Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/317

304 in vain for her first-born, and refuse to be comforted, because the Virginian Jacob chains the parti-coloured Joseph that she bore to him; let her mourn! What does the Federal Herod care that in all Virginia there is a voice heard of lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning from the poor Rachel of Africa?

Stronger than ever before, at least in fancy, and yet more truly impudent than fancied strong, the slave power proposes two immediate measures:— I. To pass the Lecompton Constitution through Congress, and force Slavery into the laws of Kansas, against the oft-repeated vote of the people.

II. To add seven thousand men to the standing army of the United States. They are nominally to put down the polygamous Mormons in Utah—Satan contradicting the lies he is the father of—but really to support the more grossly polygamous slave-holders ; to force the Lecompton Constitution upon Kansas with the bayonet; in all the North, to execute the Fugitive Slave Bill, and the Dred Scott decision, already made, and the Lemmon decision, about to be made, and establish Slavery in each free State; and also to put down any insurrection of the coloured people at the South. The Mormons are the pretence no more; the army is raised against the Democracy of Massachusetts, not the Polygamy of Utah.

Ladies and gentlemen, both of these measures will pass the Senate, pass the House. If it were the end of a presidential term, I should expect they would be defeated. But men worship the rising sun, not the setting, who has no more golden light for them. A Boston merchant, with but $87,000, could bribe men enough to pass his tariff bill! The new Presiden, the has more than $887,000,000—offices for three years to come. The addition to the army wiU cost at least $5,000,000 a year, and the patronage that gives will command votes enough. I know how tender are the feelings of Congress; I know how politicians reject with scorn the idea that money or office could alter their vote; but we all know that a President, his pocket full of public money, his hands full of offices, can buy votes of honourable senators and honourable representatives just as readily as you can buy peanuts of the huckster down stairs. I need not go from this hall, or its eastern neighbour, I need not