Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/117

104 family of men, till Harvard College had that solitary shame* Is not that enough? Now she is the first to have a professor that kidnaps men. "The Athens of America" famished both.

I can understand how a man commits a crime of passion, or covetousness, or rage,—nay, of revenge, or of ambition. But for a man in Boston, with no passion, no covetousness, no rage, with no ambition nor revenge, to steal a poor negro, to send him into bondage,—I cannot comprehend the &ct. I can understand the consciousness of a lion, not a kidnapper's heart. Once Mr. Loring defined a lawyer to be "a human agent for effecting a human purpose by human means." Here, and now, the Commissioner seems an inhuman agent for effecting an inhuman purpose by inhuman means.

I belong to a school that reverences the infinite perfection of God,—if, indeed, there be such a school. I believe, also, in the nobleness of man; but last week my faith was somewhat sorely tried. As I looked at that miscreant crew, the kidnapper's bodyguard, and read in their feces the record and the prophecy of many a crime,

I could explain and not despair. They were tools, not agents. But as I looked into the Commissioner's face, mild and amiable, a face I have respected, not without seeming cause ; as I remembered his breeding and his culture, his social position, his membership of a Christian church, and then thought of the crime he was committing against humanity, with no temptation, I asked myself, can this be true? Is man thus noble, made in the dear image of the father God? Is my philosophy a dream : or are these facts lie? But there is another court. The Empsons and the Dudleys have been summoned there before; Jeffreys and Scroggs, the Kanes, and the Curtises, and the Lorings, must one day travel the same imwelcome road. Imagine the scene after man's mythologic way. "Edward, where is thy brother Anthony?" "I know not; am I my brother's keeper. Lord?" "Edward, where is thy brother Anthony?" "Oh, Lord, he was friendless, and so I