Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/325

312 past is explanation of the present, as the present also of the past.

There are two things you may depend on: the impudent boldness of your Southern masters ; the thorough corruption of their Northern slaves. These two are "sure as death and rates." But opposition is made against Slavery,—some of it is quite remarkable. I begin with mentioning what comes from quarters which seemed least promising. 1. A Northern Democrat enters on the stage,—an unwonted appearance. But it is no "infant phenomenon," no stripling, "who never appeared on any stage before," making his first essay by venturing on an anti-Slavery part. It is an old stock actor—the little giant of many a tragedy. Mr. Douglas has broken with the Administration; the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act is now undoing his own work; the inventor of "squatter sovereignty" (or, if Cass be the inventor, Douglas has the patent) turns round and strikes the hand that fed him with honours and applause. He has great personal power of work, of endurance, immense ability to talk; all the arts of sophistry are at his command; adroit, cunning, far-sighted, for an American politician—no man, I think, better understands the strategy of politics, and no man has been more immoral and shameless in its use. He has long been the leader of the Northern Democracy, and knows its instincts and its ideas; his hand is familiar with the strings which move the puppets of the party. Amongst men not clerical, I have heard but one speaker lie with such exquisite adroitness, and make the worse appear the better reason. He is a senator, still holding his place on important committees; he is rich, in the prime of life, ambitious of power: he has abandoned drunkenness, and his native strength returns to his stout frame once more. Let us not disguise it,—no mere politician in America can do the slave power such harm. But I have no more confidence in Mr. Douglas now than in 1854. The nature of the man has not changed, nor can it change; even his will is still the same. No man has done us such harm. You know his public measures, his public speeches—the newspapers report all