RALPH WALDO EMERSON
132
imperiousness of the humble, to be found in the annals of politics or of literature.
ward forms,
it
abandons
Careful in the main of out-
itself in essentials
to the stress
and Emerson, the fact alone could have revealed the possibility. There are sentences like levin-bolts that kindle of a passion
a daring of which, in a quiet mystic like
where they smite.
"The
soul of
mercy that is the heart's heart
man, the justice, the men, from Maine to
in all
Texas, does abhor this business."
"How
could
we
call
the conspiracy that should crush these poor Indians our
government, or the land that was cursed by their parting
and dying imprecations our country, any more? You, sir, will bring down that renowned chair in which you sit into infamy if your seal is set to this instrument of perfidy: and the name of this nation, hitherto the sweet omen of religion and liberty, will stink to the world." The crash of these words, the peals from this hidden Sinai, are as heartening and vivifying as they are formidable. It will be noted that the terror and pity centre
about the United States rather than the wronged
Cherokees.
In Emerson's view, there was a victim
in
every act of crime, but he" assigned that post to the criminal, not the sufferer.
Emerson, in his
brief pastorate, in 1830-31, twice
permitted abolitionists to lecture or preach in the Sec-
ond Church. In 1837, he delivered, by request, in the Second Church at Concord, an anti-slavery lecture of an irritating mildness.
He
disliked the negro;
he disliked
the abolitionist; and, between these two dislikes, his
condemnation of the planter, though of its incisiveness.
He
sincere, lost
suspected that slavery
much was