Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/136

124 against slavery." Still he would not now pass the proviso to exclude slavery. It "would unite the South as one man, and if it did not actually rend the Union asunder, would create an alienation and irritation in that quarter of the country, which would render the Union hardly worth preserving." "Is there not ample reason for an abatement of the Northern tone, for a forbearance of Northern urgency upon this subject, without the imputation of tergiversation and treachery?"

Here I am reminded of a remarkable sentence in Mr Webster’s speech at Marshfield, in relation to the Northern men who helped to annex Texas. Here it is:—

"For my part, I think that Dough-faces is an epithet not sufficiently reproachful. Now, I think such persons are dough-faces, dough-heads, and dough-souls, that they are all dough; that the coarsest potter may mould them at pleasure to vessels of honour or dishonour, but most readily to vessels of dishonour."

The Representative from Boston, in the year 1850, has small objection to the extension of slave soil. Hearken to his words:—

"I can never put the question of extending slave soil on the same footing with one of directly increasing slavery and multiplying slaves. If a positive issue could ever again be made up for our decision, whether human beings, few or many, of whatever race, complexion, or condition, should be freshly subjected to a system of hereditary bondage, and be changed from freemen into slaves, I can conceive that no bonds of union, no ties of interest, no cords of sympathy, no consideration of past glory, present welfare, or future grandeur, should be suffered to interfere, for an instant, with our resolute and unceasing resistance to a measure so iniquitous and abominable. There would be a clear, unquestionable moral element in such an issue, which would admit of no compromise, no concession, no forbearance whatever. . . . A million of swords would leap from their scabbards to assert it, and the Union itself would be shivered like a Prince Rupert's dress in the shock.

"But, Sir, the question whether the institution of slavery, as it already exists, shall be permitted to extend itself over a hundred or a hundred thousand more square miles than it now occupies, is a different question. . . It is not, in my judgment, such an issue that conscientious and religious men may not be free to acquiesce in whatever decision may be arrived at by the consti-