Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/130

126 In 1769, oppressed Boston advocated the right of free speech; a town meeting declared that “a legal meeting of the town of Boston is an assembly where a noble freedom of speech is always expected and maintained—where men think as they please, and speak as they think.” “And such an assembly,” adds patriotic poor little Boston, “has been the dread and often the scourge of tyrants.” In 1850, Boston shut up Faneuil Hall, and forbid all freedom of speech; there must be “no agitation.” In 1854, the Supreme Court of the United States seeks to procure an indictment and inflict a fine of three hundred dollars and imprisonment for twelve months on men who, in the same Faneuil Hall, stirred up the minds of the people to keep the precepts of Christianity, and defend the inalienable rights of man.

In 1768, the British Government sought to prosecute the printers of a patriotic paper in Boston, but the Grand Jury refused a bill. In 1851, in the same Boston, fifteen hundred citizens thereof, one for each illegal grog-shop, then officially known to be in the city, entered into a solemn compact, and gave their names to the City Marshal; volunteering to escort to eternal bondage a poor, friendless negro boy.

In 1774, the British tyrant shut up the port of poor Boston, and the adjoining towns opened their harbours and said, “Use our wharves without cost, ye that suffer!” In 1851, when Lynn, Worcester, Marblehead, and New Bedford declared they would keep the commandments of Jesus of Nazareth and the New Testament's golden rule, and no fugitive slave should be torn from their municipal bosom, the leading political and commercial newspapers of Boston called on her merchants to refuse to trade with these four Christian towns.

Once, Boston and America appealed to the law of Nature and Nature's God. It was when Boston and America were poor. In 1851, 1852, 1853, and 1854, Boston and America declared there was no law of God above the Fugitive Slave Bill.

When America was poor, a single colony in the wilderness, owning but a single “Mayflower,” with nothing but clams for their food, those stern Calvinistic fathers of the land lifted up their hands and thanked God that “we