Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/323

310 personalities too indistinct for sight, at least for memory, with the City Government of Boston, the authorities of Harvard College, two ex-senators, one ex-governor, the Governor of Massachusetts (spite of the " certainty of a mathematical demonstration," now also an ex), answered to their names!

That was not all. The next day, at the public cost, in a steam-boat chartered expressly for the purpose, the City Government took Mr. Mason about the harbour, showing to him the handsome spectacle of nature, the green islands, then so fair; and you saw, a hideous sight, the magistrates, of this town doing homage to one of the foulest of her enemies, who had purposely incited a kindred spirit to deal such blows on the honoured head of a noble senator of this State. Nor was that all. The next night, one of the Professors of Harvard College, both a learned and most genial man, but at that time specially representing the servility of his institution, better even than his accomplishments generally represent its Greek scholarship, invited the author of the Fugitive Slave Bill to an entertainment at his house.

So the magistrates of Boston, the authorities of Harvard College, the "respectabilities of the neighbourhood," the Committee of the Legislature, the Governor of the Commonwealth, and its ex-senators said in their acts, and their words too, "Thus shall be done unto the man whom the slave power delighteth to honour." Here is the other act. Mr. Alger, a young Unitarian minister of this town, had been invited to deliver the annual Fourth of July Address before the city authorities; and he, good honest man, in the simplicity of his heart, like Horace Mann and Charles Sumner, long before, thought that one day in the year was consecrate to Independence, and an orator might be pardoned if, on Independence Day, he said a word in behalf of the self-evident truths of the old Declaration, and spoke of the natural and unalienable right of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Mr. Alger's grandfather fought in the battle of Bunker Hill, and it was not surprising that the "spirit of '75," speaking through such a "medium," should be a little indignant at the spirit of '57! He spoke as he ought. The City Government refused to print his speech—which, however, printed