Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/183

170 comes from abroad numbers friends of freedom—except the Catholic. Those who call themselves infidels from Germany do not range on the slave-holder's side. I have known some men who take the ghastly and dreadful name of Atheists; but they said, "there is a law higher than the slave-holder's statute." But do you know a Catholic priest that is opposed to Slavery? I wish I did. There are good things in the Catholic faith—the Protestants have not wholly outgrown it—not yet. I wish I could hear of a single Catholic priest of any eminence who ever cared anything for the freedom of the most oppressed men that are here in America. I have heard of none.

Look a little closer. The great interests prized most in America are commerce and politics. The great cities are the head-quarters of these, too. Agriculture and the mechanic arts, they are spread abroad all over the country. Commerce and politics predominate in the cities. New York is the great metropolis of commerce ; Washington of politics. What have been the views of American commerce in respect to freedom? It has been against it, I am sorry to say so.

In Europe commerce is the ally of freedom, and has been so far back that the memory of man runs not to the contrary. In America, the great commercial centres, ever since the Revolution, have been hostile to freedom. In Massachusetts we have a few rich men friendly to freedom—they are very few ; the greater part of even Massachusetts capital goes towards bondage—not towards freedom. In general, the great men of commerce are hostile to it. They want first money, next money, and money last of all; fairly if we can get it—if not, unfairly. Hence the commercial cities are the head-quarters of Slavery; all the mercantile capitols execute the Fugitive Slave Bill—Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Buffalo, Cincinnati—only small towns repudiate man-stealing. The Northern capitalists lend money and take slaves as collateral; they are good security: you can realize on it any day. The Northern merchant takes slaves into his ships as merchandise. It pays very well. If you take them on a foreign voyage, it is "piracy;" but taken coastwise, the domestic slave trade is a legal traffic. In 1852, a ship called the "Edward Everett" made two voyages from Baltimore to