Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/290

278 speaks of this party; with the intense malignity of affected scorn. Men do not thus hate a mouse in the wall. Then the abuse which we receive from all the gnats and mosquitoes of the political penny press is a sign also of our power. There are Hunkers who know that our Ideas are just—that they will be triumphant; hence their hate of our Ideas, and their hate of us.

Well, gentlemen, the cause of freedom looks very auspicious to-day: it never looked better. Every apparent national triumph of slavery is only a step to its defeat. The annexation of Texas, the Fugitive Slave Bill, are measures that ultimately will help the cause of freedom. At first, if a man is threatened with a fever, the doctor tries to "throw it off." If that is impossible, he has—tens the crisis—knowing that the sooner that comes, the sooner will the man be well again. I think General Pierce will hasten the crisis, when a Northern party shall get founded, with the American Idea for its motto. The recent action of Congress, the recent decisions of the Supreme Court, the recent action of the Executive, have de facto established this: that Slavery in the States is subject to the control of the Federal Government. True, they apply this only to the Northern States ; but if the Federal Government can interfere with Slavery in Massachusetts, to the extent of kidnapping a man in Boston, and keeping him in duresse by force of armed soldiers, then the principle is established, that the Federal Government may interfere with Slavery in South Carolina; and when we get the spirit of the North aroused, and the numbers of the North on the side of freedom, it will take but a whiff of breath to annihilate human bondage from the Delaware to the Sacramento. Even the course of Politics is in our favour. The spirit of this Teutonic family of men is hostile to Slavery. We alone preserve slavery which all the other tribes have cast off. We cannot keep it long. The Ideas of America, the Ideas of Christianity, are against it. The spirit of the age is hostile—ay, the spirit of mankind and the Nature of the Infinite God!