Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/306

294 but it is good enough for black men: it is a very Christian thing." You do not forget, surely, that there is a doctor of South-side Divinity in the city of Boston, a most thoroughly "respectable man." He has not lost a hair of "respectability" from his clerical head by perverting the Bible to the defence of slavery. When the United States Court opens its session, it asks him to come and pray for a blessing on the Court of Kidnappers in the city of Boston. It is very proper. And he represents the opinion of a large class of men, who are bottomed on money, who have a good intellectual education, and very high social standing. When South Carolina shut up coloured sailors of Massachusetts in her gaols at Charleston, and made the merchants of Boston pay the bill, the State sent one of her eminent men to remonstrate, and take legal measures to secure the constitutional rights of her citizens. But Mr. Hoar was ignominiously driven out of the State; and it was only the handsome presence of his daughter that saved him from a fate far worse than what befell Mr. Sumner. Massachusetts bore it all. Boston capitalists were angry if a man complained above his breath at this indignity; but, when they came to be tired of paying the bills, they got up a petition to Congress, very numerously signed, asking Congress to abolish that nuisance, and secure the constitutional rights of Massachusetts men. The petition was put into the hands of the senator from Boston; but he "lost it:" he "put it into his hat, and, some way or other, it fell out." But the sagacious merchants had kept a duplicate, and the senator had an attested copy sent him. He lost that too. He never dared to offer the petition of Boston merchants against an outrage which had no colour of constitutional plea to stand under. Freedom of speech was struck dumb on the floor of the Senate more than ten years ago. Even the almighty dollar could not find a tongue. But, when Rufus Choate returned to Boston, his "respectability" was not harmed in the least: he was still the "Hon. Mr. Choate." Suppose it had been a petition to increase the duty on cottons and woollens fifty per cent, and he had "lost that out of his hat?" Why, when he returned to Boston—I will not say he would have lost his head from his shoulders, but it would have been worth very little upon them.