Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/319

Rh Grier hold their court. Two great official kidnappers of the middle States hold their slave-court in the very building where the Declaration of Independence was decreed, was signed, and thence published to the world. What a spectacle it is! We thought, a little while ago, that Judge Jeffries was a historical fiction; that Scroggs was impossible; we did not think such a thing could exist. Jeffries is repeated in Philadelphia; Scroggs is brought back to life in New York and Boston and various Northern towns. What a spectacle is that for the Swiss, the German, and the Scandinavian who come here!

Do these immigrants love American slavery? The German, the Swiss, the Scandinavian hate it. I am sorry to say there is one class of men that come here who love it; it is the class most of all sinned against at home. When the Irishman reaches America, he takes ground against the African. I know there are exceptions, and I would go far to honour them; but the Irish, as a body, oppose the emancipation of the blacks as a body. Every sect that comes from abroad numbers friends of freedom—except the Catholic. Those who call themselves infidels from Germany do not range on the slaveholder's side. I have known some men who take the ghastly and dreadful name of Atheist; but they said "there is a law higher than the slaveholder's statute." But do you know a Catholic priest who is opposed to slavery? I wish I did. There are good things in the Catholic faith—the Protestants have not wholly outgrown it yet. But I wish I could hear of a single Catholic priest of any eminence who ever cared anything for the freedom of the most oppressed men in America. I have heard of none. Look a little closer. The great interests prized most in America are commerce and politics. The great cities are the head-quarters of these. Agriculture and the mechanic arts are spread abroad all over the country. Commerce and politics predominate in the cities. New York is the metropolis of commerce; Washington of politics.

What have been the views of American commerce in respect to freedom? It has been against it; I am sorry to say so. In Europe commerce is the ally of freedom, and has been so far back that the memory of man runs not to the contrary. In America, the great commercial centres,