Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/84

Rh indifference of Massachusetts, and particularly of Boston, to the efforts which are made for Freedom; her zeal to promote Slavery and honour its defenders. Men talk of dividing the Union. I never proposed that. Before last week I should not have known where to begin. I should have had to draw the line somewhere north of Boston.

Last week Massachusetts got part of her pay for obeying the Fugitive Slave Bill with alacrity; for suppressing discussion; for conquering her prejudices; pay for putting cowardly, mean men, in the place of brave, honourable men; pay for allowing the laws of Massachusetts to be trodden underfoot, and her court-house of Northern granite to be surrounded by Southern chains. Thomas Sims was scourged on the 19th of April, when he was carried back to Savannah. Boston did not feel it then. She felt it last week—felt it sorely. In September, 1860, we heard the hundred guns fired on Boston Common, in honour of the Fugitive Slave Bill—fired by men of "eminent gravity." Last Friday you saw the cannon! One day you will see it again grown into many cannons. That one was only a devil's grace before a devil's meat! No higher law, is there? Wait a little longer, and you shall find there is a "lower law," a good deal lower than we have yet come to! Sow the wind, shall we? When the whirlwind comes up therefrom, it has a course of its own, and God only can control the law of such storms as those. We have not yet seen the full consequences of sowing atheism with a broad hand among the people of this continent. We have not yet seen the end. These are only the small early apples that first fall to the earth. There is a whole tree full of them. When some autumnal storm shakes the boughs, they will cover the ground—sour and bitter in our mouths, and then poison.

Yet this triumph of Slavery does not truly represent the wishes of the Northern people. Not a single Pro-Slavery measure has ever, been popular with the mass of men in New England or Massachusetts. The people disliked the annexation of Texas in that unjust manner: they thought the Mexican War was wicked. They were opposed to the extension of Slavery; they hated the Fugitive Slave Bill, and rejoiced at the rescue of Shadrach. The kidnapping