dost thou turn pale, as when the crowd clutched at thy life in London Street? It is true, George Jeffreys, and these are not thy kin. Forgive me that I should send thee on such an errand, or bid thee seek companionship with such - with Boston hunters of the slave! Thou wert not base enough! It was a great bribe that tempted thee! Again I say, pardon me for sending thee to keep company with such men! Thou only struckst at men accused of crime; not at men accused only of their birth! Thou wouldst not send a man into bondage for two pounds! I will not rank thee with men who, in Boston, for ten dollars, would enslave a negro now! Rest still, Herod! Be quiet, Nero! Sleep, St. Dominic, and sleep, O Torquemada! in your fiery jail! Sleep, Jeffreys, underneath the altar of the church' which seeks with Christian charity to hide your hated bones."

"Well, my brethren, these are only the beginning of sorrows. There will be other victims yet; this will not settle the question. What shall we do? I think I am a calm man and a cool man, and I have a word or two to say as to what we shall do. Never obey the law. Keep the law of God. Next I say, resist not evil with evil; resist not now with violence. Why do I say this? Will you tell me that I am a coward? Perhaps I am; at least I am not afraid to be called one. Why do I say, then, do not now resist with violence? Because it is not time just yet; it would not succeed. If I had the eloquence that I sometimes dream of, which goes into a crowd of men, and gathers them in its mighty arm, and sways them as the pendent boughs of yonder elm shall be shaken by the summer breeze next June, I would not give that counsel. I would call on men, and lift up my voice like a trumpet through the whole land, until I had gathered millions out of the North and the South, and they should crush slavery for ever, as the ox crushes the spider underneath his feet. But such eloquence is given to no man. It was not given to the ancient Greek who shook the arsenal and fulmined over Greece.' He that so often held the nobles and the mob of Rome within his hand, had it not. He that spoke as never man spake, and who has since gathered two hundred millions to his name, had it not. No man has it. The ablest must wait for time! It is idle to resist here and now. It is not the hour. If in 1765 they had attempted to carry out the Revolution by force, they would have failed. Had it failed, we had not been here to-day. There would have been no little monument at Lexington'sacred to liberty and the rights of mankind,' honoring the men who fell in the cause of God and their country. No little monument at Concord; nor that tall pile of eloquent stone at Bunker Hill, to proclaim that Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.' Success is due to the discretion, heroism, calmness, and forbearance of our fathers: let us wait our time. It will come - perhaps will need no sacrifice of blood."1

Gentlemen, I think Judge Finch could construct a misdemeanor out of these words; you will find in them nothing but the plain speech of a minister of the Christian religion.

On the 6th of July, 1851, I preached "Of the three chief Safeguards of Society," and said :

"Nowhere in the world is there a people so orderly, so much attached to law, as the people of these Northern States. But one law is an exception. The people of the North hate the fugitive slave law, as they have never hated any law since the stamp act. I know there are men in the Northern States who like it, who would have invented slavery, had it not existed long before. But the mass of the Northern people hate this law, because it is hostile to the purpose of all just human law, hostile to the

12 Parker's Occasional Sermons, p. 334-337, 343-348, 351, 352.

SOME MERCHANTS AND MINISTERS FRIENDLY TO KIDNAPPING. 195

purpose of society, hostile to the purpose of individual life; because it is hostile to the law of God, — bids the wrong, forbids the right. We disobey that, for the same reason that we keep other laws: because we reverence the law of God. Why should we keep that odious law which makes us hated wherever justice is loved? Because we must sometimes do a disagreeable deed to accomplish an agreeable purpose? The purpose of that law is to enable three hundred thousand slaveholders to retake on our soil the men they once stole on other soil! Most of the city churches of the North seem to think that is a good thing. Very well; is it worth while for fifteen million freemen to transgress the plainest of natural laws, the most obvious instincts of the human heart, and the plainest duties of Christianity, for that purpose? The price to pay is the religious integrity of fifteen million men; the thing to buy is a privilege for three hundred thousand slaveholders to use the North as a hunting field whereon to kidnap men at our cost. Judge you of that bargain."

"I adjure you to reverence a government that is right, statutes that are right, officers that are right; but to disobey every thing that is wrong. I intreat you by your love for your country, by the memory of your fathers, by your reverence for Jesus Christ, yea, by the deep and holy love of God which Jesus taught, and you now feel."1

You will say all this is but indispensable duty; but the judge who hanged a man for treason because he promised to make his son "heir to the Crown"-meaning the "Crown Tavern" that he lived inwould doubtless find treason in my words also.

On the 12th of April, 1852, I delivered an address to commemorate the first anniversary of the Kidnapping of Thomas Sims, and said:

:

"But when the rulers have inverted their function, and enacted wickedness into a law which treads down the unalienable rights of man to such a degree as this, then I know no ruler but God, no law but natural Justice. I tear the hateful statute of kidnappers to shivers; I trample it underneath my feet. I do it in the name of all law; in the name of Justice and of Man; in the name of the dear God."

"You remember the decision of the Circuit judge, - himself soon to be summoned by death before the Judge who is no respecter of persons, not allowing the destined victim his last hope, 'the great writ of right.' The decision left him entirely at the mercy of the other kidnappers. The Court-room was crowded with 'respectable people,' 'gentlemen of property and standing:' they received the decision with 'applause and the clapping of hands.' Seize a lamb out of a flock, a wolf from a pack of wolves, the lambs bleat with sympathy, the wolves howl with fellowship and fear; but when a competitor for the Presidency sends back to eternal bondage a poor, friendless negro, asking only his limbs, wealthy gentlemen of Boston applaud the outrage.

'O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason!""

"When the Fugitive Slave Bill passed, the six New England States lay fast asleep : Massachusetts slept soundly, her head pillowed on her unsold bales of cotton and of woollen goods, dreaming of 'orders from the South.' Justice came to waken her, and whisper of the peril of nine thousand citizens; and she started in her sleep, and, being frighted, swore a prayer or two, then slept again. But Boston woke, — sleeping, in her shop, with cars open, and her eye on the market, her hand on her purse, dreaming

1 2 Parker's Occasional Sermons, p. 392-394.

of goods for sale,- Boston woke broadly up, and fired a hundred guns for joy. O Boston, Boston! if thou couldst have known, in that thine hour, the things which belong unto thy peace! But no: they were hidden from her eyes. She had prayed to her god, to Money; he granted her the request, but sent leanness into her soul."

"Yet one charge has been made against the Government, which seems to me a little harsh and unjust. It has been said the administration preferred low and contemptible men as their tools; judges who blink at law, advocates of infamy, and men cast off from society for perjury, for nameless crimes, and sins not mentionable in English speech; creatures not so good as the dogs that licked Lazarus's sores; but, like flies, still buzzing upon any thing that is raw. There is a semblance of justice in the charge: witness Philadelphia, Buffalo, Boston; witness New York. It is true, for kidnappers the Government did take men that looked like a bull-dog just come to man's estate;' men whose face declared them, if not the devil, at least his twin-brother.' There are kennels of the courts wherein there settles down all that the law breeds most foul, loathsome, and hideous and abhorrent to the eye of day; there this contaminating puddle gathers its noisome ooze, slowly, stealthily, continually, agglomerating its fetid mass by spontaneous cohesion, and sinking by the irresistible gravity of rottenness into that abhorred deep, the lowest, ghastliest pit in all the subterranean vaults of human sin. It is true the Government has skimmed the top and dredged the bottom of these kennels of the courts, taking for its purpose the scum and sediment thereof, the Squeers, the Fagins, and the Quilps of the law, the monsters of the court. Blame not the Government; it took the best it could get. It was necessity, not will, which made the selection. Such is the stuff that kidnappers must be made of. If you wish to kill a man, it is not bread you buy: it is poison. Some of the instruments of Government were such as one does not often look upon. But, of old time, an inquisitor was always 'a horrid-looking fellow, as beseemed his trade.' It is only justice that a kidnapper should bear his great commission in his look.""

I pity the kidnappers, the poor tools of men almost as base. I would not hurt a hair of their heads; but I would take the thunder of the moral world, and dash its bolted lightning on this crime of stealing men, till the name of kidnapping should be like Sodom and Gomorrah. It is piracy to steal a man in Guinea; what is it to do this in Boston?

"I pity the merchants who, for their trade, were glad to steal their countrymen; I wish them only good. Debate in yonder hall has shown how little of humanity there is in the trade of Boston. She looks on all the horrors which intemperance has wrought, and daily deals in every street; she scrutinizes the jails, they are filled by rum; she looks into the alms-houses, crowded full by rum; she walks her streets, and sees the perishing classes fall, mowed down by rum; she enters the parlors of wealthy men, looks into the bridal chamber, and meets death: the ghosts of the slain are there, men slain by rum. She knows it all, yet says, 'There is an interest at stake!’the interest of rum; let man give way! Boston does this to-day. Last year she stole a man; her merchants stole a man! The sacrifice of man to money, when shall it have an end? I pity those merchants who honor money more than man. Their gold is cankered, and their soul is brass, is rusted brass. They must come up before the posterity which they affect to scorn. What voice can plead for them before their own children? The eye that mocketh at the justice of its son, and scorneth to obey the mercy of its daughter, the ravens of posterity shall pick it out, and the young eagles eat it up!

"But there is yet another tribunal: 'After the death the judgment!' When he maketh inquisition for the blood of the innocent, what shall the stealers of men reply? Boston merchants, where is your brother, Thomas Sims? Let Cain reply to Christ."1

1

Parker's Additional Speeches, p. 50, 70, 88, 89, 92, 93, 100, 101.

WEBSTER AND THE STEALERS OF MEN.

197

The Sunday after Mr. Webster's death, Oct. 31, 1852, I spoke of that powerful man; listen to this:

"Mr. Webster stamped his foot, and broke through into the great hollow of practical atheism, which undergulfs the State and Church. Then what a caving in was there! The firm-set base of northern cities quaked and yawned with gaping rents. Penn's sandy foundation' shook again, and black men fled from the city of brotherly love, as doves, with plaintive cry, flee from a farmer's barn when summer lightning stabs the roof. There was a twist in Faneuil Hall, and the doors could not open wide enough for Liberty to regain her ancient Cradle; only soldiers, greedy to steal a man, themselves stole out and in. Ecclesiastic quicksand ran down the hole amain. Metropolitan churches toppled, and pitched, and canted, and cracked, their bowing walls all out of plumb. Colleges, broken from the chain which held them in the stream of time, rushed towards the abysmal rent. Harvard led the way, Christo et Ecclesia' in her hand. Down plunged Andover, Conscience and the Constitution' clutched in its ancient, failing arm. New Haven began to cave in. Doctors of Divinity, orthodox, heterodox, with only a doxy of doubt, 'no settled opinion,' had great alacrity in sinking, and went down quick, as live as ever, into the pit of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, the bottomless pit of lower law, one with his mother, cloaked by a surplice, hid beneath his sinister arm, and an acknowledged brother grasped by his remaining limb. Fossils of theology, dead as Ezekiel's bones, took to their feet again, and stood up for most arrant wrong. "There is no higher law of God,' quoth they, as they went down; no golden rule, only the statutes of men.' A man with mythologic ear might fancy that he heard a snickering laugh run round the world below, snorting, whinnying, and neighing, as it echoed from the infernal spot pressed by the fallen monsters of ill-fame, who, thousands of years ago, on the same errand, had plunged down the self-same way. What tidings the echo bore, Dante nor Milton could not tell. Let us leave that to darkness, and to silence, and to death.

6

"But spite of all this, in every city, in every town, in every college, and in each capsizing church, there were found Faithful Men, who feared not the monster, heeded not the stamping; nay, some doctors of divinity were found living. In all their houses there was light, and the destroying angel shook them not. The word of the Lord came in open vision to their eye; they had their lamps trimmed and burning, their loins girt; they stood road-ready. Liberty and Religion turned in thither, and the slave found bread and wings. When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will hold me up!'

"After the 7th of March, Mr. Webster became the ally of the worst of men, the forefront of kidnapping. The orator of Plymouth Rock was the advocate of slavery; the hero of Bunker Hill put chains round Boston Court House; the applauder of Adams and Jefferson was a tool of the slaveholder, and a keeper of slavery's dogs, the associate of the kidnapper, and the mocker of men who loved the right. Two years he lived with that rabble rout for company, his name the boast of every vilest thing.

'Oh, how unlike the place from whence he fell!'"'

"Do men mourn for him? See how they mourn! The streets are hung with black. The newspapers are sad colored. The shops are put in mourning. The Mayor and Aldermen wear crape. Wherever his death is made known, the public business stops, and flags drop half-mast down. The courts adjourn. The courts of Massachusetts - at Boston, at Dedham, at Lowell, all adjourn; the courts of New Hampshire, of Maine, of New York; even at Baltimore and Washington, the courts adjourn; for the great lawyer is dead, and Justice must wait another day. Only the

United States Court, in Boston, trying a man for helping Shadrach out of the furnace of the kidnappers, the court which executes the Fugitive Slave Bill,- that does not adjourn; that keeps on; its worm dies not, and the fire of its persecution is not quenched, when death puts out the lamp of life! Injustice is hungry for its prey, and must not be balked. It was very proper! Symbolical court of the Fugitive Slave Bill it does not respect life, why should it death? and, scorning liberty, why should it heed decorum?"1

On the 12th of February, 1854, I preached "Some Thoughts on the new Assault upon Freedom in America."

"Who put Slavery in the Constitution; made it Federal? who put it in the new States? who got new soil to plant it in? who carried it across the Mississippi — into Louisiana, Florida, Texas, Utah, New Mexico? who established it in the Capital of the United States? who adopted Slavery and volunteered to catch a runaway, in 1793, and repeated the act in 1850, — in defiance of all law, all precedent, all right? Why, it was the North. 6 Spain armed herself with bloodhounds,' said Mr. Pitt, to extirpate the wretched natives of America.' In 1850, the Christian Democracy set worse bloodhounds afoot to pursue Ellen Craft; offered them five dollars for the run, if they did not take her; ten if they did! The price of blood was Northern money; the bloodhounds—they were Kidnappers born at the North, bred there, kennelled in her church, fed on her sacraments, blessed by her priests! In 1778, Mr. Pitt had a yet harsher name for the beasts wherewith despotic Spain hunted the red man in the woods he called them Hell Hounds. But they only hunted 'savages, heathens, men born in barbarous lands.' What would he say of the pack which in 1851 hunted American Christians, in the Athens of America,' and stole a man on the grave of Hancock and Adams all Boston looking on, and its priests blessing the deed!' "See what encourages the South to make new encroachments. She has been eminently successful in her former demands, especially with the last. The authors of the fugitive slave bill did not think that enormity could be got through Congress : it was too atrocious in itself, too insulting to the North. But Northern men sprang forward to defend it-powerful politicians supported it to the fullest extent. The worse it was, the better they liked it. Northern merchants were in favor of it-it would conciliate the South.' Northern ministers in all the churches of commerce baptized it, defended it out of the Old Testament, or the New Testament. The Senator of Boston gave it his mighty aid, he went through the land a huckster of Slavery, peddling Atheism: the Representative of Boston gave it his vote. Their constituents sustained both! All the great cities of the North executed the bill. The leading Journals of Boston advised the merchants to withhold all commercial intercourse from Towns which opposed Kidnapping. There was a 'Union Meeting' at Faneuil Hall. You remember the men on the platform: the speeches are not forgotten. The doctrine that there is a Law of God above the passions of the multitude and the ambition of their leaders, was treated with scorn and hooting: a loud guffaw of vulgar ribaldry went up against the Justice of the Infinite God! All the great cities did the same. Atheism was inaugurated as the first principle of Republican government; in politics, religion makes men mad! Mr. Clay declared that no Northern gentleman will ever help return a fugitive Slave!' What took place at Philadelphia? New York? Cincinnati? - nay, at Boston? The Northern churches of commerce thought Slavery was a blessing, Kidnapping a 'grace.' The Democrats and Whigs vie with each other in devotion to the fugitive slave bill. The Compromises' are the golden rule. The

1 1 Parker's Additional Speeches, 235-37, 246 - 47.