Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/118

106 We cannot have any settled and lasting harmony nntil one or the other of these ideas is cast out of the councils of the nation: so there must be war between them before there can be peace. Hitherto^, the nation has not been clearly aware of the existence of these two adverse principles; or, if aware of their existence, has thought little of their irreconcilable diversity. At the present time, this fact is brought home to our consciousness with great clearness. On the one hand, the friends of freedom set forth the idea of freedom, clearly and distinctly, demanding liberty for each man. This has been done as never before. Even in the Senate of the United States it has been done, and repeatedly during the present session of Congress. On the other hand, the enemies of freedom set forth the idea of slavery as this has not been done in other countries for a long time. Slavery has not been so lauded in any legislative body for many a year, as in the American Senate in 1850. Some of the discussions remind one of the spirit which prevailed in the Roman Senate, 62, when about four hundred slaves were crucified, because their master, Pedanius Secundus, a man of consular dignity, was found murdered in his bed. I mean to say, the same disregard of the welfare of the slaves, the same willingness to sacrifice them—if not their Hves, which are not now at peril, at least their welfare, to the convenience of their masters. Anybody can read the story in Tacitus, and it is worth reading, and instructive, too, at these times.

Here are some of the statements relative to slavery made in the thirty-first Congress of the United States. Hearken to the testimony of the Hon. Mr Badger, of North Carolina: "It is clear that this institution [slavery] not only was not disapproved of, but was expressly recognized, approved, and its continuance sanctioned by the divine lawgiver of the Jews."

"Whether an evil or not, it is not a sin; it is not a violation of the divine law.

"What treatment did it receive from the founder of the gospel dispensation? It was approved, first negatively, because, in the whole New Testament, there is not to be found one single word, either spoken by the Saviour, or by any of the evangelists or apostles, in which that institution is either directly or indi-