Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/288

276 I thank God for what he has done already. He is a man of a good deal of ability, and may be trusted yet to do us good service, not in your way or my way, but in his own way. I ought to say a word of Mr. Sumner. I know that he has disappointed the expectations of his best friends by keeping silent so long. But Mr. Sumner's whole life shows him to be an honest man, not a selfish man at all—a man eminently sincere, and eminently trustworthy, eminently just. He has a right to choose his own time to speak. I wish he had spoken long ago, and I doubt if this long delay is wholly wise for him. But it is for him to decide, not for us. "A fool's bolt is soon shot," while a wise man often reserves his fire. He should not be taunted with his remarks made when he had no thought of an election to the Senate. A man often thinks a thing easy, which he finds difficult when he comes up to the spot. But this winter past, Mr. Sumner has not been idle. I have a letter from an eminent gentleman at Washington—a man bred in kings' courts abroad—who assures me that Sumner has carried the ideas of freedom where they have never been carried before, and when he speaks, will be listened to with much more interest than if he had uttered his speech at his first entrance to Congress. Depend upon it, we shall hear the right word from Charles Sumner yet. I do not believe that he has waited to make it easy for him to speak, but that it may be better for his Idea, and the cause of Freedom he was sent there to represent.

Then there is another man of great mark on the same side. I mean Mr. Seward. He is nominally with the Whigs, but he is really of the political Anti- Slavery Party, the chief man in it. Just now he has more influence than any man in the Northern States, and is the only prominent Whig politician of whom we might wisely predict a brilliant future. General Scott, I take it, owes his nomination to Senator Seward. In the Convention, he seems to have wished for three things:—1. To defeat Mr. Webster at all events. 2. To defeat Mr. Fillmore, if possible. 3. To have the nomination of General Scott, without a platform, if possible, but if not, with a platform, even with the present platform. Had General Scott been nominated without a slavery platform, I think Mr. Seward, and many