Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/60

Rh than the Fugitive Slave Bill? He sneered, and asked, "Will you have the 'Higher Law of God^ to rule over you?" and the multitude which occupied the floor, and the multitude that crowded the galleries, howled down the Higher Law of God ! They treated the Higher Law to a laugh and a howl ! That was Tuesday night. It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving-day. On that Thanks- giving-day, I told the congregation that the men who howled down the Higher Law of Almighty God, had got Almighty God to settle with; that they had sown the wind, and would reap the whirlwind. At that meeting Mr. Choate told the people—"REMEMBER! ! Remember!" Then nobody knew what to "remember." Now you know. That is the state of that case. Then you "remember" the kidnappers came here to seize Thomas Sims. Thomas Sims was seized. Nine days he was on trial for more than his life ; and never saw a judge—never saw a jury. He was sent back into bondage from the city of Boston. You remember the chains that were put around the Court House; you remember the judges of Massachusetts stooping, crouching, creeping, crawling under the chain of Slavery, in order to get to their own courts. All these things you "remember." Boston was non-resistant. She gavp ner "back to the smiters"—from the South; she "withheld not her cheek"—from the scorn of South Carolina, and welcomed the "spitting" of kidnappers from Georgia and Virginia. To-day we have our pay for such conduct. You have not forgotten the "fifteen hundred gentlemen of property and standing," who volunteered to conduct Mr. Sims to slavery—Marshal Tukey's "gentlemen," They "remember" it. They are sorry enough now. Let us forgive—we need not forget. "REMEMBER! ! Remember!""

The Nebraska Bill has just now been passed. Who passed it? The fifteen hundred " gentlemen of property and standing" in Boston, who, in 1851, volunteered to carry Thomas Sims into slavery by force of arms. They passed the Nebraska Bill. If Boston had punished the kidnapping of 1845, there would have been no Fugitive Slave Bill in 1850. If Massachusetts, in 1850, had declared the Bill should not be executed, the kidnapper would