Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/181

168 Such is the aspect of America when the immigrant comes near and looks the nation in the face. What a spectacle that is to put alongside of the other! Europe repudiates bondage—Scandinavia, Holland, France, England. Since Britain emancipated her slaves, the present Emperor of Russia has set free over seven million of slaves that belonged to his own private domain, and established, more than four thousand schools, free for those seven millions of emancipated slaves; and did he not fear an outbreak in a country where "revolution is endemic," he would set free the other five and thirty millions that occupy his soil to-day. And when he extends his territory, he never extends the area of bondage, only the area of what in Russia is freedom.

What a spectacle! A country reaching from sea to sea, from the gulf of tropic heat to Lake Superior's arctic cold, and not an inch of free soil all the way! Three millions of square miles, and not a foot where a fugitive from Slavery can be safe! A democracy, and every eighth man bought and sold!

It is the richest nation in the world, after England; yet, we are so poor that every eighth man is unable to say that he owns the smallest finger on his feeblest hand. So poor are we amid our riches, that every eighth woman is to such an extent a pauper that she does not own the baby she has borne into the world, nor even the baby that she bears under her bosom! Maternity is put up at public vendue, and the auctioneer says, " So much for the mother and so much for the hopes and expectations of another life that is to be born!"

America calls herself "the best educated nation in the world," and yet, in fifteen democratic States, it is a felony by statute to teach a child to know the three letters that spell "God." What a spectacle is that! Nor is that all; but able men, well-educated and well-endowed, come forward to teach us that Slavery is not only no evil, but is right as a principle, and is divine—is a part of the divine revelation which the great God miraculously made to man. What a spectacle!

Four hundred thousand immigrants come here openly every year, and a thousand fugitives flee off by night, escaping from American despotism. They go by the under-