Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/316

Rh is raised to strangle Democracy. They never give the alarm: it would be to "strike the hand that feeds them." Nay, they crouch down and "lick the hand just raised to shed our blood." Even at Washington, Slavery has sewed up the delegated Northern mouth, else so noisy once. It is nearly two years since a Southern bully, a representative man of South Carolina, stole upon our great senator, with coward blows felled him to the ground, and with his bludgeon beat the stunned and unconscious man. He meant to "silence agitation:" he did his work too well. Excepting the discussion which followed that outrage, do you remember an anti-Slavery speech in the Senate since Charles Sumners', in May 1856? Can you think of one in the House? If such have been spoken, I have not heard either, though I have listened all the time. Now and then some one has made an apology for the North, promising not to touch Slavery in the part most woundable. But I believe there has been no manly anti-Slavery speech in House or Senate till Mr. Hale broke the silence with a noble word.

The slave power dealt the blows upon one Northern man, and nearly silenced all the rest!" The safer part of valour is discretion!" The South has many slaves not counted in the census. Ought they to represent the North? The slave power is conscious of strength, and sure of victory. It never felt so strong before. Look at this: the Treasury Department has just instructed the collectors not to permit a free negro to act as master of a vessel,—he is not a citizen of the United States! See what the Southern States are doing. A bill has been reported in the Senate of Louisiana, authorizing that State to import five thousand African slaves. If it becomes a law the Government will not prevent the act; our worst enemy, the Supreme Court, is ready to declare unconstitutional the law which forbids the African slave trade. The South may import as many slaves as she likes; the Government is for her wickedness, not against that—only against justice and the unalienable rights of man. Another bill pending before the Virginia Legislature to banish or enslave all the 75,000 free coloured persons in that State, where more than one President has been the father of a mulatto woman's child. The law to enslave them all may pass; the Federal Government cares nothing about it. African Rachel may mourn