Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/275

Rh this, and of the consciousness that it is true, while the Northern States have cast out this institution, tho Southern States have kept it. The nation has adopted, extended, and fostered it. This has been done, notwithstanding the expectation of the people, in 1787, that it would soon end. It has been done against the design of the Constitution, which was "to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty against the idea of America, that "All men have an equal and unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;" against all religion, all humanity, all right,—ay, and against the conscience of a majority of the people; Well, a law was passed last September, that would have been atrocious two hundred years ago; you all know it. I have no words to describe it by. For the last two hundred years, the English race has not invented an adjective adequate to describe it. The English language is used up and broken down by any attempt to describe it. That law was not the desire of the people: and, could the nation have been polled North and South, three-fourths would have said "No!" to the passage of that law. It was not passed to obtain the value of the slaved escaped, for in seven months twenty slaves have not been returned! It was not a measure looking to legal results, but it wad a political measure* looking to political results: what those results will be, we shall see in due time.

In America the controlling class is divided into two great parties: one is the slave power in the States of the South; the Other is. the money power in the cities of the North. There are exceptional men in both divsions—men that own slaves, and yet love freedom and hate slavery. There are rich men in Northern cities who do the same; quite otherwise. They are hostile to the great idea of America. Let me speak with the nicety of theological speech. These two divisions are two "persons" in One "power there is only one "nature" in both, one "will," If not the same nature, it is a like nature : Homoi-ousia, if not Homo-ousia! The Fugitive Slave Law was the act of all