Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/170

158 the area of freedom, seek the shelter of the British crown. Nay, he negociated a treaty with Mexico, which bound her to deliver up fugitive slaves, escaping from the United States—a treaty which the Mexican Congress refused to ratify! Should a great man have known better? Great men are not always wise. Afterwards, public attention was called to the matter; humble men gave lofty counsel; Mr. Adams used different language, and recommended different measures. But long before that, on the 7th of December, 1804, Mr. Pickering, his colleague in the Senate of the United States, offered a resolution, for the purpose of amending the Constitution, so as to apportion representatives, and direct taxes among the States, according to their free inhabitants.

But there are other things in Mr. Adams's course and conduct, which deserve the censure of a good man. One was, the attempt to justify the conduct of England, in her late war with China, when she forced her opium upon the barbarians with the bayonet. To make out his case, he contended that "In the celestial empire … the patriarchal system of Sir Robert Filmer: flourished in all its glory," and the Chinese claimed superior dignity over all others; they refused to hold equal and reciprocal commercial intercourse with other nations, and "it is time this enormous outrage upon the rights of human nature, and the first principles of the laws of nations, should cease." It is true, the Chinese were "barbarians;" true, the English carried thither the Bible and Christianity, at least their own Christianity. But, even by the law of nations, letting alone the law of nature, the barbarians had a right to repel both Bible and Christianity, when they came in a contraband shape—that of opium and cannon balls. To justify this outrage of the strong against the weak, he quite forgets his old antipathy to England, his devotion to human freedom, and the sovereignty of the people, calling the cause of England " a righteous cause."