Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/51

38 Society adapts its publications to the Southern market, by expunging every word hostile to the patriarchal institution. Mr. Gurney says, "If this love had always prevailed among professing Christians, where would have been the sword of the crusader? Where the African slave-trade? Where the odious system which permits to man a property in his fellow-man, and converts rational beings into marketable chattels?" The American Tract Society alters the text, and instead of what I have italicized, it prints: "Where the tortures of the Inquisition? Where every system of oppression and wrong by which he who has the power revels in luxury and ease at the expense of his fellow-men!"

In 1850 and 1851, the most prominent preachers in the North came out in public and justified the kidnapping of men in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. It is true some noble mimsters lifted up their voices against it; but the theological leaders went for man-steabng, and knew no higher law.

Commercial and political journals denounced every minister who appUed the golden rule of the Gospel to the poor fugitives from Slavery. Several clergymen were driven from their parishes in Massachusetts, because they preached against kidnapping. Metropolitan newspapers invited merchants to refuse to trade with towns where the Fugitive Slave Bill was unpopular; lawyers and doctors opposed to Slavery must not be employed.

Anti-Slavery sentiments are carefully excluded from school-books : the writers want a Southern market. The principal men in the Northern colleges appear to be on the side of oppression. The political and commercial press of the North is mainly on the side of the slave-holder. While preparing this paper I find in a Northern newspaper (the Boston Courier, of April 26, 1853) an advertisement as follows : —

The advertisement is dated "Savannah, 19th April."

On that day, 1851, Boston landed at Savannah a man