Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/328

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CONDITION OF AMERICA.

of Northern fanaticism burst harmless at her feet; the contempt for her Northern revilers is the result of her consciousness of her influence in the political world. She makes and unmakes Presidents; she dictates her terms to the Northern Democracy and they obey her. She selects from among the faithful of the North a man upon whom she can rely, and she makes him President." This latter is true! The opinion of Richmond is of more weight than the opinion of New York. Slavery, the political Gog on the outside, steers the ark of commercial Noah, and makes it rough or smooth weather inside, just as he likes.

"In the early days of the Republic, the superior sagacity of her statesmen enabled them to rivet so firmly the shackles of the slave, that the Abolitionists will never be able to unloose them."

"A wide and impassable gulf separates the noble, proud, glorious Old Dominion from her Northern traducers; the mastiff dares not willingly assail the skunk!" "When Virginia takes the field, she crushes the whole Abolition party; her slaughter is wholesale, and a hundred thousand Abolitionists are cut down when she issues her commands!"

Again (April 4th, 1854), "A hundred Southern gentlemen, armed with riding-whips, could chase an army of invading Abolitionists into the Atlantic."

In reference to the project at the North of sending Northern Abolitionists along with the Northern slave-breeders to Nebraska, to put freedom into the soil before slavery gets there, the Examiner says: "Why, a hundred wild, lank, half-horse, half-alligator Missouri and Arkansas emigrants would, if so disposed, chase out of Nebraska and Kansas all the Abolitionists who have figured for the last twenty years at Anti-slavery meetings."

I say slavery is not profitable for the nation nor for a State, but it is profitable for slave- owners. You will see why. If the Northern capitalist owned the weavers and spinners at Lowell and Lawrence, New England would be poorer; and the working-men would not be so well off", or so well educated; but Undershot and Overshot, Turbine Brothers, Spindle & Co., would be richer and would get larger dividends. Land monopoly in England enfeebles the island, but enriches the aristocracy. How poor, ill-fed, and ill-clad were the French peasants before the Revolution;