Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/312

300 God; Christianity the true religion; and the worship of God by love; inwardly it is piety, love to God,—outwardly love to man—morality, benevolence, philanthropy. What a spectacle to the eyes of the Scandinavian, the German, the Dutchman, the Irishman, as they view America from afar! What a contrast it seems to Europe. There liberty is ideal; it is a dream; here it is organic, an institution; one of the establishments of the land.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the aspect which America presents to the oppressed victims of European despotism in Church and in State. Far off on the other side of the Atlantic, among the Apennines, on the plains of Germany and in the Sclavonian lands, I have met men to whom America seemed as this fair-proportioned edifice that I have thus sketched out before your eyes. But when they come nearer, behold, half the land is black with slavery. In 1850, out of more than two hundred and forty hundred thousand Americans, thirty-two hundred thousand were slaves—more than an eighth of the population counted as cattle; not as citizens at all. They are only human material, not yet wrought into citizens:—nay, not counted human. They are cattle, property: not counted men, but animals and no more. Manhood must not be extended to them. Listen while I read to you from a Southern print. It was recommended by the Governor of Alabama that the Legislature should pass a law prohibiting the separation of families; whereupon the Richmond Enquirer discourses thus: "This recommendation strikes us as being most unwise and impolitic. If slaves are property, then should they be at the absolute disposal of the master, or be subject only to such legal provisions as are designed for the protection of life or limb. If the relation of master and slave be infringed for one purpose, it would be difficult to fix any limit to the encroachment." They are property, no more, and must be treated as such, and not as men.

Slavery is on the Atlantic slopes of the continent. There are one million six hundred thousand slaves between the Alleghany range and the Atlantic coast. Slavery is in the central basin. There are a million and a half of slaves on the land drained by the Mississippi. Spite of law and constitution, slavery has gone to the Pacific slopes, travelling with the gold-hunter into California. The State whose