Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/51

Rh I am guilty of treason, moral treason. Why, a wrong—it is only the threshold of ruin. I would not have my country take the next step. Treason is it, to show that this war is wrong and wicked! Why, what if George III., any time from '75 to '83, had gone down to Parliament and told them it was treason to discuss the war then waging against these colonies! What do you think the Commons would have said? What would the Lords say? Why, that king, foolish as he was, would have been lucky, if he had not learned there was a joint in his neck, and, stiff as he bore him, that the people knew how to find it.

I do not believe in killing kings, or any other men; but I do say, in a time when the nation was not in danger, that no British king, for two hundred years past, would have dared call it treason to discuss the war—its cause, its progress, or its termination!

Now is the time to act! Twice we have let the occasion slip ; beware of the third time! Let it be infamous for a New England man to enlist; for a New England merchant to loan his dollars, or to let his ships in aid of this- wicked war; let it be infamous for a manufacturer to make a cannon, a sword, or a kernel of powder, to kill our brothers with, while we all know that they are in the right, and we in the wrong.

I know my voice is a feeble one in Massachusetts. I have no mountainous position from whence to look down and overawe the multitude; I have no background of political reputation to echo my words. I am but a plain, humble man; but I have a background of Truth to sustain me, and the Justice of Heaven arches over my head! For your sakes, I wish I had that oceanic eloquence whose tidal flow should bear on its bosom the drift-weed which politicians have piled together, and sap and sweep away the sand-hillocks of soldiery blown together by the idle wind; that oceanic eloquence which sweeps all before it, and leaves the shore hard, smooth, and clean! But feeble as I am, let me beg of you, fellow-citizens of Boston, men and brothers, to come forward and protest against this wicked war, and the end for which it is waged. I call on the whigs, who love their country better than they love the tariff of '42; I call on