Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/238

226 ness. That may be, or may not be. The slave-hunter may have his "fugitive" before the collector of Boston, or the postmaster of Truro, if he sees fit. If they, remembering their Old Testament, refuse to "bewray him that wandereth," the slave-hunter may bring on his officer with him from Georgia or Florida; he may bring the custom-house officer from Mobile or Wilmington, some little petty postmaster from a town you never heard of in South Carolina or Texas, and have any dark man in Boston up before that "magistrate," and on his decision have the fugitive carried off to Louisiana or Arkansas, to bondage for ever. The bill provides that the trial may be had before any such officer, "residing or being" in the State where the fugitive is found! There were three fugitives at my house the other night. Ellen Craft was one of them. You all know Ellen Craft is a slave: she, with her husband, fled from Georgia to Philadelphia, and is here before us now. She is not so dark as Mr. Webster himself, if any of you think freedom is to be dealt out in proportion to the whiteness of the skin. If Mason's bill passes, I might have some miserable postmaster from Texas or the District of Columbia, some purchased agent of Messrs. Bruin and Hill, the great slave-dealers of the Capitol, have him here in Boston, take Ellen Craft before the caitiff, and on his decision hurry her off to bondage as cheerless, as hopeless, and as irremediable as the grave!

Let me interest you in a scene which might happen. Suppose a poor fugitive, wrongfully held as a slave—let it be Ellen Craft—has escaped from Savannah in some northern ship. No one knows of her presence on board; she has lain with the cargo in the hold of the vessel. Harder things have happened. Men have journeyed hundreds of miles bent double in a box half the size of a coffin, journeying towards freedom. Suppose the ship comes up to Long Wharf, at the foot of State Street. Bulk is broken to remove the cargo ; the woman escapes, emaciated with hunger, feeble from long confinement in a ship's hold, sick with the tossing of the heedless sea, and still further etiolated and blanched with the mingling emotions of hope and fear. She escapes to land. But her pursuer, more remorseless than the sea, has been here