Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/78

66 we should have had men hanged for treason, because they spoke of this national iniquity I Nothing would have been easier. A "gag law" is not wholly unknown in America.

If you will take all the theft, all the assaults, all the cases of arson, ever committed in time of peace in the United States, since the settlement of Jamestown in 1608, and add to them all the cases of violence offered to woman, with all the murders, they will not amount to half the wrongs committed in this war for the plunder of Mexico. Yet the cry has been, and still is, "You must not say a word against it; if you do, you ’afford aid and comfort to the enemy.' "Not tell the nation that she is doing wrong? What a miserable saying is that ; let it come from what high authority it may, it is a miserable saying. Make the case your own. Suppose the United States were invaded by a nation ten times abler for war than we are, with a cause no more just, intentions equally bad; invaded for the purpose of dismembering our territory and making our own New England the soil of slaves; would you be still? would you stand and look on tamely while the hostile hosts, strangers in language, manners, and religion, crossed your rivers, seized your ports, burnt your towns? No, surely not. Though the men of New England would not be able to resist with most celestial love, they would contend with most manly vigour; and I should rather see every house swept clean off the land, and the ground sheeted with our own dead; rather see every man, woman, and child in the land slain, than see them tamely submit to such a wrong. And so would you. No; sacred as life is, and dear as it is, better let it be trodden out by the hoof of war, rather than yield tamely to a wrong. But while you were doing your utmost to repel such formidable injustice, if in the midst of your invaders, men rose up and said, "America is in the right, and, brothers, you are wrong; you should not thus kill men to steal their land: shame on you!" how should you feel towards such? Nay, in the struggle with England, when our fathers perilled everything but honour, and fought for the unalienable rights of man, you all remember, how in England herself there stood up noble men, and with a voice that was heard above the roar of the populace, and an authority higher than the majesty of the throne, they said, "You do a wrong; you may