Long ago, the South said the North should not discuss the morality of slavery; that was their business. Well, the controlling men of Boston obeyed. They said, "No: the North shall not discuss the subject of slavery." The lips of yonder college were sewed up with Slavery's iron thread: I hope they will open now. Slavery put its thumbs into the ears, and its fingers over the eyes, of Boston respectability; and it sewed up the mouth of Commerce, Fashion, Politics,—I was going to say Religion; but it did not: it sewed up the mouth only of the churches.
It is not twenty-five years since the Governor of Virginia asked Mayor Otis, of Boston, to put a stop to the efforts of the Abolitionists; and, after three days' search, the police of Boston found the "Liberator," who was making all this mischief. His office was in a garret; and his "only visible auxiliary," quoth Mr. Otis, " was a negro boy." Mr. Otis wanted to ferret out antislavery, and put the heel of the Hartford Convention upon it.
It is not twenty-one years since a Governor of Massachusetts, in his annual message, recommended the Legislature to inquire if some law should not be made to suppress the freedom of speech. It is not yet quite twenty-one years since there was a meeting in Faneuil Hall to denounce the discussion of this very matter. Here is what a distinguished man said ; he was not a young man then: "I would beseech them" [the Abolitionists] " to discard their dangerous abstractions," [the abstractions that "all men are endowed with certain unalienable rights, among which is the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,"] "which they adopt as universal rules of conduct,… which darken the understanding, and mislead the judgment." He would advise them to consider "the precepts and example of their Divine Master. He found slavery, Roman slavery, an institution of the country in which he lived. Did he denounce it? Did he attempt its immediate abolition ? Did he do any thing, or say any thing, which could, in its remotest tendency, encourage resistance and violence ? No: his precept was. Servants (slaves), obey your masters! It was because he would not interfere with the administration of the laws of the land." If the "Divine Master" was Jesus of Nazareth, then no such word is given to us in this Bible. It was only the gospel according to Peleg Sprague. Boston
