Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/321

Rh "testimonial" of its gratitude,—a pitcher and a cane. Of course there are honourable men in the South, who abhor this cowardly violence; but they will not dare to speak aloud.

Do not think the blow was struck at Mr. Sumner alone. It was at you and me and all of us,—a blow at freedom of speech. Violence must begin somewhere, and he happened to be there. Now threats are uttered against all others who oppose the enslavement of the people: your masters say that Seward, Wilson, Wade, and Hale shall next take their turn.

It is encouraging to see the effect of this outrage on the people at the North. Nothing has so stirred men before. Each new stroke of the slave-driver's whip startles some one. Whenever Slavery is driven through our Northern cities, it breaks up the pavement a little; the stones are never replaced: by and by, the street will be impassable for that tumbril. The Fugitive Slave Bill opened some Northern eyes; others were unstopped by its enforcement here. Some recovered their conscience when the Nebraska iniquity was first proposed ; the blows in the Senate House waken yet more ; the fall of the buildings at Lawrence startle other men from deadly sleep. "Let bygones be bygones:" if a man comes into the field at the eleventh hour, to honest work, let not those who have borne the burthen and heat of the day grudge him his place and his penny. If a man stand with his back leaning against the public whipping-post in Charleston, S.C, but looks northward, and loves freedom, and will do anything for it, let us give him our thanks and our help.

The crime which the slaveholders have now committed against our senator is very small compared to the sin of Boston against two of its inhabitants. Which is worse, for Mr. Brooks at Washington to beat an unarmed senator with a heavy bludgeon, taking him unawares, or for Commissioner Curtis and Commissioner Loring to steal Mr. Sims and Mr. Burns? What are a few blows, to slavery for life? what the Southern "testimonial," compared to the "fifteen hundred gentlemen "who voluntered for the first kidnapping, and the citizen soldiers who so eagerly took part in the last one? Will Massachusetts ask the House of Representatives to expel the assassin ? Who is Judge