Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/131

Rh are permitted to suck of the abundance of the seas and treasures hid in the sands,” and sought to establish freedom all over this western wilderness. Now, America, with five-and-twenty millions of people, with five million tons of shipping white-blossoming on all the seas, with more than seven thousand million dollars of property, is longing to encircle with chains the whole American commonwealth of freemen, and spread the curse of bondage from the Gulf of Mexico to the most Northern lakes; nay, to plant this Upas by the borders of the Amazon that it may reach far as the Andes, and drop its lecherous distilment all over the South American continent.

In 1636, when Massachusetts was poor, not a settlement twenty miles in the interior, not a shore-line fifty miles long, she established Harvard College, and therefore once levied a tax of a peck of corn, or twelve pence, on each householder in the province. But now, in fifteen States of the affluent Union, it is a felony to teach one of the labouring classes to read and write; nay, for a Mulatto mother to teach her daughter to read the golden rule of Jesus in the New Testament. This very year, Mrs. Douglas has been gaoled thirty days for teaching free black children to read!

In 1772, even the burgesses of Virginia wished to abolish the slave trade. Jefferson and Patrick Henry, noble sons of the afflicted colony, sought to emancipate all her slaves. The author of the Declaration of Independence trembled for Virginia when he remembered that God is just. In 1854, Virginia counts “negroes as the connecting link between man and the brute creation.” In 1778, the Articles of Confederation between the revolutionary colonies allowed the slave to escape from State to State; no compact authorized the master to go over the border for his prey. But, in 1850, the one-and-thirty wealthy States authorized the master to pursue his fugitive at the expense of the Federal Government, in every State, and tread down its law: nay, if a man gives but a cup of cold water to the hunted fugitives, he is to be fined a thousand dollars and put in gaol for six months for each offence. Only last week a Fugitive Slave Bill Judge fined a man three thousand dollars for aiding three fellow Christians to keep their freedom in the “Democratic