Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/74

Rh House the same proclivities to despotism which he had evinced in his maiden speech.

In 1835, the anti-Slavery men and women were mobbed in Boston by an assembly of "respectable gentlemen;" the Mayor did not stop the tumult, the destruction of property, and the peril to life! There were no soldiers in the streets then; nobody, I think, was punished.

The next winter, the General Assemblies of several Southern States sent resolutions to the Massachusetts General Court, whereof this is one from South Carolina:—"The formation of abolition societies, and the acts and doings of certain fanatics, calling themselves abolitionists, in the non-slaveholding States of this confederacy, are in direct violation of the obligations of the compact of the Union."

South Carolina requested the Government "promptly and effectually to suppress all those associations," and would consider " the abolition of Slavery in the district of Columbia as a violation of the rights of citizens, and a usurpation to be at once resisted." Georgia asked Massachusetts "to crush the traitorous designs of the abolitionists." Virginia required the non-slaveholding States "to adopt penal enactments, or such other measures as will effectually suppress all associations within their respective limits, purporting to be, or having the character of, abolition societies;" and that they "will make it highly penal to print, publish, or distribute newspapers, pamphlets, or other publications, calculated or having a tendency to incite the slaves of the Southern States to insurrection and revolt." How do you think Massachusetts answered? In solemn resolutions the committee of the Massachusetts Legislature declared that "the agitation of the question of domestic slavery had already interrupted the friendly relations between the several States of the Union; "expressed its "entire disapprobation of the doctrines and speeches of such as agitate the question," and advised them "to abstain from all such discussion as might tend to disturb and agitate the public mind." That was the voice of a committee appointed by the Massachusetts Legislature. True, it was not accepted by the House of Representatives, but the report was only too significant. What followed?