Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/159

Rh avenue to wealth, to honour, office, fame, is open to all. There is Slavery, and as men sow, thus shall they reap—New England, wealth of her freedom; Virginia, from her bondage, poverty. The exports of New England, they are the products of her toilsome hand and thinking brain; they are books, manufactured articles: New England's hand goes through every land. The exports of Virginia, they are her sons and daughters, bred as slaves, to be sold as cattle. Virginia has 78,000 children at school and college; New England, 676,000. From the Aroostook to the Housatonic, from the day of the Pilgrims until now, New England has been covered all over with the footprints of human freedom. The poor little school-houses dot the land everywhere, and the meeting-house lifts its finger to heaven as the index of God's higher law, His self-evident truths, the inalienable right of man to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. While New England opens her ten thousand schools to all children—Saxon, German, Irish, African—in Virginia the arm of the State shuts a woman in gaol because she taught a coloured girl to read the New Testament. While Massachusetts turns with scorn a Judge of Probate out from his office because he kidnapped a man, Virginia shuts a Northern sea captain for forty years in her penitentiary because he aided $4000 worth of human property to become free men, who believe sic semper tyrannis. That is the effect of Ślavery!

Nothing can save Slavery. It is destined to ruin. Once I thought it might end peacefully: now I think it must fall as so many another wickedness, in violence and blood. Slavery is in flagrant violation of the institutions of America—direct government, over all the people, by all he people, for all the people. It is hostile to the interests of industrial democracy: it lessens wealth—weakening the growth of creative power, toil and thought. It lies in the way of all religion. There is one great maxim of morality, older than Jesus of Nazareth, common to the Chinese, Buddhistic, Classic, Mahommedan, and Christian religion, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.” Measure Slavery by the Golden Rule, and where is it? It conflicts with the self-evident truths of human reason so clear to our fathers, and