Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/203

190 There is no higher law, is there? "He taketh the wise in their own craftiness, the council of the wicked is carried"—ay, but it is carried headlong. Only see what a change has been coming over our spirit just now. Three years ago, Isaiah Rynders and Hiram Ketchum domineered over New York; and those gentlemen who are to follow me, and whom you are impatient to hear, were mobbed down in the city of New York, two years ago; they could not find a hall that would be leased to them for money or love, and had to adjourn to Syracuse to hold their convention. Look at this assembly now.

A little while ago all the leading clergymen were in favour of the Fugitive Slave Bill; now three thousand of New England ministers remonstrate against Nebraska. They know there is a fire in their rear, and, in theological language, it is a fire that "is not quenched." It goeth not out by day, and there is no night there. The clergymen stand between eternal torment on one side and the little giant of Slavery on the other. They do not go back. Two thousand English clergymen once became non-conformists in a single day. Tnree thousand New England ministers remonstrated against the enslavement of Nebraska. Now is the time to push and be active, call meeting, bring out men of all parties, all forms of religion, agitate, agitate, agitate. Make a fire in the rear of the Government and the representatives. The South is weak—only united. The North is strong in money, in men, in education, in the justice of our great cause—only not united for freedom. Only be faithful to ourselves, and Slavery will come down, not slowly, as I thought once, but when the people of the North say it, it will come down with a great.

Then, when we are free from this plague-spot of Slavery—the curse to our industry, our education, our politics, and our religion—we shall increase more rapidly in number and still more abundantly be rich. The South will be as the North—active, intelligent—Virginia rich as New York, the Carolinas as active as Massachusetts. Then, by peaces fill purchase, the Anglo-Saxon may acquire the rest of this North American Continent. The Spaniards will make nothing of it. Nay, we may honourably go farther South,