Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/142

138 think we are going to ruin, and can only save ourselves by holding to the customs of our fatht^s, and of the " good old times." In 1631, a man was fined forty pounds, whipped on the naked back, both his ears out oflj and then banished this colony, for uttering hard speeches against the government and the church at Salem. In the first century of the existence of this town, the magistrates could banish a woman because she did not like the preaching, nor all the ministers, and told the people why; they could whip women naked in the streets, because they spoke reproachfully of the magistrates; they could nne men twenty pounds, and then banish them, for comforting a man in gaol before his trial; they could pull down, with legal formality, the house of a man they did not like; they could whip women at a cart's tail from Salem to Rhode Island for fidelity to their conscience; they could beat, imprison, and banish men out of the land, simply for baptizing one another in a stream of water, instead of sprinkling them ft-om a dish ; they could crop the ears, and scourge the backs, and bore the tongues of men, for being Quakers—yes, they could shut them in gaols, could banish them out of the colony, could sell them as slaves, could hang them on a gallows, solely for worshipping God after their own conscience; they could convulse the whole land, and hang some thirty or forty men for witchcraft;, and do all this in the name of God, and then sing psalms, with most nasal twang, and pray by the hour, and preach.'—I will not say how long, nor what, nor how I It is not yet one hundred years since two slaves were judicially burnt alive on Boston Heck, for poisoning their master.

But why talk of days so old? Some of you remember when the pillory and the whipping-post were a part of the public furniture of the law, and occupied a prominent place in the busiest street in town. Some of you have seen mm and women scourged, naked and bleeding, in State Street; have seen men judicially branded in the forehead with a hot iron, their ears clipped off by the sheriff, and held up to teach humanity to the gaping crowd of idle boys and vulgar men. A magistrate was once brought into odium, in Boston, for humanely giving back to his victim, a part of the ear he had officially shorn off, that the mutilated member might be restored and made whole. How