Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/212

200 arm, and "tolled the bell" of Liberty Hall in New Bedford. You remember the ghastly efforts at mirth made by some newspapers on the occasion. "The Vigilance Committee knows everything," said one of the kidnappers.

It now became apparent that Boston must furnish the victim. But some of the magistrates of Boston thought the marshal was too clumsy to succeed, and offered him the aid of the city. So, on the night of the third of April, Thomas Sims was kidnapped by two police-officers of Boston, pretending to the by-standers that he was making a disturbance, and to him that he was arrested for theft. He was had into the "court" of the kidnappers the next morning, charged with being a slave and a fugitive.

You will ask. How did it happen that Sims did not resist the ruffians who seized him? He did resist; but he was a rash, heedless young fellow, and had a most unlucky knife, which knocked at a kidnapper's bosom, but could not open the door. He was very imperfectly armed. He underwent what was called a "trial," a trial without "due form of law;" without a jury, and without a judge; before a Slave Act Commissioner, who was to receive twice as much for sacrificing a victim as for acquitting a man! The Slave Commissioner decided that Mr Sims was a slave. I take it, nobody beforehand doubted that the decision would be against the man. The commissioner was to receive five dollars more for such a decision. The law was framed with exquisite subtlety. Five dollars is a small sum, very small; but things are great or little by comparison.

But, in doing justice to this remarkable provision of the bill, let me do no injustice to the commissioner, who decided that a man was not a man, but a thing. I am told that he would not kidnap a man for five dollars; I am told on good authority, that it would be "no temptation to him." I believe it; for he also is "a man and a brother." I have heard good deeds of his doing, and believe that he did them. Total depravity does not get incarnated in any man. It is said that he refused both of the fees in this case; the one for the "examination," and the other for the actual enslaving of Mr Sims. I believe this also: there is historical precedent on record for casting down a larger fee, not only ten, but thirty pieces of silver, likewise "the