Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/338

326 …We can not only preserve domestic servitude, but we can defy the power of the world." … "The time will come that all the islands and regions suited to African slavery, between us and Brazil, will fall under the control of these two powers…. In a few years there will be no investment for the $200,000,000 … so profitable … as the development … of the tropical regions " [that is, as the African slave-trade] … "If the slave-holding race in these States are but true to themselves, they have a great destiny before them."

Now, gentlemen and ladies, who is to blame that things have come to such a pass as this? The South and the North; but the North much more than the South, very much more. Gentlemen, we let Gog get upon the ark; we took pay for his passage. Our most prominent men in Church and State have sworn allegiance to Gog. But this is not always to last; there is a day after to-day—a behind each to-day.

The North should have fought slavery at the adoption of the Constitution, and at every step since; after the battle was lost then, we should have resisted each successive step of the slave power. But we have yielded—yielded continually. We made no fight over the annexation of slave territory, the admission of slave States. We ought to have rent the Union into the primitive townships sooner than consent to the Fugitive Slave Bill. But as we failed to fight manfully then, I never thought the North would rally on the Missouri Compromise line. I rejoice at the display of indignation I witness here and elsewhere. For once New York appears more moral than Boston. I thank you for it. A meeting is called in the Park to-morrow. It is high time; though I doubt that the North will yet rally and defend even the line drawn in 1820. But there are two lines of defence where the nation will pause, I think—the seizure and occupation of Cuba, with its war so destructive to Northern ships; and the restoration of the African slave-trade. The slave-breeding States, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, will oppose the last; for if the Gulf States and the future tropical territories can import Africans at one hundred dollars a head, depend upon it, that will spoil the market for the slave-breeders of America. And, gentlemen, if Virginia cannot