Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/52

Rh whom she had kidnapped in her own streets; on that day, in 1775, a few miles from Boston, a handful of farmers and mechanics first drew the sword of America against the oppressions of her parent, "in the sacred cause of God and their country." Nemesis is never asleep! If men are to be advertised for sale in a Boston newspaper, it is well that the advertisement should date from the Battle of Lexington, or the Declaration of Independence.

Last year the State of Illinois passed "An Act to prevent the immigration of free negroes" into that State. A man who brings a free negro or mulatto into the State is to be fined not less than $100, nor more than $500, and to be imprisoned not more than a year. Every negro thus coming, shall be fined fifty dollars, and, if unable to pay, shall be sold to any person "who will pay said fine and costs, for the shortest time." "Every person who shall have one-fourth negro blood shaU be deemed a mulatto." Delaware has just passed a similar law, though with penalties less severe.

In the commercial journals of the free and the slave States, the most scandalous abuse has been poured out upon Mrs. Stowe for her Uncle Tom^ Cabin, and its Key. "Priestess of Darkness" is one of the pleasant epithets applied to her. The Duchess of Sutherland receives, also, a large share of abuse from the same quarter. When the kidnapper is honoured; when "prime negroes" are advertised for sale; when clergymen recommend manstealing in the name of Christ and of God, it is very proper that ladies of genius and philanthropy should be held up as objects of scorn and contempt! Men who know no law higher than the Fugitive Slave Bill, must work after their kind. It is a strange spectacle which America just now offers. Exiles flee hither, four hundred thousand in a year, and are welcome; while Americans born take their lives in their hand, and fly to Canada, to Nova Scotia, for an asylum. Unsuccessful "rebels," who have committed "treason" at home, find a shelter in America, a welcome, and the protection of the democratic government; while 3,300,000 men, guilty of no crime, are kept in a bondage worse than Siberian. The "chief judicial officer" of