"I have studied the records of crime—it is a part of my ministry. I do not find that any College Professor has ever been hanged for murder in all the Anglo-Saxon family of men, till Harvard College had that solitary shame. Is not that enough? Now she is the first to have a Professor that kidnaps men. 'The Athens of America' furnished both!
"I can understand how a man commits a crime of passion, or covetousness, or rage, nay, of revenge, or of ambition. But for a man in Boston, with no passion, no covetousness, no rage, with no ambition nor revenge, to steal a poor negro, to send him into bondage,—I cannot comprehend the fact. I can understand the consciousness of a lion, not a kidnapper's heart."
"But there is another court. The Empsons and the Dudleys have been summoned there before: Jeffreys and Scroggs, the Kanes, and the Curtises, and the Lorings, must one day travel the same unwelcome road. Imagine the scene after man's mythological way. 'Edward, where is thy brother, Anthony?' 'I know not; am I my brother's keeper, Lord?' 'Edward, where is thy brother, Anthony?' 'Oh, Lord, he was friendless, and so I smote him; he was poor, and I starved him of more than life. He owned nothing but his African body. I took that away from him, and gave it to another man!'
"Then listen to the voice of the Crucified—'Did I not tell thee, when on earth, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy understanding and thy heart?"' 'But I thought thy kingdom was not of this world.'
"'Did I not tell thee that thou shouldst love thy neighbor as thyself? Where is Anthony, thy brother? I was a stranger, and you sought my life; naked, and you rent away my skin; in prison, and you delivered me to the tormentors—fate far worse than death. Inasmuch as you did it to Anthony Burns, you did it unto me.'"[222]
Gentlemen, I suppose the honorable Judge had the last three addresses in his mind while concocting his charge to the Grand-Jury which refused to find a bill. I infer this partly from what took place in the room of the next Grand-Jury which found this indictment, and partly also from another source which you will look at for a moment.
I preach on Sundays in the Music Hall, which is owned by a Corporation who rent it to the 28th Congregational Society for their religious meetings. Mr. Charles P. Curtis, father-in-law of the Hon. Judge Curtis, and step-brother of Commissioner Loring, and a more distant relation but intimate friend of George T. Curtis, was then president of that Corporation, and one of its directors. At a meeting of the corporation, held presently after the kidnapping of Mr. Burns, Mr. Charles P. Curtis and his family endeavored to procure a vote of the Corporation to instruct the directors "to terminate the lease of the 28th Congregational Society as soon as it can be legally done, and not to renew it." Mr. Charles P. Curtis managed this matter clandestinely, but not with his usual adroitness, for at the meeting he disclosed the cause of his act,—that Mr. Parker had called his brother a murderer, probably referring to the passage just read from the "Lesson for the Day." But he took nothing by that motion.[223]
What influence this private and familistic disposition had in framing the Judge's charge, I leave it for you and the People of America to determine. You also can conjecture whether it had any effect on Mr. Greenough, the other son-in-law of Mr. Charles P. Curtis, who refused to return my salutation, and who, "by a miracle," was put on the new Grand-Jury after the old one was discharged, and then was so "very anxious to procure an indictment" against me. I leave all that with you. You can easily appreciate the efforts made to silence not only my Sunday preaching, but also the magnificent eloquence of Wendell Phillips; yes, to choke all generous speech, in order that kidnappers might pursue their vocation with none to molest or make them afraid.