Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/288

284 compense of reward" the Spanish Hidalgo got for his deed; but the American divine, for his offer, has been put into "one of the priests' offices, that he might eat a piece of bread." He has been appointed, as the newspapers say, a chaplain of the navy at Washington. Verily he has his reward.

But there have been found men in Boston to go a little further. Last Thanksgiving Day, I said it would be difficult to find a magistrate in Boston to take the odium of sending a fugitive back to Slavery. I believed, after all, men had some conscience, although they talked about its being a duty to deliver up a man to bondage. Pardon me, my country, that I rated you too high! Pardon me, town of Boston, that I thought your citizens all men! Pardon me, lawyers, that I thought you had been all born of mothers! I Pardon me, ruffians, who kill for hire! I thought you had some animal mercy left, even in your bosom! Pardon me, United States' commissioners, marshals, and the like, I thought you all had some shame! Pardon me, my hearers, for such mistakes. One commissioner was found to furnish the warrant! Pardon me, I did not know he was a commissioner; if I had, I never would have said it

Spirits of tyrants, I look down to you! Shade of Cain, you great first murderer, forgive me that I forgot your power, and did not remember that you were parent of so long a line! And you, my brethren, if hereafter I tell you that there is any limit of meanness or wickedness which a Yankee will net jump over, distrust me, and remind me of this day, and I will take it back!

Let us look at the public conduct of any commissioner who will send an innocent man from Boston into Slavery. I would speak of all men charitably; for I know how easy it is to err,—yea, to sin. I can look charitably on thieves, prowling about in darkness; on rum-sellers, whom poverty compels to crime; on harlots, who do the deed of shame that holy woman's soul abhors and revolts at; I can pity the pirate, who scours the seas in doing his fiendish crimes—he is tempted, made desperate by a gradual training in wickedness. The man, born at the South, owning slaves, who goes to Africa and sells adulterated rum in exchange for men to retail at Cuba,—I