Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/192

Rh "A wide and impassable gulf separates the noble, proud, glorious Old Dominion from her Northern traducers; the mastiff dare not willingly assail the skunk!" "When Virginia takes the field, she crushes the whole Abolition party; her slaughter is wholesale, and a hundred thousand Abolitionists are cut down when she issues her commands!"

Again (April 4th, 1854), "A hundred Southern gentlemen, armed with riding- whips, could chase an army of invading Abolitionists into the Atlantic."

In reference to the project at the North of sending Northern Abolitionists along with the Northern slave- breeders to Nebraska, to put freedom into the soil before Slavery gets there, the Examiner says:—"Why, a hundred wild, lank, half-horse, half-alligator Missouri and Arkansas emigrants would, if so disposed, chase out of Nebraska and Kansas all the Abolitionists who have figured for the last twenty years at anti-Slavery meetings."

I say Slavery is not profitable for the nation nor for a State, but it is profitable for slave-owners. You will see why. If the Northern capitalist owned the weavers and spinners at Lowell and Lawrence, New England would be poorer, and the working-men would not be so well off, or so well-educated; but Undershot and Overshot, Turbine Brothers, Spindle and Co., would be richer, and would get larger dividends. Land monopoly in England enfeebles the island, but enriches the aristocracy. How poor, ill-fed, and ill-clad were the French peasants before the Revolution; how costly was the chateau of the noble. Monopoly was bad for the people; profitable for the rich men. How poor are the people in Italy; how rich the Cardinals and the Pope. Oppression enriches the oppressor; it makes poorer the down-trodden. Piracy is very costly to the merchant and to mankind; but it enriches the pirate. Slavery impoverishes Virginia, but it enriches the master. It gives him money—commercial power—office—political power. The slave-holder is drawn in his triumphal chariot by two chattels: one, the poor black man, whom he "owns legally;" the other is the poor white man, whom he owns morally, and harnesses to his chariot. Hence these American lords of the lash cleave to this institution—they love it. To the slave-holders, Slavery is money and power!

Now the South, weak in numbers, feeble in respect to