Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/225

Rh Massachusetts says, "I would not harbour a fugitive." A clergyman says, I would send back my own mother! If the great object of government is the protection of property, why should a governor personally harbour a fugitive, or officially protect nine thousand coloured men? Why should not a clergyman send to slavery his mother, to save the Union, or to save a bank, or to gain a chaplaincy in the navy? But, if this be so, then what a mistake it was in Jesus of Nazareth to say, "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things that he possesseth!" Verily the meat is more than the life; the body less than raiment! Christ was mistaken in his "beware of covetousness:" he should have said, "Beware of philanthropy; drive off a fugitive; send back your mother to bondage. Blessed are the kidnappers, for they shall be called the children of God."

Even Thomas Paine had a Christianity which would choke at the infidelity and practical atheism taught in the blessed name of Jesus in the Boston churches of commerce to-day. The gospel relates that Jesus laid his hands on men to bless them—on the deaf, and they heard; on the dumb, and they spoke; on the blind, and they saw; on the lame, and they walked; on the maimed and the sick, and they were whole. But Christian Boston lays its hand on a whole and free man, and straightway he owns no eyes, no ears, no tongue, no hands, no foot: he is a slave!

In 1761, the Massachusetts of John Hancock would not pay three pence duty on a pound of tea, to have all the protection of the British Crown: ninety years later, the Boston of Daniel Webster, to secure the trade of the South, and a dim, delusive hope of a protective tariff, will pay any tax in men. It is no new thing for her citizens to be imprisoned at Charleston and New Orleans, because they are black. What merchant cares? It does not interrupt trade. Five citizens of Massachusetts have just been sent into bondage by a Southern State. Of what consequence is that to the politicians of the commonwealth? Our property is worth six hundred million dollars. But how much is a man worth less than a dollar! The penny wisdom of "Poor Richard" is the great gospel to the city which cradled the benevolence of Franklin.

Boston capitalists do not hesitate to own Southern plant-