Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/285

Rh whence men cleared for Africa, to take in a cargo of slaves. It is still carried on from New York and Boston—but secretly; then it was openly done. Some of you, whose hoary heads dignify and give a benediction to this audience, may perhaps remember the great Rhode Island slave-trader, who occasionally visited this city, and if your eyes ever saw him, I know that your hearts—then hot with youth—recoiled with indignation at such a sight—a stealer of men! He seemed to be born for a slave-trader; he had a kidnapper’s name on him at his birth. He was called Wolf!

These are the two acts of the Federal government against slavery since the Declaration of Independence. That is all that America has done against slavery, in eight and seventy years. She has multiplied her population tenfold, her revenue fifteenfold, and has abolished the slave-trade, and prohibited slavery in the North- Western territory. Now see what has been done in favour of slavery.

I. This is the first step: in 1787, America inaugurated slavery into the Constitution.

1. She left it in the slave States, as part of the "Republican" Institutions.

2. Next, she provided that the owners of slaves should have their property represented in Congress, five slaves counting the same as three freemen ; and, at this day, in consequence of this iniquitous Act, for the 3,204,000 slaves which she has stolen and unjustly holds, the South has delegates in Congress equal to the representation of almost two millions of freemen in New England.

3. It was agreed, also, that slaves escaping from the service of their masters into a free State, should not thereby recover their freedom, but should be "delivered up."

Here were three concessions made to slavery at first. They were at variance with the programme of principles in the Declaration; the programme of purpose in the Constitution's preamble. They were known to be at variance with the religion of Jesus in the New Testament; at variance with the laws of Nature and of God. The Convention was ashamed of the whole thing, and added hypocrisy to its crime: it did not dare mention the word slave. That