Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/209

Rh jury, it is still the great safeguard of the people; spite of preaching, there is some virtue left; and, though a minister would send back his mother into slavery, a Massachusetts jury will not a send a man to jail for such an act as that.

The case of Shadrach was not the last. Kidnappers came and kidnappers went: for a long time they got no spoil. I need not tell, must not tell, how they were evaded, or what help came, always in season. The Vigilance Committee did not sleep; it was in "permanent session" much of the whole winter; its eyes were in every place, beholding the evil and the good. The government at Washington did not like this state of things, and stimulated the proper persons, as the keeper of a menagerie in private stirs up the hyenas and the cougars and the wolves, from a safe distance. There was a talk of "Sherman’s flying-artillery" alighting at Boston; but it flew over and settled at Newport, I think. Next there was to be a "garrison of soldiers" to enforce the law; but the men in buckram did not appear. Then a "seventy-four gun ship was coming," to bombard Southack street, I suppose. Still it was determined that the "Union" was not quite safe; it was in danger of a "dissolution;" the "medicine-men" of politics and commerce looked grave. True, the Union had been "saved" again and again, till her "salvation" was a weariness; she "was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse." All winter long, the Union was reported as in a chronic spasm of dissolution." So the "medicine-men" prescribed: A man kidnapped in Massachusetts, to be taken at the South; with one scruple of lawyer, and two scruples of clergyman. That would set the Union on her legs. Boston was to furnish all this medicine.

It was long before this city could furnish a kidnapped man. The Vigilance Committee parried the blow aimed at the neck of the fugitive. The country was on our side,—gave us money, help, men when needed. The guardians of Boston could not bear the taunt that she had not sent back a slave. New York had been before her; the "City of Brotherly Love," the home of Penn and Franklin, had assisted in kidnapping; it went on vigorously under the arm of a judge who appropriately bears the name of the great first murderer. No judge could be better entitled; Kane and kidnapping are names conjuring well. Should