Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/182

Rh ground railroad, shut up in boxes smaller than a coffin, or, as lately happened, riding through the storms of ocean in the fore-chains of a packet ship, wet by every dash of the sea, and frozen by the winter's wind. Far off in the South the spirit of freedom came in the Northern blast to the poor man, and said to him, "It is better to enter into freedom halt and maimed rather than, haying two hands and two feet, to continue in bondage for ever; "and he puts himself in the fore-chains of a packet ship, and, half frozen, with the loss of two of his limbs, he gets to the North, and thanks God that he has got one hand and one foot to enter into freedom with. Alas! he is carried back, halt and maimed, to die; then he goes from bondage to that other Commonwealth, where even the American slave is free from his master, and democrats "cease from troubling."

America translates the Bible—I am glad of it, and would give my mite thereto—into a hundred and forty-seven different tongues, and sends missionaries all over the world; and here at home are three and a quarter millions of American men who have no Bible, whose only missionary is the overseer.

In the Hall of Independence, Judge Kane and Judge Grier hold their court. Two great official kidnappers of the middle States hold their slave-court in the very building where the Declaration of Independence was decreed, was signed, and thence published to the world. What a spectacle it is! We thought, a little while ago, that Judge Jeffries was an historical fiction; that Scroggs was impossible. We did not think such a thing could exist. Jeffries is repeated in Philadelphia; Scroggs is brought back to life in various Northern towns. What a spectacle is that for the Swiss, the German, and the Scandinavian who come here!

Do these immigrants love American Slavery? The German, the Swiss, the Scandinavian hate it. I am sorry to say there is one class of men that come here who love it; it is the class most of all sinned against at home. When the Irishman comes to America, he takes ground against the African. I know there are exceptions, and I would go far to honour them; but the Irish, as a body, oppose the emancipation of the blacks as a body. Every sect that