his personal liberty, than for a white man to fight for political independence, and against a tax of three pence a pound on tea. Wait a little, and things will come round.

III. The existence of slavery endangers all our Democratic institutions. It does this if only tolerated as an exceptional measure-a matter of present convenience, and still more when proclaimed as an instantial principle, a rule of political conduct for all time and every place. Look at this: In 1790 there were (say) 300,000 slaves; soon they make their first doubling, and are 600,000; then their second, 1,200,000; then their third, 2,400,000. They are now in the process of doubling the fourth time, and will soon be 4,800,000; then comes the fifth double, 9,600,000; then the sixth, 19,200,000. Before the year of our Lord nineteen hundred there will be twenty million slaves!

An Anglo-Saxon with common sense does not like this Africanization of America; he wishes the superior race to multiply rather than the inferior. Besides, it is plain to a one-eyed man that slavery is an irreconcilable enemy of the progressive development of Democracy; that, if allowed to exist, it must be allowed to spread, to gain political, social, and ecclesiastical power; and all that it gains for the slaveholders is just so much taken from the freemen.

Look at this-there are twenty Southern representatives who represent nothing but property in man, and yet their vote counts as much in Congress as the twenty Northerners who stand for the will of 1,800,000 freemen. Slavery gives the South the same advantage in the choice of President; consequently the slaveholding South has long controlled the Federal power of the nation.

Look at the recent acts of the slave power! The Fugitive Slave bill, the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the Dred Scott decision, the fillibustering against Cuba (till found too strong), and now against Mexico and other feeble neighbours, and, to crown all, the actual re-opening of the African slave-trade!

The South has kidnapped men in Boston, and made the Judges of Massachusetts go under her symbolic chain to enter the courts of justice (!) She has burned houses and butchered innocent men in Kansas, and the perpetrators of that wickedness were rewarded by the Federal government with high office and great pay! Those things are

notorious; they have stirred up some little indignation at the North, and freemen begin to think of defending their liberty. Hence came the Free-Soil party, and hence the Republican party-it contemplates no direct benefit to the slave, only the defence of the white man in his national rights, or his conventional privileges. It will grow stronger every year, and also bolder. It must lay down principles as a platform to work its measure on; the principles will be found to require much more than what was at first proposed, and even from this platform Republicans will promptly see that they cannot defend the natural rights of freemen without destroying that slavery which takes away the natural rights of a negro. So, first, the wise and just men of the party will sympathize with such as seek to liberate the slaves, either peacefully or by violence; next, they will declare their opinions in public; and, finally, the whole body of the party will come to the same sympathy and the same opinion. Then, of course, they will encourage men like Capt. Brown, give him money and all manner of help, and also encourage the slaves whenever they shall rise to take their liberty, at all hazards. When called to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, they will go readily enough and do the work by removing the cause of insurrection-that is-by destroying slavery itself.

An Anti-slavery party, under one name or another, will before long control the Federal Government, and will exercise its constitutional rights, and perform its constitutional duty, and "guarantee a Republican form of government to every State in the Union." That is a work of time and peaceful legislation. But the short work of violence will be often tried, and each attempt will gain something for the cause of humanity, even by its dreadful process of blood.

IV. But there is yet another agency that will act against slavery. There are many mischievous persons who are ready for any wicked work of violence. They abound in the city of New York (a sort of sink where the villany of both hemispheres settles down, and genders that moral pestilence which steams up along the columns of the New York Herald and the New York Observer, the great escapepipes of secular and ecclesiastical wickedness), they commit the great crimes of violence and robbery at home, plunder

emigrants, and engage in the slave-trade, or venture on fillibustering expeditions. This class of persons is common in all the South. One of the legitimate products of her "peculiar institution," they are familiar with violence, ready and able for murder. Public opinion sustains such men. Bully Brooks was but one of their representatives in Congress. Now-a-days they are fond of slavery, defend it, and seek to spread it. But the time must come one day -it may come any time-when the lovers of mischief will do a little fillibustering at home, and rouse up the slaves to rob, burn, and kill. Prudent carpenters sweep up all the shavings in their shops at night, and remove this food of conflagration to a safe place, lest the spark of a candle, the end of a cigar, or a friction-match should swiftly end their wealth, slowly gathered together. The South takes pains to strew her carpenter's shop with shavings, and fill it full thereof. She encourages men to walk abroad with naked candles in their hands and lighted cigars in their mouths; then they scatter friction-matches on the floor, and dance a fillibustering jig thereon. She cries, "Well done! Hurrah for Walker!" "Hurrah for Brooks!" "Hurrah for

the bark Wanderer and its cargo of slaves! Up with the bowie-knife! Down with justice and humanity!" The South must reap as she sows; where she scatters the wind, the whirlwind will come up. It will be a pretty crop for her to reap. Within a few years the South has BURNED ALIVE eight or ten negroes. Other black men looked on, and learned how to fasten the chain, how to pile the green wood, how to set this hell-fire of slavery agoing. The apprentice may be slow to learn, but he has had teaching enough by this time to know the art and mystery of torture; and, depend upon it, the negro will one day apply it to his old tormentors. The fire of vengeance may be waked up even in an African's heart, especially when it is fanned by the wickedness of a white man: then it runs from man to man, from town to town. What shall put it out? The white man's blood!

Now, slavery is a wickedness so vast and so old, so rich and so respectable, supported by the State, the press, the market, and the Church, that all those agencies are needed to oppose it with-those, and many more which I cannot speak of now. You and I prefer the peaceful method; but

I, at least, shall welcome the violent, if no other accomplish the end. So will the great mass of thoughtful and good men at the North; else why do we honour the heroes of the Revolution, and build them monuments all over our blessed New-England? I think you gave money for that of Bunker Hill: I once thought it a folly; now I recognize it as a great sermon in stone, which is worth not only all the money it cost to build it, but all the blood it took to lay its corner-stones. Trust me, its lesson will not be in vain —at the North, I mean, for the LOGIC OF SLAVERY will keep the South on its lower course, and drive it on more swiftly than before. "Capt. Brown's expedition was a failure," I hear it said. I am not quite sure of that. True, it kills fifteen men by sword and shot, and four or five men by the gallows. But it shows the weakness of the greatest slave State in America, the worthlessness of her soldiery, and the utter fear which slavery genders in the bosoms of the masters. Think of the condition of the city of Washington while Brown was at work!

Brown will die, I think, like a martyr, and also like a saint. His noble demeanour, his unflinching bravery, his gentleness, his calm, religious trust in God, and his words. of truth and soberness, cannot fail to make a profound impression on the hearts of Northern men; yes, and on Southern men. For " every human heart is human," &c. I do not think the money wasted, nor the lives thrown away. Many acorns must be sown to have one come up ; even then, the plant grows slow; but it is an oak at last. None of the Christian martyrs died in vain; and from Stephen, who was stoned at Jerusalem, to Mary Dyer, whom our fathers hanged on a bough of "the great tree" on Boston Common, I think there have been few spirits more pure and devoted than John Brown's, and none that gave up their breath in a nobler cause. Let the American State hang his body, and the American Church damn his soul; still, the blessing of such as are ready to perish will fall on him, and the universal justice of the Infinitely perfect God will take him welcome home. The road to heaven is as short from the gallows as from a throne; perhaps, also, as easy.

I suppose you would like to know something about myself. Rome has treated me to bad weather, which tells its

But

story in my health, and certainly does not mend me. I look for brighter days and happier nights. The sad tidings from America-my friends in peril, in exile, in jail, killed, or to be hung-have filled me with grief, and so I fall back a little, but hope to get forward again. God bless you and yours, and comfort you!

Ever affectionately yours,

THEODORE PARKER.

A LETTER TO THE BOSTON ASSOCIATION OF CONGREGATIONAL MINISTERS, TOUCHING CERTAIN MATTERS OF THEIR THEOLOGY.

GENTLEMEN :

The peculiar circumstances of the last few years have placed both you and me in new relations to the public, and to one another. Your recent actions constrain me to write you this public letter, that all may the more fully understand the matter at issue between us, and the course you design to pursue. You are a portion of the Unitarian body, and your opinions and conduct will no doubt have some influence upon that body. You have, I am told, at great length, and in several consecutive meetings, discussed the subject of my connection with your reverend body; you have debated the matter whether you should expel me for heresy, and by a circuitous movement, recently made, have actually excluded me from preaching the Thursday Lecture. I do not call in question your motives, for it is not my office to judge you, neither do I now complain of your conduct, public or private, towards me during the last three years. That has been various. Some members of your association have uniformly treated me with the courtesy common amongst gentlemen; some also with the civilities that are usual amongst ministers of the same denomination. Towards some of your number I entertain an affectionate gratitude for the good words I have heard from their lips in my youth. I feel a great regard for some of

VOL. XII.-Autob. and Miscell.

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