Till the fugitive slave law was passed, we did not know what a great saint Iscariot was. I think there ought to be a chapel for him, and a day set apart in the calendar. Let him have his chapel in the navy-yard at Washington. He has got a priest there already. And for a day in the calendar—set apart for all time the seventh of March!
Let us look at some other things in that Judge's address to the grand jury. "Unjust and oppressive laws may indeed be passed by human government. But if infinite and inscrutable Wisdom permits political society ... to establish such laws, may not the same Wisdom permit and require individuals ... to obey them?" Ask the prophets in such a case, if they would have felt themselves permitted and required to obey them! Ask the men who were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection; who had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment; who were stoned and sawn asunder; who were slain with the sword; who wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, destitute, afflicted, and tormented, of whom the world was not worthy! Ask the apostles, who thanked God they were counted worthy to suffer shame in the name of Christ! Ask Paul, who was eight times publicly beaten, thrice shipwrecked; and in perils of waters, of robbers, of the heathen, of false brethren—that worst of all peril! Nay, ask Christ; let the Crucified reply,—whether, when a wicked law is made, and we are commanded to keep it, God means we should! Ask the men who, with their ocean-wearied feet, consecrated the rock of Plymouth forever! Ask the patriots of the Revolution! What do they say? I will not give the answer. Even the martyred Jesuits say No. Who is it that says Yes? Judas and the Judge. Let them go—each "to his own place." Let me say no more of them.
This attempt to keep the people down by false doctrine, is no new thing. But to say that there is no law higher than what the State can make, is practical atheism. It is not a denial of God in his person; that is only speculative atheism. It is a denial of the functions and attributes of God; that is real atheism. If there is no God to make a law for me, then there is no God for me.
The law of the land is so sacred, it must override the law of God, must it? Let us see if all the laws of the United States are kept everywhere. Let a black man go to South Carolina in a ship, and we shall see. Let the British minister complain that South Carolina puts British subjects in jail, for the color of their skin. Mr. Secretary Clayton tells him, We cannot execute the laws of the United States in South Carolina. Why not? Because the people of South Carolina will not allow it!
Are the laws of Massachusetts kept in Boston, then? The usury law says, Thou shalt not take more than six per cent. on thy money. Is that kept? There are thirty-four millions of banking capital in Massachusetts, and I think that every dollar of this capital has broken this law within the past twelve months; and yet no complaint has been made. There are three or four hundred brothels in this city of Boston, and ten or twelve hundred shops for the sale of rum. All of them are illegal: some are as well known to the police as is this house; indeed, a great deal more frequented by some of them, than any house of God. Does anybody disturb them? No! I have a letter from an alderman who furnishes me with facts of this nature, who says, that "Some of the low places are prosecuted, some broken up." Last Saturday night, the very men who guarded Mr. Sims, I am told, were playing cards in his prison-house, contrary to the laws of Massachusetts. In Court Square, in front of the court-house, is a rum-shop, one of the most frequented in the city, open at all hours of the day, and, for aught I know, of the night too. I never passed when its "fire was quenched," and its "worm" dead. Is its owner prosecuted? How many laws of Massachusetts have been violated this very week, in this very city, by the slave-hunters here, by the very officers of the State? What is the meaning of this? Every law which favors the accumulation of money, must be kept; but those which prohibit the unjust accumulation of money by certain classes—they need not be kept.[29]
No doubt it would be a great pity to have the city government careful to keep the laws of the city,—to suppress rum-shops, and save the citizens from the almshouse, the jail, and the gallows. Such laws may be executed at Truro and Wellfleet; but it is quite needless for the officers of "The Athens of America," to attend to the temperance laws.[30]—What a pity for the magistrates of Boston to heed the laws of the State! No; it is the fugitive slave law that they must keep.
II. A great deal of pains has been taken to impress the people with their "moral duty to obey the fugitive slave law." To carry it out, government needs base men; and that, my brothers, is a crop which never fails. Rye and wheat may get blasted many times in the course of years; the potato may rot; apples and peaches fail. But base men never fail. Put up your black pirate-flag in the market-place, offer "money and office," and they will come as other carrion-vultures to their prey. The olive, the fig, and the orange are limited in their range; even Indian corn and oats will not grow everywhere; but base men are indigenous all the world over, between the tropics, and under a polar sky. No bad scheme ever failed for lack of bad men to carry it out. Do you want to kill Baptists and Quakers in Boston? There are the men for you. To hang "witches" at Salem? There are hangmen in plenty on Gallows Hill. Would James the Second butcher his subjects? He found his "human" tools ready. Would Elizabeth murder the Puritans and Catholics? There was no lack of ruffians. Would bloody Mary burn the Protestants? There were more executioners than victims. Would the Spanish Inquisition torture and put to death the men for whom Christ died? She found priests and "gentlemen," ready for their office. Would Nero murder the Christians, and make a spectacle of their sufferings? Rome is full of scoundrels to do the deed, and teems with spectators rushing to the amphitheatre at the cry of "Christians to the Lions!" all finding a holiday in their brothers' agony. Would the high-priests crucify the Son of man? They found a commissioner to issue the mandate, a marshal to enforce it, a commissioner to try him by illegal process,—for the process against Christ was almost as unconstitutional as that against Sims,—they found a commissioner ready to condemn Christ, against his own conscience, soldiers ready to crucify him. Ay! and there was a Peter to deny him, and a Judas to betray, and now there is a judge with his legal ethics, to justify the betrayal! I promised not to speak of Judas or the judge again, but they will come up before me! It is true, that, if in Boston, some judicial monster should wish to seethe a man in a pot of scalding water, he would find another John Boilman in Boston, as Judge Jeffries found one in England, in 1686.
The churches of New England, and the North, have had their trials. In my time they have been tried in various ways. The temperance reformation tried them. They have had perils on account of slavery. The Mexican war tried them; the fugitive slave law has put them to the rack. But, never in my day, have the churches been so sorely tried, nor done so well as now. The very letter of the New Testament on the one side, and of the Old Testament on the other, both condemned the law; the spirit of them both was against all slavery.
There are two great sects in Christendom,—the churches of Christianity, and the churches of commerce. The churches of Christianity always do well: they think that religion is love to God, and love to man. But the churches of commerce, which know no higher law, what should they do? Some of the ministers of the churches of commerce were wholly silent. Why so? The poor ministers were very modest all at once. Now, modesty is a commendable virtue; but see how it works. Here is a man who has given his mind ten, twenty, or thirty years to the study of theology, and knows every Hebrew particle of the Old Testament, and every Greek particle of the New Testament, as well as he knows the Lord's Prayer; every great work on the subject of Christianity, from Nicodemus down to Norton. Let him come out and say that the Old Testament was written like other books; let him say that the miracles of the Old and New Testament are like the miracles of the Popish legends; then, ministers in their pulpits, who never studied theology or philosophy, or pretended to study, only to know, the historical development of religion in the world,—they will come down instantly upon our poor man, call his doctrines "false," and call him an "infidel," an "atheist." But let a rich parishioner, or a majority of the rich parishioners, be in favor of the fugitive slave law, and all at once the minister is very modest indeed. He says to his people, by silence or by speech, "I do not understand these things; but you, my people, who all your lives are engaged in making money and nothing else, and worship mammon and nothing else, you understand them a great deal better than I do. My modesty forbids me to speak. Let us pray!"[31]