Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/216

204 conducted him, weeping as lie went, towards the water-side; they passed under the eaves of the old State-house, which had rocked with the eloquence of James Otis, and shaken beneath the manly tread of both the Adamses, whom the cannon at the door could not terrify, and whose steps awakened the nation. They took him over the spot where, eighty-one years before, the ground had drunk in the African blood of Christopher Attucks, shed by white men on the fifth of March; brother's blood which did not cry in vain. They took him by the spot where the citizens of Massachusetts—some of their descendants were again at the place—scattered the taxed tea of Great Britain to the waters and the winds; they put him on board the "Acorn," owned by a merchant of Boston, who, once before, had kidnapped a man on his own account, and sent him off to the perdition of slavery, without even the help of a commissioner; a merchant to whom it is "immaterial what his children may say of him!"

"And this is Massachusetts liberty!" said the victim of the avarice of Boston. No, Thomas Sims, that was not "Massachusetts liberty;" it was all the liberty which the government of Massachusetts wished you to have; it was the liberty which the city government presented you; it was the liberty which Daniel Webster designed for you. The people of Massachusetts still believe that "all men are born free and equal," and "have natural, essential, and unalienable rights" "of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties," "of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness." Even the people of Boston believe that; but certain politicians and merchants, to whom it is "immaterial what their children say" of them,—they wished you to be a slave, and it was they who kidnapped you.

Some of you remember the religious meeting held on the spot, as this new "missionary" went abroad to a heathen land; the prayer put up to Him who made of one blood all nations of the earth; the hymns sung. They sung then, who never sung before, their "Missionary Hymn:"

On the spot where the British soldiers slew Christopher