Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/221

208 natural man seeks to aid the victim escaping from torment, to comfort and shelter him. I say every natural man. If a man is "regenerated," after the fashion of Mr. Adams, of this city—not Samuel or John, but the Reverend Nehemiah Adams, who takes a "South Side View of Slavery,"—or of President Lord, of Dartmouth College, who finds Slavery a sacred institution,—if a man is "regenerated" after this sort, he will aid the slave-hunters to the fullest extent, and that with alacrity; but men with natural hearts aid him who flees. These things being so, the property being obnoxious to flight on its own limbs, and able to excite the instinctive sympathy of whoso is most human, the Government, whose great domestic object is the protection of property at home, must eminently protect this property in its special peril. So Government, resisting the great objective law of God, which tends to moralize mankind, must seek to extend and propagate Slavery; must oppose also the special subjective law of humanity which, inclines us to help a man escaping from bondage. And so the Government must pass the Fugitive Slave Bill, and re-kidnap the runaway, remanding him to Slavery, and put the sheltering philanthropist in gaol, and fine him a thousand dollars: thereto it must seek out the vilest men; not only the villains of the gutter, but also the congenital scoundrels of the courts and the parlour, and give them a legal commission to lay their hand on any poor woman, and, if they send her back to Slavery, pay them twice as much as if they declare her free! That programme of principles was posted all over the land, and re-affirmed by prominent politicians. Whig and Democratic; by two Baltimore conventions of the people, unusually large and "very respectable;" by hundreds of political and commercial editors, North and South; by prominent merchants,—merchant traders and merchant manufacturers,—nine hundred and eighty-seven of "our most eminent citizens" endorsing it all. It was affirmed by judges on the bench, one judge telling the jury that, if there was a doubt in their minds, and a conflict between the law of God and the Fugitive Slave Bill, then they must "obey both;" God upwards and the devil downwards. It was re-affirmed by prominent ministers of all denominations. All these five classes said, "There is no higher