The Liberator

MAN-WORSHIP.

BY SHARPSTICK.

Man-worship is a habit to which the Americans are exceedingly prone. They do not pay half enough regard to the rights of men in general, as is proved by the existence of slavery among them, of restrictions based upon color, &c.; but they have a decided fondness for picking out some idol among the great slaughterers or great slaveholders of the nation, and then fairly crouching down in the dust before him. They plaster him with praise, split their throats hurrahing for him, adopt his sayings as the perfection of wisdom, defend him from every imputation of the slightest fault, and are ready to engage in any Quixotic undertaking, or establish any system of policy which he proposes. All considerations of justice, duty, expediency or propriety are thrown to the winds when the bell-wether of the day heads for a certain path; and onward rush the masses, pell-mell, after him, never thinking how their flesh may be torn by the brambles of wrong, or in what wretched pasturage of folly they may fetch up.

This country abounds in men who are in the constant habit of pinning their faith on some priest's sleeve in religion, and hanging hold of some demagogue's coat-tail in politics. They can no more stand alone than a babe five minutes old; and seem to possess no more facility at using their intellects on matters of Church and State, than such an infant would possess at using its limbs in gymnastic exercises. They never presume to think for themselves on those topics where independent thought is most important. They swallow the 'creed,' or sit on the 'platform that is prepared for them; and would regard it as equivalent to 'moral treason' to kick out of the traces on any essential point. Take away their leaders, and these poor helpless creatures would be like a rickety child deprived of all props—like sheep having no shepherd. When Daniel Webster, for example, dies,—and, having pounded his own constitution by debauchery quite as much as he has expounded the Constitution of the United States, he must die soon,—but when he dies, what a panic will run through the cliques of Wall-street and State-street! Their oracle having become dumb in the grave, to whom shall they look for instruction? Their guide-board lying prostrate in the mud, how shall they find their way through labyrinthine questions of government?

I might cite numberless examples of this servile propensity, from the blind adoration of the Democrats for Jefferson's name and notions, down to the childish anxiety with which the Whigs waited and watched for Henry Clay's dying words on intervention. If this sentiment of reverence were always turned upon worthy objects, it would be in a measure excusable; but when it is misdirected and abused—when it runs into servile adulation, and lifts up images of stocks and stones, and even deifies reptiles,—then it is pitiable. With a Magna Charta which declares all men to be created free and equal, it is really a source of astonishment and grief to behold so many Americans, of respectable talents and fair education, knuckling to, cringing before, and receiving marching orders from, a pack of selfish schemers! They appear to be imbued with distrust of their own judgment the instant political or theological topics are broached, and to hold the opinion that they must have a harness on their shoulders, and a bit in their mouths, to keep them in the straight and narrow way of truth. The same man who will conduct an extensive and intricate business with consummate skill, alone and unadvised, frequently goes all of a tremor to the consecrated parson or caucus wire-puller of his locality, to know what side to take in regard to opposing sects or parties.

This mania often breaks out into enthusiastic adoration of some foreigner who chances to visit us. The public mind is heated to a fever pitch about him; his actions and sayings fill the newspapers; his portrait stares at you from every print-seller's window; his movements gain that senatorial notice and that legislative attention which are denied to topics of ten-fold more pressing consequence. That Louis Kossuth,—the American demi-god of a large class to-day,—has spoken many lofty truths, and performed many noble deeds, and endured much personal suffering, to promote the welfare of humanity, I do not doubt. That he is far higher in aim and purer in motive than the mass of our own statesmen, I also believe. But he has not uttered such lofty truths, or performed such noble deeds, or endured such personal suffering, as many a persecuted and despised abolitionist in this very land. He is not so high in aim or pure in motive as the mass of the party who rally round the principle of immediate emancipation. Where, then, is the sense of going into ecstasies at his eloquence, earnest and moving as it is? Where the benefit of saving all our esteem and admiration to bestow upon him, especially when we are too apt to treat with contumely and violence those who remind us of our duty at home in tones more thrilling than his? Why meet with toasting and feasting one whose love for his brother stops at the boundary of his native land, or at all events dies out when the victim of oppression chances to be of a little (and but a little) darker hue than himself; and meet with insult and injury those whose love for their brethren is all embracing, and stops at no degree of latitude, and dies out at no shade of complexion? Let us not fall into the inconsistency of honoring a partial development of virtue, while we slight and even abuse more perfect impersonations of the same virtue. Let us, finally, worship no man; but let us venerate goodness, in whomsoever it exists. The best saint that lives has blemishes of character; and to elevate him 'in the lump' to the summit of our mental regard would be as absurd as to believe word for word of a certain book, with all its crudities, contradictions, impossibilities, and absurd fables.