Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/197

Rh them from high and honourable convictions; others from sordid motives; some from native bigotry and meanness they could not help. But the mass of the people went for the rights of the people. It was not a mere matter of dollars and cents that stirred the men of Massachusetts then. True, the people had always been thrifty, and looked well to the "things of this world." But threepence duty on a pound of tea, six farthings on a gallon of molasses, was not very burdensome to a people that had a school before there was any four-footed beast above a swine in the colony—a people that once taxed themselves thirteen shillings and eight pence in a pound of income! It was the principle they looked at. They would not have paid three barley-corns on a hogshead of sugar, and admit the right of Parliament to levy the tax. This same spirit extended to the other colonies: Virginia and Massachusetts stood side by side; New York with Boston.

It was a dark day for New England when the Stamp Act became a law; but it was a much darker day when the Fugitive Slave Bill passed the Congress of the United States. The Acts of Trade and the Stamp Act were the work of foreign hands, of the ministers of England, not America. A traitor of New Hampshire was thought to have originated the Stamp Act; but even he did not make a speech in its favour. The author of the Act was never within three thousand miles of Boston. But the Fugitive Slave Bill was the work of Americans; it had its great support from another native of New Hampshire; it got the vote of the member for Boston, who faithfully represented the money which sent him there; though, God be thanked, not the men! When the Stamp Act came to be executed in Boston, the ships hung their flags at half-mast; the shops were shut, the bells were tolled; ship, shop, and church all joining in a solidarity of affliction, in one unanimous lament. But, when the Fugitive Slave Bill came to Boston, the merchants and politicians of the city fired a hundred guns at noonday, in token of their joy! How times have changed! In 1765, when Huske of New Hampshire favoured the Stamp Act, and Oliver of Boston accepted the office of distributor of stamps, the people hung their busts in effigy on Liberty-tree; Oliver must ignominiously forswear his office. After