Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/307

294 the Protestant Reformation, can it ever be false to Freedom? Germany acts on mankind by thought—by great ideas. What France is for war, England for commerce, and Russia for the brute power of men, that is Germany for thought. The Germans have had connection with African Slavery, but have ended it. Sweden begun the work some years ago; then Denmark followed; now, within the last few months, Holland has finished it. Here are the documents. Soon the last footsteps of German oppression will be covered up by the black man rejoicing in is freedom. Though their rulers are often tyrants, our German kinsfolk are on our side—God bless them!

IV. England has great influence by her political institutions, her army and navy, her commerce and manufactures, her power of practical thought, her large wealth, her mighty spread. She and her children control a sixth part of the globe, and nearly a fourth part of its people. No tribe of men has done such service for Freedom as the Anglo-Saxons, in Britain and America. England has had connection with African Slavery, her hand has been dyed deep in the negro's blood. She planted Slavery in her provinces throughout the continent and its many islands; the ocean reeked with the foul steam of her slave-ships. She was a hard master, and men died by millions under her lash. But nobly did the dear old mother put this wickedness away. She abolished the slave trade, making it piracy; at length, she repudiated Slavery itself, and in one day threw into the sea the fetters of 800,000 men. Well did Lord Brougham say—it was "the greatest triumph ever won over the foulest wrong man ever did against man." England need hot boast of Agincourt, Cressy, Poitiers, and many another victorious fight, at Waterloo, Sebastopol, or Delhi; the most glorious victory her annals record was achieved on the 1st of August, in the first year of Victoria, when justice triumphed over such giant wrong. Nobly has she contended against the slave trade, rousing the tardy conscience of Brazil, and not quite vainly galvanizing Spain into some show of humanity. She has shamed even the American Government—and I think we have a sloop-of-war on the African coast, which we yearly hear of in the annual appropriation bill! But this nobleness is exceptional even in England; the world had seen no such example before. That emancipa-