Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/86

74 Yet ye leaders of the land, know this,—that the blood of thirty thousand men cries out of the ground against you. Be it your folly or your crime, still cries the voice, "Where is thy brother?" That thirty thousand—in the name of humanity I ask, "Where are they?" In the name of justice I answer, "You slew them!"

It was not the people who made this war. They have often enough done a foolish thing. But it was not they who did this wrong. It was they who led the people; it was demagogues that did it. Whig demagogues and demagogues of the democrats; men that flatter the ignorance, the folly, or the sin of the people, that they might satisfy their own base purposes. In May, 1846, if the facts of the case could have been stated to the voters, and the question put to the whole mass of the people," Shall we go down and fight Mexico, spending two hundred million of dollars, maiming four and twenty thousand men, and butchering thirty thousand; shall we rob her of half her territory?"—the lowest and most miserable part of the nation would have said as they did say, "Yes;" the demagogues of the nation would have said as they did say, "Yes;" perhaps a majority of the men of the South would have said so, for the humanity of the nation lies not there; but if it had been brought to the great mass of the people at the North,—whose industry and skill so increase the national wealth, whose intelligence and morals have given the nation its character abroad,—then they, the great majority of the land, would have said, "No. We will have no war! If we want more land, we will buy it in the open market, and pay for it honestly. But we are not thieves, nor murderers, thank God, and will not butcher a nation to make a slave-field out of her soil." The people would not have made this war.

Well, we have got a new territory, enough to make one hundred States of the size of Massachusetts. That is not all. We have beaten the armies of Mexico, destroyed the little strength she had left, the little self-respect, else she would not so have yielded and given up half her soil for a few miserable dollars. Soon we shall take the rest of her possessions. How can Mexico hold them now—weakened, humiliated, divided worse than ever within herself. Before