United States -- History -- Constitutional period, 1789-1809 -- Fiction
for the welfare and the grandeur of the whole that each part should have
its healthful life? The whole exists but by the glow within its parts.
Shall we become dead members of a sickly soul? God forbid! but sister
planets revolving in their orbits about one central Idea, which is
Freedom by Coöperation. To each her own life, varied, rich, complete,
and her communal life, large with service rendered and received! Each
bound to other and to that central Thought by primal law, but each a
sovereign orb, grave mistress of her own affairs! Slavery! Ay, I will
give you that though you want it not! Slavery is abominable. There is a
tree that grows in the tropics which they call the upas tree. All who
lie in the shadow of its branches fall asleep, and die sleeping. To-day
we lie under the upas tree--would that we were awake! I have heard
that--in the tropics--the sons sometimes hew down that which the fathers
have planted. I would that it were so in Virginia! Freedom of thought,
of speech, and of pen. I will away with this cope of lead, this Ancient
Authority, which is too often an Ancient Iniquity. Did it not have
once a minority? was it not once a New Thought? Is not a man's
thought to-day as potent, holy, and near the right as was his
great-grandfather's thought which was born in a like manner, of the
brain of a man, in a modern time? I will think freely and according to
reason. When it seems wise to tell my mind I will speak; and with
judgment I will write down my thought; and fear no man's censure.
Knowledge! I was a poor boy, and I strove for learning, strove hard, and
found it worth the striving. I know the hunger, and I know the rage when
one asks for knowledge and asks in vain. Is it not a shameful thing that
happy men, lodged warm and clear in the Interpreter's house, should hear
the groping in the dark without, know that their fellows are searching,
in pain and with shortness of breath, for the key which let the
fortunate in, and make no stir to aid those luckless ones? Give of your
abundance, or your abundance will decay in your hands and turn to that
which shall cause you shuddering!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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