Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/297

Rh lectures, lyceums, of Massachusetts; or the ignorance, the ignoble sloth, of Mississippi and Alabama? Ay! it is a question of domestic morality. Shall a man have a right to his own limbs, his liberty, his life? Shall the mother own the babe that is born from her bosom? Shall she be a maid, and keep her innocence and her honour? Shall she be a wife, faithful to him that she loves, or shall she be the instrument of a master’s lust, who has the law to enforce rape and violence? That is the question.

It is a great religious question. Shall the passions and ambition of base men have rule in Nebraska, or the natural law of the most high God? The Unitarian Autumnal Convention at Worcester debated the great question, whether men should have a Litany in the churches. The American Tract Society, the American Missionary Society, have questions of similar magnitude, which come before them. This is not thought a religious question. It is only one which concerns the welfare of millions of men, in hundreds of years yet to come; ay, thousands! The prayer of the Puritan, his self-denial, his trust in God, and love of the right,—they are the best inheritance New England ever got-shall we extend the best institutions of New England to Nebraska; or shall we send there the slave-driver with his whip, with his bloodhound, with his politician and his——! shall I say the next word? I pass it by. That question must be answered in a month; in one short month; ay! perhaps, in a week. In sixty years, Virginia has not doubled her population, while New York has ten times the population of 1790. The most valuable export of Virginia, is her slaves, enriched by the "best blood of the old dominion;" the "Mother of Presidents" is also the great slave-breeder of America. Since she ceased to import bondmen from Africa, her slaves become continually paler in the face; it is the "effect of the climate"—and Democratic institutions. One quarter of her slaves have but one-fourth African blood in their veins; half of her slaves are half white. The Ethiopian is changing his skin. Beneficent "effect of the climate"—and Democratic institutions! By the laws of Virginia, it is a crime punishable by imprisonment, to deny the master’s right to hold his slave; it was lately proposed in her Legislature, to exclude from the jury-