Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/226

214 ations, and buy and sell men; Boston merchants do not scruple to let their ships for the domestic slave-trade, and carry the child from his mother in Baltimore, to sell him to a planter in Louisiana or Alabama; some of them glory in kidnapping their fellow-citizens in Boston. Most of the slave-ships in the Atlantic are commanded by New England men. A few years ago, one was seized by the British government at Africa, "fail of slaves;" it was owned in Boston, had a "clearance" from our harbour, and left its name on the books of the insurance offices here. The controlling men of Boston have done much to promote, to extend, and to perpetuate slavery. Why not, if the protection of property be the great object of government? why not, if interest is before justice? why not, if the higher law of God is to be sneered at in state and church?

When the Fugitive Slave Bill passed, the six New England States lay fast asleep: Massachusetts slept soundly, her head pillowed on her unsold bales of cotton and of woollen goods, dreaming of "orders from the South." Justice came to waken her, and whisper of the peril of nine thousand citizens; and she started in her sleep, and, being frighted, swore a prayer or two, then slept again. But Boston woke,—sleeping, in her shop, with ears open, and her eye on the market, her hand on her purse, dreaming of goods for sale,—Boston woke broadly up, and fired a hundred guns for joy. Boston, Boston! if thou couldst have known, in that thine hour, the things which belong unto thy peace! But no: they were hidden from her eyes. She had prayed to her god, to money; he granted her the request, but sent leanness into her soul. Yet at first I did not believe that the Fugitive Slave Bill could be executed in Boston; even the firing of the cannons did not convince me; I did not think men bad enough for that. I knew something of wickedness; I knew what love of money could do; I had seen it blind most venerable eyes. I knew Boston was a Tory town; the character of upstart Tories—I thought I knew that: the man just risen from the gutter knocks down him that is rising. But I knew also the ancient history of Boston. I remembered the first commissioner we ever had in New England,—Sir Edmund Andros, sent here by the worst of the Stuarts "to rob us of our charters in North America."