Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/148

Rh Slavery;" "Domestic Slavery Is not only natural and necessary, but a great blessing." "Free society is a sad and signal failure;" "it does well enough in a new country." "Free society has become diseased by abolishing Slavery. It can only be restored to pristine health, happiness, and prosperity by re-instituting Slavery." "Slavery may be administered under a new name." "Free society is a monstrosity. Like all monsters it will be short-lived. We date and do vindicate Slavery in the abstract." The negro " needs a master to protect and govern him ; so do the ignorant poor in old countries." "There is no moral wrong in Slavery;" it "is the normal condition of human society." "The benefits and advantages which so far have resulted from this institution we take as lights to guide us to the brighter truths of its future history." "We belong to that society of which Slavery is the distinguishing element, and we are not ashamed of it. We find it marked by every evidence of Divine approval."

These two ideas are now fairly on foot. They are hostile; they are both mutually invasive and destructive. They are in exact opposition to each other, and the nation which embodies these two is not a figure of equilibrium. As both are active forces in the minds of men, and as each idea tends to become a fact—a universal and exclusive fact—as men with these ideas organize into parties as a means to make their idea into a fact, it follows that there must not only be strife amongst philosophical men about these antagonistic principles and ideas, but a strife of practical men about corresponding facts and measures. So the quarrel, if not otherwise ended, will pass from words to what seems more serious ; and one will overcome the other.

So long as these two ideas exist in the nation as two political forces there is no national unity of idea, of course, no unity of action. For there is no centre of gravity common to Freedom and Slavery. They will not compose an equilibrious figure. You may cry, "Peace! peace!"