Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/70

58 men in bondage. Not long since a clergyman of the South, who boasted that he owned thirty slaves, and "would wade knee-deep in blood" to defend his right to them, was received by the Northern churches, and, as himself has said, "invited on every hand to pulpits," with no rebuke, but only welcome, from the large and powerful denomination to which he belonged. He returned, as he says, "leaving the hot-beds of abolitionism, without having been once foiled. God be praised for sustaining me. I give Him all the glory, for without Him I am. nothing." Even in Boston there is a church of the same denomination, in which no coloured man is allowed to purchase a seat. Coloured men at the North are excluded from colleges and high schools, from theological seminaries and from respectable churches—even from the town hall and the ballot. Doctrines and outward deeds are but signs of sentiments and ideas which rule the life.

The sons of the North, when they settle in the South, as merchants, ministers, lawyers, planters, when they stand in the congress of the nation, when they fill important offices in the federal government—what testimony do they bear to the declaration that "all men are created equal"? I should blush to refresh your memories with Northern shame.

If the clergy find slavery "ordained" in the Bible, and established amongst the "Christian institutions," did not the laymen first find it in the Bible of Rousseau? Important men at the South have taught that slavery is "a moral and humane institution, productive of the greatest political and social advantages;" "the corner-stone of our republican edifice:" "It is the most sure and stable edifice for free institutions in the world." The doctrine that "all men are created equal" in rights is declared "ridiculously absurd." Democratic Mr Calhoun declares that where "common labour is performed by members of the political community a dangerous element is obviously introduced into the body politic." A pagan had taught it two thousand years before.

Thus powerful is the influence of slavery in its action on the intellectual, moral, and religious development of the people at the South; thus subtly does it steal upon the North. As one of your most illustrious citizens, old but