Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/193

180 money, Has continually directed the politics of America, just as she would. Her ignorance and poverty were more efficacious than the Northern riches and education. She is in earnest for Slavery; the North not in earnest for Freedom! only earnest for money. So long as the Federal Government grinds the axes of the Northern merchant, he cares little whether the stone is turned by the free man's labour or the slave's. Hence, the great centres of Northern commerce and manufactures are also the ffreat centres of pro- Slavery politics. Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Buffalo, Cincinnati, they all liked the Fugitive Slave Bill; all took pains to seize the fugitive who fled to a Northern altar for freedom; nay, the most conspicuous clergymen in those cities became apostles of kidnapping ; their churches were of commerce, not Christianity. The North yielded to that last most insolent demand. Under the influence of that excitement she chose the present Administration, the present Congress. Now see the result! Whig and Democrat meet on the same platform at Baltimore. It was the platform of Slavery. Both candidates gave in their allegiance to the same measure—Scott and Pierce—it was the measure which compromised the first principles of the American Independence—they were sworn on the Fugitive Slave Bill. Whig and Democrat knew no "higher law," only the statute of slave-holders. Conscience bent down before the Constitution. What sort of a government can you expect from such conduct! What representatives! Just what you have got. Sow the wind, will you? then reap the whirlwind. Mr. Pierce said in his inaugural, "I believe that involuntary servitude is recognised by the Constitution;" "that it stands like any other admitted right. I hold that the compromise measures (i.e., the Fugitive Slave Bill) are strictly constitutional, and to be unhesitatingly carried into effect." The laws to secure the master's right to capture a man in the free States "should be respected and obeyed, not with a reluctance encouraged by abstract opinions as to their propriety in a different state of society, but cheerfully and according to the decision of the tribunal to which their exposition belongs." These words were historical—reminiscences of the time when "no higher law" was the watchword of the American State and the American