Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/313

Rh things,—that, as often as they have demanded wickedness, Boston has answered the demand: they piece out their small bit of lion's skin with the pelt of many a Northern fox. They are in earnest for slavery: they think New England is not in earnest for freedom. Do you blame them for their inference? A few years ago, Mr. Sumner spoke in Boston, on "the True Grandeur of Nations," a lofty word before the City Fathers, on the Fourth of July, 1845. An Argument against War, a Plea for Peace. As two of our most distinguished citizens came from listening, one said to the other, "Well, if that young man is going to talk in that way, he cannot expect Boston to hold him up." Since then, that young man has spoken even nobler words. Boston has not held him up; nay, the controlling part of it has sought to strike him down,—counted him one of "a nest of vipers,"—done nothing to support, all to overthrow him. Why? Because he was the continual defender of the unalienable rights of man. Slaveholders are not fools: they know all this. The South never struck a Northern advocate of a tariff, or a defender of the Union. She knew the North would "hold up" the champions of the Union and the tariff. It attacks only the Soldiers of Freedom, knowing that the controlling power of the North also hates them. I know men in Boston to-day, who would long since have struck Mr. Sumner, had they only dared,—nor him alone.

Last week, there were two remarkable spectacles in the United States. One at the State House, in Boston: it was the Legislature, stimulated by the enemies of freedom, proceeding to repeal the Personal Liberty Law, and seeking to restore kidnapping to Massachusetts. I need not tell here who it was—a very few men—that plotted the wickedness, nor how much they expected to gain by it. On the same day, not far from the same hour, in the Nation House at Washington, there was another spectacle. A Representative of slavery, with a bludgeon, knocks our Senator to the ground,—strikes him twenty or thirty blows after he is down. They are two scenes in the same tragedy. Both blows were dealt by the same arm,—the Slave Power; both aimed at the same mark,—the Head of Freedom; each came from the same motive, which I need not name.