Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/302

290 the North. In the Senate, the South has thirty, the North thirty-two. But out of the two and thirty Northern Senators, not twelve men can be found to protest against this wicked Bill. The President is a Northern man; the Cabinet has the majority from the North; the committee of Senators who reported this Bill has a majority of Northern men; its chairman is a Northern man.

The very men who enacted the Fugitive Slave Law turn pale; but what do they do? They do nothing! Where is the North ? Where has it been these fifty years back?—at the feet of the South. Where are the Northern ideas—where is the Northern conscience, the Northern right! Oh, tell me, where? Is it in your Legislature? Listen! See if you can hear any faint breathings of the great Northern heart, that fought the war of Independence. At least, it is in the cities. Listen! In Boston, the "great men" who control Church and State—they have called conventions, have they? prepared resolutions—got them ready—had preliminary meetings—have they? Nothing of it. There is not a mouse stirring amongst them. It is all right, I suppose, in the little towns? There is the Northern heart—a great conscience, that says, '^ Give me liberty or give me death!"—"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God!" Listen to Massachusetts! Can you hear anything? Well, I am a minister. It is in the pulpits of the North, perhaps. Hark! The Bible rustles, as that Southern wind, heavy with slavery, turns over its leaves rich in benedictions; and I hear the old breath come up again—"Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"—"Inasmuch as ye have not done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have not done it unto me." Is that the voice of the pulpit? Oh, no! That is the voice of a Hebrew peasant; a poor woman's son. In his own time, they said "He hath a devil." They hung him as a "blasphemer," an "infidel." That is not the pulpit’s voice. Listen again. Here it is: "I would send back my own mother." That is the answer of the American pulpit. Eight and twenty thousand Protestant ministers! The foremost sect of them all debated, a little while ago, whether it should have a Litany, and on what terms it should admit young men to the communion table—allow them to drink "grocers' wine, "and eat "bakers' bread," on the "Lord's day," in the "Lord's house;" and never