Thursday, March 23, 2006

Garrison against the Tyrants

Tyrants of the old world! contemners of the rights of man! disbelievers in human freedom and equality! enemies of mankind! console not yourselves with the delusion, that REPUBLICANISM and the AMERICAN UNION are synonymous terms—or that the downfall of the latter will be the extinction of the former, and, consequently, a proof of the incapacity of the people for self-government, and a confirmation of your own despotic claims! Your thrones must crumble in dust; your sceptre of dominion drop from your powerless hands; your rod of oppression be broken; yourselves so vilely abased, that there shall be none so poor to do your reverence. The will of God, the beneficent Creator of the human family, cannot always be frustrated. It is his will that every form of usurpation, every kind of injustice, every device of tyranny, shall come to nought; that peace, and liberty, and righteousness, shall reign from sea to sea, and from the rivers to the ends of the earth; and that, throughout the earth, in the fulness of a sure redemption, there shall be none to molest or make afraid. Humanity, covered with gore, cries with a voice that pierces the heavens. His will be done! Justice, discrowned by the hand of violence, exclaims in tones of deep solemnity, HIS WILL BE DONE! Liberty, burdened with chains, and driven into exile, in thunder-tones responds, HIS WILL BE DONE!

William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, 10 January 1845