Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/85

Rh false to their sense of right. Is our soil degenerate, and have we lost the breed of noble men ?

No, I have not denounced the men who directly made the war, or indirectly edged the people on. Pardon me, thou prostrate Mexico, robbed of more than half thy soil, that America may have more slaves ; thy cities burned, thy children slain, the streets of thy capital trodden by the alien foot, but still smoking with thy children's blood; pardon me if I seem to have forgotten thee ! And you, ye butchered Americans, slain by the vomito, the gallows, and the sword ; you, ye maimed and mutilated men, who shall never again join hands in prayer, never kneel to God once more upon the limbs He made you ; you, ye widows, orphans of these butchered men, far off in that more sunny South, here in our own fair land ; pardon me that I seem to forget your wrongs! And thou, my Country, my own, my loved, my native land, thou child of great ideas and mother of many a noble son, dishonoured now, thy treasure wasted, thy children kiUed or else made murderers, thy peaceful glory gone, thy Government made to pimp and pander for lust of crime; forgive me that I seem over-gentle to the men who did and do the damning deed which wastes thy treasure, spills thy blood, and stains thine honour's sacred fold! And you, ye sons of men everywhere, thou child of God, Mankind, whose latest, fairest hope is planted here in this new world,—forgive me if I seem gentle to thy enemies, and to forget the crime that so dishonours man, and makes this ground a slaughter-yard of men—slain, too, in furtherance of the basest wish! I have no words to teU the pity that I feel for them that did the deed. I only say, "Father, forgive them, for they know full well the sin they do!" A sectarian church could censure a General for holding his candle in a Catholic cathedral ; it was "a candle to the Pope;" yet never dared to blame the war. While we loaded a ship of war with corn, and sent off the Macedonian to Cork, freighted by private bounty to feed the starving Irishman, the State sent her ships to Vera Cruz, in a cause most unholy, to bombard, to smite, and to kill. Father! forgive the State; forgive the church. It was an ignorant State, It was a silent church—a poor, dumb dog, that dared not bark at the wolf who prowls about the fold, but only at the lamb.