Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/243

230 could get both these kinds of weed out of the soil, it would not be a very difficult matter to sow the seed and raise a harvest of anti-Slavery. Next for the positive work. It calls out men who hitherto have never taken the initiative in politics, but have voted just as they were bid. I will speak of Massachusetts, of Boston. We had there a large class of excellent men, who always went, a week or two before the election, to the Whigs and Democrats, and said, "Whom ore we to vote for?" The great Whigs said, "We have not yet taken counsel of the Lord ; we shall do so to-morrow, and then we will tell you." So these men went home, and bowed their knees, and waited in silent submission; and the next day their masters said, "You are to vote for John Smith or John Brown," or whosoever it chanced to be. And the people said, "Hurrah for the great John Smith!" "Hurrah for the great John Brown!" "Did you ever hear of him before?" asked some one. "No: but he is the greatest man alive." "Who told you so?" "Oh! our masters told us so." Now, the Know-Nothings went to that class of men, and said, "You have been fooled long enough." "So we have," said the people," and no mistake! and we will not bear it any longer." They would not be fooled any longer by the Whigs, and some of them no longer by the Democrats ; but they were fooled by the Know-Nothings. Nevertheless, it was an important thing for this class of people to take the initiative in political matters. If they stumbled as they tried to go alone, it is what all children have done. "Up and take another," is' good advice. So the Know Nothings not only pulled up the Whig- weed, and left it to rot, but they stirred the land ; they ploughed it deep with a subsoil plough, turning up a whole stratum of people which had never been brought up to the surface of the political garden before. That was another very important matter; and yet, allow me to say, with all this subsoiling, they have not turned up one single man who proves powerful in politics, and at the same time new. Mr. Wilson owns his place in the Senate to the Know-Nothings: he was known to be a powerful man before. Mr. Banks owes his place to this party; he also was a powerful man before. I do not find, anywhere in the United States, that the