Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/113

100 So things went at Allobrogian Vienna on the 2nd of June, sixteen hundred and seventy-six years ago last Friday. The murder of those Christians was just as "legal" as the rendition of Anthony Burns. It would be curious to know what the "respectable" men of the town said thereupon: to see the list of fifteen hundred citizens volunteering their aid; to read the letter of nine hundred and eighty-seven men thanking the commissioner for touching their conscience. The preaching of the priests must have been edifying:—"I would drive a Christian away from my own door! I would murder my own mother!"

Doubtless some men said, "The statute which commands the torturous murder of men, women, and children, for no crime but piety, if constitutional, is wicked and cruel." And doubtless some heathen "Chief-Justice Parker" choked down the rising conscience of mankind, and answered, "Whether the statute is a harsh one or not, it is not for us to determine." No! it is not for the bloodhound to ask whether the victim he rends to quivering fragments is a sinner or a saint; the bloodhound is to bite, and not consider; he has teeth, not conscience. The Fugitive Slave Bill Commissioner is not to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with his God; he is to kidnap men in Boston at ten dollars a head! The pagan murder of Christians at Vienna under Aurelian, did not differ much from the Christian kidnapping of Mr. Burns in Boston under Pierce. But, alas for these times—it is not recorded of the Romans that any heathen Judge of Probate came forward and volunteered to butcher the widows arid orphans of the early Church! Then the tormentor worshipped Mars and Bellona; now he sits in the Church of Jesus Christ. Boston chose a fit day to consummate her second kidnapping. St. Pothinus was a Christian preacher, so was Anthony Burns—"a minister of the Baptist denomination," "regularly ordained!" Commissioner Loring could not have done better than select this time to execute his "decision." On St. Pothinus's day, let Anthony Burns be led to a martyrdom more atrocious! The African