Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/142

130 the idea of freedom and equity and natural justice—that is another thing. The Toryism of American journals, with little scholarship, with no wit, and wisdom in homoeopathic doses; the Toryism of a man who started from nothing, the architect of his own fortune; the Toryism of a republican, of a Yankee, the Toryism of a snob,—it is Toryism reduced to its lowest denomination, made vulgar and contemptible; it is the little end of the tail of Toryism. Let us loathe the unclean thing in the depth of our soul, but let us pity the poor Tory; for he, also, in common with the negro slave, is "A man and a brother."

Then the spirit of trade is often against us. Mr Mann, in his letter, speaks of the opposition made to Wilberforce by the "Guinea merchants" of Liverpool, in his attempts to put an end to the slave-trade. The Corporation of Liverpool spent over ten thousand pounds in defence of a traffic, "the worst the sun ever shone upon." This would seem to be a reflection upon some of the merchants of Boston. It seems, from a statement in the Atlas, that Mr Mann did not intend his remarks to apply to Boston, but to New York and Philadelphia, where mass meetings of merchants had been held, to sustain Mr Clay^s compromise resolutions. Although Mr Mann did not apply his re- marks to Boston, I fear they will apply here as well as to our sister cities. I have yet to learn that the letter of Mr Webster's retainers was any less well adapted to continue and extend slavery, than the resolutions passed at New York and Philadelphia. I wish the insinuations of Mr Mann did not apply here.

One of the signers of the letter to Mr Webster incautiously betrayed, I think, the open secret of the retainers when he said—"I don^t care a damn how many slave States they annex!" This is a secret, because not avowed; open, because generally known, or at least believed, to be the sentiment of a strong party in Massachusetts. I am glad to have it also expressed; now the issue is joined, and we do not fight in the dark.

It has long been suspected that some inhabitants of Boston were engaged in the slave-trade. Not long since, the brig "Lucy Anne," of Boston, was captured on the coast of Africa, with five hundred and forty-seven slaves on board. This vessel was built at Thomaston in 1839;