Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/293

Rh If Nebraska is free, the tide of immigration will set thither, as once to Ohio, Michigan, Illinois ; as now to Wisconsin, Iowa, Minesota. There will be a rapid increase of freemen, with their consequent wealth, education, ideas, democratic institutions, free States, with consequent political power. All this the South wishes to avoid; for the South—I must say it—is the enemy of the North. She is the foe to Northern industry—to our mines, our manufactures, and our commerce. Thrice, in my day, has she sought to ruin all three. She is the foe to our institutions—to our democratic politics in the State, our democratic culture in the school, our democratic work in the community, our democratic equality in the family, and our democratic religion in the Church. Hear what a great slave organ says of religion:—"The Bible has been vouchsafed to mankind for the purpose of keeping us out of hell-fire and getting us into heaven by the mysteries of faith and the inner life—not to teach us ethnology, government," &c. It is the Editor of the Richmond Examiner who says that, the American Chargé at Turin.

I say the South is the enemy of the North. England is the rival of the North, a powerful rival, often dangerous; sometimes a mean and dishonourable rival. But the South is our foe,—far more dangerous, meaner, and more dishonourable. England keeps treaties ; the South breaks faith. She broke faith individually, and Webster lies there a wreck on the shore of his own estate; breaks it nationally, "and renews the agitation!" I always knew she would; I never trusted her lying breath; I warned my brothers and sisters against it: now she fulfils the expectation. She is the enemy of our material welfare and our spiritual development. Her success is our ruin. Our welfare shames her institutions, her ideas, and is the destruction to her "peculiar institution." She has been beaten in her effort to blot the territory of Oregon with slavery; but she never surrenders. This I honour in the South,—she is always true to her own institution, and her own idea. I honour the man who, on Plymouth Rock, when the sons of the Puritans crouched and shrunk down, and scarce one brave word could get spoken for humanity and the great rights of man which our fathers brought across the sea,—I honour