Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/105

92 said that Albert J. Tirrell was invited to move in that leprous gang, and declined! "The wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted!" The publican who fed those locusts of Southern tyranny, said that out of the sixty-five, there was but one respectable man, and he kept aloof from all the rest. I have seen courts of Justice in England, Holland, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland, and I have seen just such men. But they were always in the dock, not the servants of the Court. The Marshal was right; "the statute is so cruel and wicked that it should not be executed by good men." He chose fit tools for fitting work. I do not think Herod sent the guardian of orphans to massacre the innocents of Bethlehem. I doubt that Pontius Pilate employed a Judge of Probate to crucify Jesus between two thieves!

There was an unfairness about the offer to sell Mr. Burns. I do not know whose fault that was. His claimant pretended that he would sell; but when the money was tendered, his agents delayed, equivocated, wore out the time, till it was Sunday; and the deed could not legally be done. It was the man, and not the money they wanted. He offered to sell the man for twelve hundred dollars. The price was exorbitant, he would not bring eight hundred at Alexandria.