Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/196

184 other "seventeenth of June," if the Ministry persisted in their course.

On the fifteenth of May, 1770, she again issued similar instructions. "James I.," says the letter of instruction, "more than once laid down, that, as it was atheism and blasphemy in a creature to dispute what the Deity may do, so it is presumptuous and sedition in a subject to dispute what a king may do in the height of his powers." "Good Christians," said he, "will be content with God's will revealed in his word, and good subjects will rest in the king's will revealed in Ms law." That was the "No Higher Law Doctrine" of the time. See how it went down at Boston in 1770. "Surely," said the people of Boston, in town-meeting assembled, "nothing except the ineffable contempt of the reigning monarch diverted that indignant vengeance which would otherwise have made his illustrious throne to tremble, and hurled the royal diadem from his forfeit head." Such was the feeling of Boston towards a government which flouted at the eternal law of God.

The people claimed that law was on their side ; even Sir Henry Finch having said, in the time of Charles I., "The king's prerogative stretcheth not to the doing of any wrong." But, Boston said, "Had the express letter of the law been less favourable, and were it possible to ransack up any absurd, obsolete notions which might have seemed calculated to propagate slavish doctrines, we should by no means have been influenced to forego our birthright;" for "mankind will not be reasoned out of their feelings of humanity." "We remind you, that the further nations recede and give way to the gigantic strides of any powerful despot, the more rapidly will the fiend advance to spread wide desolation." "It is now no time to halt between two opinions." "We enjoin you at all hazards to deport… like the faithful representatives of a free-born, awakened, and determined people, who, being impregnated with the spirit of liberty in conception, and nurtured in the principles of freedom from their infancy, are resolved to breathe the same celestial ether, till summoned to resign the heavenly flame by that omnipotent God who gave it." That was the language of Boston in 1770.

True there were men who took the other side; some of