Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/86

Rh Boston is the test and touchstone of political principles and measures. Faneuil Hall is "the cradle of liberty," and therein have been rocked the great ideas of America—rocked by noble hands.

Well, if Boston had said, "No Texan annexation in that wicked way!" we might have had Texas on fair conditions. If Boston had opposed the Mexican War, all New England would have done the same—almost all the North. "We might have had all the soil we have got, without fighting a battle, or taking or losing a life, at far less cost; and have demoralized nobody. If, when the Fugitive Slave Bill was before Congress, Boston had spoken against that iniquity, all the people would have risen, and there would have been no Fugitive Slave Act. If, after that Bill was passed, she had said, "No kidnapping," there would have been none. Then there would have been no Nebraska Bill, no repeal of the Missouri Compromise, no attempt to seize Cuba and Saint Domingo. If the fifteen hundred gentlemen of "property and standing" in Boston, who volunteered to return Mr. Sims to bondage, or the nine hundred and eighty-seven who thanked Mr. Webster for the Fugitive Slave Bill, had come forward on the side of justice, they might have made every Commissioner swear solemnly that he would not execute that Act. Thus the "true sons of liberty," on the 17th of December, 1765, induced Commissioner Oliver to swear solemnly, at noon-day, in "presence of a great crowd," and in front of the Liberty Tree, that he would not issue a single stamp! Had that been done, there would have been no man arrested. There are only eight Commissioners, and public opinion would have kept them all down. We should have had no kidnappers here.

Boston did not do so ; Massachusetts did no such thing. She did just the opposite. In 1828, the Legislature of Georgia passed resolutions relative to the Tariff, declaring that the General Government had no right to protect domestic manufactures, and had been guilty of a "flagrant usurpation;" she will insist on her construction of the Constitution, and "will submit to no other." Georgia carried her point. The Tariff of 1828 went to the ground! South Carolina imprisons our coloured citizens: we bear it with a patient shrugs—and pay the cost: Massachusetts