gang, by the gret horn spoon!" sez he.

"Freedom's Keystone is Slavery, thet ther 's no doubt on, It 's sutthin' thet 's--wha' d' ye call it?--divine,-- An' the slaves thet we ollers _make_ the most out on Air them north o' Mason an' Dixon's line,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Fer all thet," sez Mangum, "'T would be better to hang 'em, An' so git red on 'em soon," sez he.

"The ma.s.s ough' to labour an' we lay on soffies, Thet 's the reason I want to spread Freedom's aree; It puts all the cunninest on us in office, An' reelises our Maker's orig'nal idee,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Thet 's ez plain," sez Ca.s.s, "Ez thet some one 's an a.s.s, It 's ez clear ez the sun is at noon," sez he.

"Now don't go to say I 'm the friend of oppression, But keep all your spare breath fer coolin' your broth, Fer I ollers hev strove (at least thet 's my impression) To make cussed free with the rights o' the North,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Yes," sez Davis o' Miss., "The perfection o' bliss Is in skinnin' thet same old c.o.o.n," sez he.

"Slavery 's a thing thet depends on complexion, It 's G.o.d's law thet fetters on black skins don't chafe; Ef brains wuz to settle it (horrid reflection!) Wich of our onnable body 'd be safe?"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Mister Hannegan, Afore he began agin, "Thet exception is quite oppertoon," sez he.

"Gen'nle Ca.s.s, Sir, you need n't be twitchin' your collar, _Your_ merit 's quite clear by the dut on your knees, At the North we don't make no distinctions o' colour; You can all take a lick at our shoes wen you please,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Mister Jarnagin, "They wunt hev to larn agin, They all on 'em know the old toon," sez he.

"The slavery question aint no ways bewilderin'.

North an' South hev one int'rest, it 's plain to a glance; No'thern men, like us patriarchs, don't sell their childrin, But they _du_ sell themselves, ef they git a good chance,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- Sez Atherton here, "This is gittin' severe, I wish I could dive like a loon," sez he.

"It 'll break up the Union, this talk about freedom, An' your fact'ry gals (soon ez we split) 'll make head, An' gittin' some Miss chief or other to lead 'em, 'll go to work raisin' promiscoous Ned,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Yes, the North," sez Colquitt, "Ef we Southerners all quit, Would go down like a busted balloon," sez he.

"Jest look wut is doin', wut annyky 's brewin'

In the beautiful clime o' the olive an' vine, All the wise aristoxy is tumblin' to ruin, An' the sankylots drorin' an' drinkin' their wine,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Yes," sez Johnson, "in France They 're beginnin' to dance Beelzebub's own rigadoon," sez he.

"The South 's safe enough, it don't feel a mite skeery, Our slaves in their darkness an' dut air tu blest Not to welcome with proud hallylugers the ery Wen our eagle kicks yourn from the naytional nest,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "O," sez Westcott o' Florida, "Wut treason is horrider Then our priv'leges tryin' to proon?" sez he.

"It 's 'coz they 're so happy, thet, wen crazy sarpints Stick their nose in our bizness, we git so darned riled; We think it 's our dooty to give pooty sharp hints, Thet the last crumb of Edin on airth shan't be spiled,"

Sez John C. Calhoun, sez he;-- "Ah," sez Dixon H. Lewis, "It perfectly true is Thet slavery 's airth's grettest boon," sez he.

[It was said of old time, that riches have wings; and, though this be not applicable in a literal strictness to the wealth of our patriarchal brethren of the South, yet it is clear that their possessions have legs, and an unaccountable propensity for using them in a northerly direction.

I marvel that the grand jury of Was.h.i.+ngton did not find a true bill against the North Star for aiding and abetting Drayton and Sayres. It would have been quite of a piece with the intelligence displayed by the South on other questions connected with slavery. I think that no s.h.i.+p of state was ever freighted with a more veritable Jonah than this same domestic inst.i.tution of ours. Mephistopheles himself could not feign so bitterly, so satirically sad a sight as this of three millions of human beings crushed beyond help or hope by this one mighty argument,--_Our fathers knew no better!_ Nevertheless, it is the unavoidable destiny of Jonahs to be cast overboard sooner or later. Or shall we try the experiment of hiding our Jonah in a safe place, that none may lay hands on him to make jetsam of him? Let us, then, with equal forethought and wisdom, lash ourselves to the anchor, and await, in pious confidence, the certain result. Perhaps our suspicious pa.s.senger is no Jonah after all, being black. For it is well known that a superintending Providence made a kind of sandwich of Ham and his descendants, to be devoured by the Caucasian race.

In G.o.d's name, let all, who hear nearer and nearer the hungry moan of the storm and the growl of the breakers, speak out! But, alas! we have no right to interfere. If a man pluck an apple of mine, he shall be in danger of the justice; but if he steal my brother, I must be silent. Who says this? Our Const.i.tution, consecrated by the callous suetude of sixty years, and grasped in triumphant argument in the left hand of him whose right hand clutches the clotted slave-whip. Justice, venerable with the undethronable majesty of countless aeons, says,--SPEAK! The Past, wise with the sorrows and desolations of ages, from amid her shattered fanes and wolf-housing palaces, echoes,--SPEAK! Nature, through her thousand trumpets of freedom, her stars, her sunrises, her seas, her winds, her cataracts, her mountains blue with cloudy pines, blows jubilant encouragement, and cries,--SPEAK! From the soul's trembling abysses the still, small voice not vaguely murmurs,--SPEAK! But, alas! the Const.i.tution and the Honourable Mr. Bagowind, M.C., say,--BE DUMB!

It occurs to me to suggest, as a topic of inquiry in this connexion, whether, on that momentous occasion when the goats and the sheep shall be parted, the Const.i.tution and the Honourable Mr. Bagowind, M.C., will be expected to take their places on the left as our hircine vicars.

_Quia sum miser tunc dicturus?

Quem patronum rogaturus?_

There is a point where toleration sinks into sheer baseness and poltroonery. The toleration of the worst leads us to look on what is barely better as good enough, and to wors.h.i.+p what is only moderately good. Woe to that man, or that nation, to whom mediocrity has become an ideal!

Has our experiment of self-government succeeded, if it barely manage to _rub and go_? Here, now, is a piece of barbarism which Christ and the nineteenth century say shall cease, and which Messrs. Smith, Brown, and others say shall _not_ cease. I would by no means deny the eminent respectability of these gentlemen, but I confess, that, in such a wrestling-match, I cannot help having my fears for them.

_Discite just.i.tiam, moniti, et non temnere divos._

H. W.]