Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/233

Rh wilderness, than let her riches stand between us and our fellow-man. Thy money perish, if it brutalize thy heart!

I wish I could believe the motives of men were good in this; that they really thought the nation was in peril. But no; it cannot be. It was not the love of country which kept the "compromises of the Constitution" and made the Fugitive Slave Bill. I pity the politicians who made this wicked law, made it in the madness of their pride. I pity that son of New England, who, against his nature, against his early history, drew his sword to sheathe it in the bowels of his brother-man. The melancholiest spectacle in all this land, self-despoiled of the lustre which would have cast a glory on his tomb, and sent his name a watchword to many an age,—now he is the companion of kidnappers, and a proverb amongst honourable men, with a certainty of leaving a name to be hissed at by mankind.

I pity the kidnappers, the poor tools of men almost as base. I would not hurt a hair of their heads; but I would take the thunder of the moral world, and dash its bolted lighting on this crime of stealing men, till the name of kidnapping should be like Sodom and Gomorrah. It is piracy to steal a man in Guinea; what is it to do this in Boston?

I pity the merchants who, for their trade, were glad to steal their countrymen; I wish them only good. Debate in yonder hall has shown how little of humanity there is in the trade of Boston. She looks on all the horrors which intemperance has wrought, and daily deals in every street; she scrutinizes the jails,—they are filled by rum; she looks into the alms-houses, crowded full by rum; she walks her streets, and sees the perishing classes fall, mowed down by rum; she enters the parlours of wealthy men, looks into the bridal chamber, and meets death: the ghosts of the slain are there,—men slain by rum. She knows it all, yet says, "There is an interest at stake!"—the interest of rum; let man give way! Boston does this to-day. Last year she stole a man; her merchants stole a man! The sacrifice of man to money, when shall it have an end? I pity those merchants who honour money more than man. Their gold is cankered, and their soul is brass,—is rusted brass. They must come up before the posterity which they affect to scorn. What voice can plead for them before their own