Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/227

Rh He was a terrible tyrant. The liberty of Connecticut fled into the "Great oak at Hartford:"—

"All Connecticut was in the oak." But Massachusetts laid her hands on the commissioner,—he was her governor also,—put him in jail, and sent him home for trial in 1689. William of Orange thought we "served him right." The name of "commissioner" has always had an odious meaning to my mind. I did not think a commissioner at kidnapping men would fare better than Sir Edmund kidnapping charters. I remembered the Writs of Assistance, and thought of James Otis; the Stamp Act, "Adams and Liberty" came to my mind. I did not forget the way our fathers made tea with salt water. I looked up at that tall obelisk; I took courage, and have since reverenced that "monument of piled stones." I could not think Mr Webster wanted the law enforced, spite of his speeches and letters. It was too bad to be true of him. I knew he was a bankrupt politician, in desperate political circumstances, gaming for the Presidency, with the probability of getting the vote of the county of Suffolk, and no more. I knew he was not rich: his past history showed that he would do almost anything for money, which he seems as covetous to get as prodigal to spend. I knew that "a man in falling will catch at a red-hot iron hook." I saw why Mr Webster caught at the Fugitive Slave Bill: it was a great fall from the coveted and imaginary Presidency down to actual private life at Marshfield. It was a great fall. The Slave Act was the red-hot iron hook to a man "falling like Lucifer, never to hope again." The temptation was immense. I could not think he meant to hold on there; he did often relax his grasp, yet only to clutch it the tighter. I did not like to think he had a bad heart. I hoped he would shrink from blasting the head of a single fugitive from that dreadful "thunder" of his speech; that he would not like to execute his own law. Men in Boston said it could not be executed. Even cruel men that I knew shuddered at the thought of kidnapping a man who fills their glasses with wine. The law was not fit to be executed: that was the general opinion in Boston at first. So, when kidnapper Hughes came here for William Craft, even the commissioner