Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/314

Rh of every State, with their property of every description, including slaves reposing under the aegis of the Constitution." "The cheering result, then, is, that the Southern States stand now on stronger and higher ground than at any previous period of our history; and this, under the progressive and constitutional action of the General Government, blotting out invidious lines, establishing the broad platform of State equality, demolishing squatter sovereignty, retrieving the errors of the past, and furnishing new securities for the future." "The number of slave-holding States has been increased to fifteen, out of an aggregate of thirty-one States, with a fair prospect of further increase in Texas, and in other territory, acquired or to be acquired from Mexico, in the Carribean Sea, and still further south."

The slave States, he says, no longer "conceding domestic Slavery to be a 'moral, social, and political evil,' any more than any other system of menial and praedial labour, but able … to defend it as consistent with scriptural teachings, and as an ordinance of Jehovah for the culture and welfare of the staple States, and the civilization and Christianization of the African." To them he says, "Cotton is king, and destined to rule the nations with imperial sway."

The slave-holders feel stronger than ever before. This privileged class, the " Nobility of Democracy," counts only 350,000 in all. Feeble in numbers, the slave power is strong in position—holding the great federal offices, judicial, executive, and military, stronger in purpose and in will. "The hope, the courage of assailants, is always greater than that of those who act merely on the defensive." At the South, it rules the non -slaveholders, as at the North it has had also the Democratic party under its thumb. There is a secret article in the creed of that party which demands unconditional submission to the infallibility of the negro-driver. Senator Toombs has no slaves in Georgia who yield to his will more submissively than to the whim of the Southern master crouches Hon. Mr. Gushing, whose large intellectual talents, great attainments, and consummate political art, in this hall, so fitly represent the town of Newburyport. It is the glory of the Northern Democratic party that it has been the most cringeing slave to the haughtiest and unworthiest master in the world. All individuality seemed "crushed out," to use Mr. Cushing's own happy phrase. Within eight months every Northern State has had a State Democratic Convention, each of which has passed resolutions endorsing the Dred Scott decision. This act implies no individuality, of thought or