Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/214

202 conduct, and I begged him to desist; a poor fellow clutched my arm, and said, "For God’s sake don’t scold us: we feel worse than you do!" But with the money of Boston against them, the leading clergy defending the crime against human nature, the city government using its brief authority, squandering the treasure of Boston and its intoxicating drink for the same purpose, what could a police officer or a watchman do but obey orders? They did it most unwillingly and against their conscience.

You remember the conduct of the courts of Massachusetts; the Supreme Court seemed to love the chains around the Court-house; for one by one the judges bowed and stooped and bent and cringed and curled and crouched down, and crawled under the chains. Who judges justly must himself be free. What could you expect of a court sitting behind chains; of judges crawling under them to go to their own place?—the same that you found. It was a very appropriate spectacle,—the Southern chain on the neck of the Massachusetts Court. If the Bay State were to send a man into bondage, it was proper that the Courthouse should be in chains, and the judges should go under.

You remember the "soldiers" called out, the celebrated "Sims Brigade," liquored at Court Square and lodged at Faneuil Hall. Do you remember when soldiers were quartered in that place before? It was in 1768, when hireling "regulars" came, slaves themselves, and sent by the British Ministry to "make slaves of us all;" to sheathe their swords "in the bowels of their countrymen" That was a sight for the eyes of John Hancock,—the "Sims Brigade," in Faneuil Hall, called out to aid a Slave Act Commissioner in his attempt to kidnap one of his fellow-citizens! A man by the name of Samuel Adams drilled the police in the street. Samuel Adams of the old time left no children. We have lost the true names of men; only Philadelphia keeps one.

You remember the looks of men in the streets, the crowds that filled up Court Square. Men came in from the country,—came a hundred miles to look on; some of them had fathers who fought at Lexington and Bunker Hill. They remembered the old times, when, the day after the battle of Lexington, a hundred and fifty volunteers, with the fire-