Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/276

272 tho two "persons," representing the same "nature," and the same "will." It was the result of a union of the slave power of tho South with the money power of the North: the Philistines and the Hebrews ploughed with tho same heifer.

There is sometimes an excuse or a palliation for a wicked deed. There was something like one for tho "Gag Law," the "Alien and Sedition Law," although there is no valid excuse for either of these laws, none to screen their author from deserved reproach. There is no excuse for the Fugitive Slave Law; there was no occasion for it.

You all know how it was brought about; you remember the speech of Mr. Webster on the 7th of March, 1850, a day set apart for the blessed martyrs, Saints Perpetua and Felicitas. We all know who was the author of that law. It is Mr. Webster's Fugitive Slave Law! It was his "thunder," unquestioned and unquestionable. You know what a rapid change was wrought in the public opinion of the controlling classes, soon after its passage. First the leading Whigs went over. I will not say they changed their Principles,—God knows, net I, what principles they have; will only say, they altered their "resolutions," and ate their own words. True, the Whigs have not all gone over. There are a few who still cling to the old Whig-tree, after it has been shaken and shaken, and thrashed and thrashed, and brushed and brushed, by politicians, as apple-trees in autumn. There are still a few little apples left, small and withered, no doubt, and not daring to show their dishonoured heads just now, but still containing some precious seeds that may do service by and by. Whig journal after journal went over; politician after politician "caved in" and collapsed. At the sounding of the rams' horns of Slavery, how quick the Whig Jericho went down! Its fortresses of paper resolutions rolled up and blew away. Of course, men changed only after "logical conviction." Of course, nobody expected a "reward" for the change, at least only in the world to come. Were they not all Christians? True, on the 17th of June last, seventy-five years after the battle of Bunker Hill, Mr. Webster said in the (Senate, that if the North should vote for the Fugitive Slave Bill, a tariff was expected. But that was of no moment, no more than worldly riches to; "the elect." Of