SPEECH
AT A MEETING OF
THE AMERICAN ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY,
TO CELEBRATE
THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY BY THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, APRIL 6, 1848.
Mr Chairman,—The gentleman before me[1] has made an allusion to Rome. Let me also turn to that same. city. Underneath the Rome of the Emperors, there was another Rome; not seen by the sun, known only to a few men. Above, in the sunlight, stood Rome of the Caesars, with her markets and her armies, her theatres, her temples, and her palaces, glorious and of marble. A million men went through her brazen gates. The imperial city, she stood there, beautiful and admired, the queen of nations. But underneath all that, in caverns of the earth, in the tombs of dead men, in quarries whence the upper city had been slowly hewn, there was another population, another Rome, with other thoughts; yes, a devout body of men, who swore not by the public altars; men whose prayers were forbidden; their worship disallowed, their ideas prohibited, their very lives illegal. Time passed on; and gradually Rome of the pagans disappeared, and Rome of the Christians sat there in her place, on the Seven Hills, and stretched out her sceptre over the nations.
So underneath the laws and the institutions of each modern nation, underneath the monarchy and the republic,
- ↑ Mr Wendell Phillips.
