Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/165

152 and not dare listen to the proffered reply; easy to bark at justice, and howl at the unalienable rights of man ; easy to yelp out the vengeance of a corrupt administration of slave-hunters upon all who love the Higher Law of God; but He himself has so fashioned the hearts of men that we instinctively hate all tyranny, all oppression, all wrong; and the hand of history brands ineffaceable disgrace on the brass foreheads of all such as enact iniquity by statute, and execute wickedness as law. The memory of the wicked shall rot. Scroggs and Jeffreys also got their appointment as pay for their service and their character—fitting bloodhounds for a fitting king. For near two hundred years their names have been a stench in the face of the Anglo-Saxon tribe. Others as unscrupulous may take warning by their fate. Thus has Slavery debauched the Federal Courts.

VII. Alas me! Slavery has not ended yet its long career of sin. Its corruption is seven-fold. It debauches the elected offices of our City, and even our State. In the Sims time of 1851, the laws of Massachusetts were violated nine days running, and the Free Soil Governor sat in the State House as idle as a feather in his chair. In the wicked week of 1854, the Whig Governor sat in the seat of his predecessor; Massachusetts was one of the inferior counties of Virginia, and a slave-hunter had eminent domain over the birthplace of Franklin and the burial-place of Hancock! Nay, against our own laws the Free Soil Mayor put the neck of Boston in the hands of a "train-band captain"—the people "wondering much to see how he did ride! "Boston was a suburb of Alexandria; the mayor a slave-catcher for our masters at the South! You and I were only fellow-slaves!

All this looks as if Slavery was to triumph over Freedom. But even this is not the end. Slavery has privately emptied her seven vials of wrath upon the nation—committing seven debaucheries of human safeguards of our natural rights. That is not enough—there are other seven to come. This Apocalyptic Dragon, grown black with long-continued deeds of shame and death, now meditates five further steps of crime. Here is the programme of the next attempt—a new political tragedy in five acts.