Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/37

Rh make money by it. The eyes of the North. are full of cotton; they see nothing else, for a web is before them; their ears are full of cotton, and they hear nothing but the buzz of their mills; their mouth is full of cotton, and they can speak audibly but two words—Tariff, Tariff, Dividends, Dividends. The talent of the North is blinded, deafened, gagged with its own cotton. The North clamoured loudly when the nation's treasure was removed from the United States Bank; it is almost silent at the annexation of a slave territory big as the kingdom of France, encumbered with debts, loaded with the entailment of war! Northern governors call for soldiers; our men volunteer to fight in a most infamous war for the extension of slavery! Tell it not in Boston, whisper it not in Faneuil Hall, lest you waken the slumbers of your fathers, and they curse you as cowards and traitors unto men ! Not satisfied with annexing Texas and a war, we next invaded a territory which did not belong to Texas, and built a fort on the Rio Grande, where, I take it, we had no more right than the British, in 1841, had on the Penobscot or the Saco. Now the Government and its Congress would throw the blame on the innocent, and say war exists "by the act of Mexico!" If a lie was ever told, I think this is one. Then the "dear people" must be called on for money and men, for "the soil of this free republic is invaded ;" and the Governor of Massachusetts, one of the men who declared the annexation of Texas unconstitutional, recommends the war he just now told us to pray against, and appeals to our "patriotism," and "humanity," as arguments for butchering the Mexicans, when they are in the right and we in the wrong! The maxim is held up, "Our country, right or wrong;" "Our country, howsoever bounded;" and it might as well be, "Our country, howsoever governed." It seems popularly and politically forgotten that there is such a thing as Right. The nation's neck invites a tyrant. I am not at all astonished that northern representatives voted for all this work of crime. They are no better than Southern representatives; scarcely less in favour of slavery, and not half so open. They say: Let the North make money, and you may do what you please with the nation ; and we will choose governors that dare not oppose you, for, though we are descended from the Puritans, we have but one