Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/82

Rh and topmost plank in them both. Each confessed Slavery to be master; it seemed that there was no North; slave soil all the way from the south of Florida to the north of Maine. All over the land Slavery ruled.

You cannot forget Mr. Pierce's inaugural address, nor the comments of the Boston press thereon. He says the Fugitive Slave Bill is to be "unhesitatingly carried into effect;" "not with reluctance," but " cheerfully and willingly." The newspapers of Boston welcomed the sentiment; and now Mr. Pierce's organ, the Washington Unions says it is very proper this Bill should be enforced at Boston, for "Boston was among the first to approve of this emphatic declaration." So let the promise be executed here till we have enough of it! You know the contempt which has been shown towards everybody; who opposed Slavery here in Massachusetts. Horace Mann—there is not a man in the State more hated than he by the "prominent politicians,"—or more loved by the people—because he opposed Slavery with all his might; and it is a great might. Robert Rantoul, though a politician and a party man, fought against Slavery; and when he died, though he was an' eminent lawyer, the members of the Suffolk bar, his brother lawyers, took no notice of him. They wore no crape for Robert Rantoul! He had opposed Slavery; let him die unnoticed, unhonoured, unknown. Massachusetts sent to the Senate a man whose chief constitutional impulse is the instinct of decorum—Mr. Everett, who had been ready to buckle on his knapsack, and shoulder his musket, to put down an insurrection of slaves; a Cambridge professor of Greek, he studied the original tongue of the Bible to learn that the Scripture says "slaves," where the English Bible says only "servants." Fit Senator!

Then came the Nebraska Bill. It was at once a measure and a principle. As a measure, it extends the old curse of Slavery over half a million square miles of virgin soil, and thus hinders the growth of the territory in population, riches, education, in moral, and religious character. It makes a South Carolina of what might else be a Connecticut, and establishes Paganism in the place of Christ's piety. As a principle, it is worse still—it makes Slavery national and inseparable from the national soil; for the