Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/95

82 kidnap Ellen Craft. He did not like the business. It was not a part of Mr. Loring's official obligation. A man lets himself to a sea-captain as a mariner to go a general voyage. He is not obliged to go privateering or pirating whenever the captain hoists the black flag. He can leave at the next port. A labourer lets himself to a farmer to do general farm work. By and by his employer says, "I intend to steal sheep." The man is not obliged by his contract to go and steal sheep because his employer will. That would be an illegal act, no doubt. But suppose the general government had made a law, authorizing every farmer to steal all the black sheep he can lay his hands on; nay, commanding the felony. Is this servant, who is hired to do general farm work, obliged in his official capacity to go and steal black sheep? 1 do not look at it so, I do not think any man does. A lawyer turns off many a client. A constable refuses many a civil job. He does not like the business. The Commissioner took this business because he liked to take it. I do not say he was not "conscientious." I know nothing of that. I only speak of the act. Herod was "conscientious," for aught I know, and Iscariot and Benedict Arnold, and Aaron Burr, I do not touch that question. To their own master they stand or fall. The tortures of the Spanish Inquisition may have been "conscientious."

It was entirely voluntary for Mr. Loring to take this case. There was no official obligation, no professional honour, that required him to do it. He had a "great precedent," even, in Mr. Hallett, to decline it. In 1843, Massachusetts enacted a law prohibiting any State officer from acting as slave-catcher, for fear of abuse of our own law. Since that, Mr. Loring has become Judge of Probate. There was a chance for a good man to show his respect for the law of the State which gives him office.

Now see how the case was conducted. I am no lawyer, and shall not undertake to judge the technical subtleties of the case. But look at the chief things which require no technical skill to judge.

The Commissioner spoke very Idndly, and even paternally, when he consulted Burns. I confess the tear started to my eye when he looked so fatherly towarda the man,