Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/191

178 how great it is. I will read it to you presently. Things are great and small by comparison. I am quoting again, from the Richmond Examiner (March 24th, 1854). "Virginia in this confederacy is the impersonation of the well-born, well-educated, well-bred aristocrat" [well-born, while the children of JeflFerson and the only children of Madison are a "connecting link between the human and brute creation;" well-educated, with 21 per cent, of her white adults unable to read the vote they cast against the unalienable rights of man; well-bred, when her great product for exportation is—the children of her own loins! Slavery is a "patriarchal institution;" the Democratic Abrahams of Virginia do not offer up their Isaacs to the Lord; that would be a sacrifice, they only sell them. So]; "she looks down from her elevated pedestal upon her parvenu, ignorant, mendacious Yankee vilifiers, as coldly and calmly as a marble statue; occasionally she condescends to recognise the existence of her adversaries at the very moment when she crushes them. But she does it without anger, and with no more hatred of them than the gardener feels towards the insects which he finds it necessary occasionally to destroy." "She feels that she is the sword and buckler of the South—that it is her influence which has so frequently defeated and driven back in dismay the Abolition party when flushed by temporary victory. Brave, calm and determined, wise in times of excitement, always true to the slave power, never rash or indiscreet, the waves of Northern fanaticism burst harmless at her feet; the contempt for her Northern revilers is the result of her consciousness of her influence in the political world. She makes and unmakes Presidents; she dictates her terms to the Northern Democracy, and they obey her. She selects from among the faithful of the North a man upon whom she can rely, and she makes him President. [This latter is true! The opinion of Kichmond is of more might than the opinion of New York, Slavery, the political Gog on the outside, steers the ark of commercial Noah, and makes it rough or smooth weather inside, just as he likes.]

"In the early days of the Republic, the superior sagacity of her statesmen enabled them to rivet so firmly the shackles of the slave, that the Abolitionists will never be able to unloose them,