Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/84

70 more, and make him a king over all the land. But as you only burnt, robbed, and murdered on so small a scale, and without the command of the President or the Congress, we shall hang you by the neck. Our Governor ordered these men to go and bum and rob and kill; now he orders you to be hanged, and you must not ask any more questions, for the hour is already come."

To make the whole more perfect—suppose a native of Loo-Choo, converted to Christianity by your missionaries in his native land, had come hither to have "the way of God" "expounded unto him more perfectly," that he might see how these Christians love one another. Suppose he should be witness to a scene like this! To men who know the facts of war, the wickedness of this particular invasion and its wide-extending consequences, I fear that my words will seem poor and cold and tame. I have purposely mastered my emotion, telling only my thought. I have uttered no denunciation against the men who caused this destruction of treasure, this massacre of men, this awful degradation of the moral sense. The respectable men of Boston—"the men of property and standing" all over the State, the men that commonly control the politics of New England—tell you that they dislike the war. But they re-elect the men who made it. Has a single man in all New England lost his seat in any office because he favoured the war? Not a man. Have you ever known a northern merchant who would not let his ship for the war, because the war was wicked and he a Christian? Have you ever known a northern manufacturer who would not sell a kernel of powder, nor a cannon-ball, nor a coat, nor a shirt for the war ? Have you ever known a capitalist, a man who lives by letting money, refuse to lend money for the war because the war was wicked? Not a merchant, not a manufacturer, not a capitalist. A little money—it can buy up whole hosts of men. Virginia sells her negroes; what does New England sell? There was once a man in Boston, a rich man too, not a very great man, only a good one who loved his country, and there was another poor man here, in the times that tried men's souls; but there was not money enough in all England, not enough promise of honours, to make Hancock and Adams