Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/234

222 children? The eye that mocketh at the justice of its son, and scorneth to obey the mercy of its daughter, the ravens of posterity shall pick it out, and the young eagles eat it up! But there is yet another tribunal: "After the death the judgment!" When he maketh inquisition for the blood of the innocent, what shall the stealers of men reply? Boston merchants, where is your brother, Thomas Sims? Let Cain reply to Christ.

Come, Massachusetts! take thy historic mantle, wrought all over with storied memories of two hundred years, adorned with deeds in liberty’s defence, and rough with broidered radiance from the hands of sainted men; walk backwards, and cover up and hide the naked public shame of Boston, drunk with gain, and lewdly lying in the street. It will not hide the shame. Who can annul a fact? Boston has chronicled her infamy, and on the iron leaf of time,—ages shall read it there! Then let us swear by the glory of our fathers and the infamy of this deed, that we will hate slavery, hate its cause, hate its continuance, and will exterminate it from the land; come up hither as the years go by, and here renew the annual oath, till not a kidnapper is left lurking in the land; yes, till from the Joseph that is sold into Egypt, there comes forth a man to guide his people to the promised land. Out of this "Acorn" a tall oak may grow.

Old mythologies relate, that, when a deed of sin is done, the souls of men who bore a kindred to the deed come forth and aid the work. What a company must have assisted at this sacrament a year ago! What a crowd of ruffians, from the first New England commissioner to the latest dead of Boston murders! Robert Kidd might have come back from his felon-grave at "Execution Dock," to resume his appropriate place, and take command of the "Acorn," and guide her on her pirate-course. Arnold might sing again his glad Te Deum, as on that fatal day in March. What an assembly there would be,—"shapes hot from Tartarus."

But the same mythologies go fabling on, and say that at such a time the blameless, holy souls who made the virtues blossom while they lived, and are themselves the starriest flowers of heaven now, that they return to bless the old