PHILLIPS, WENDELL, b. Boston, Nov. 29, 1811; son of Boston's first mayor. He graduated from Harvard in 1831, and from the Cambridge law-sehool in 1833; was admitted to the state bar, and practiced until 1839, when he retired front professional work on account of his unwillingness to he bound by an oath of fidelity to the U. S. constitution, as then construed by the supreme court. His first public appearance in tho light of it reformer was in an impromptu speech of great eloquence it the Fanettil hall meeting of Dec., 1837, held to denounce the murder in Alton, Ill., of the rev. E. P. Love joy (q.v.). He was a warm supporter of Garrison and that party of abolitionists who believed the constitution to be void as upholding slavery against the "higher law." Since the settlement of the slavery question by the war, Mr. Phillips has been an eager advo cate of the woman's rights, temperance, and "labor-reform" movements, and in 1870 was the candidate of the labor-reform party fur governor of Massachusetts. For many years
Wendell Phillips has been recoguized as the first of public lecturers. Perhaps the best known of his lectures arc those on The Lost Arts and on Daniel O'Conuell. As an orator he is unsurpassed in vigorous elegance and grace of delivery. He has published many pamphlets on the questions in which he was so warmly interested, such as The Constitu tion a Pro-s'atery Contract (1844); Review of Webster's 7th-of-March Speech (1830). A col lection of his speeches, letters, and lectures was published in 1863 in Boston. Perhaps no speaker in the country elicits more admiration for finished and impressive address; while probably none elicits more adverse criticism for his views. The criticism, how ever, is :tinted not at his moral principle, but at his intellectual method.