Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 1 (of 3)Parker, Theodore
Religion
Speeches, Addresses, and Occasional Sermons, Volume 1 (of 3)
Parker, Theodore
Sermons, American; Unitarianism
I say again it is time for the people to take up this matter. Your
Congress will do nothing till you tell them what and how! Your 29th
Congress can do little good. Its sands are nearly run, God be thanked!
It is the most infamous Congress we ever had. We began with the Congress
that declared Independence, and swore by the Eternal Justice of God. We
have come down to the 29th Congress, which declared war existed by the
act of Mexico, declared a lie; the Congress that swore by the Baltimore
Convention! We began with George Washington, and have got down to James
K. Polk.
It is time for the people of Massachusetts to instruct their servants in
Congress to oppose this war; to refuse all supplies for it; to ask for
the recall of the army into our own land. It is time for us to tell
them that not an inch of slave territory shall ever be added to the
realm. Let us remonstrate; let us petition; let us command. If any class
of men have hitherto been remiss, let them come forward now and give us
their names--the merchants, the manufacturers, the whigs and the
democrats. If men love their country better than their party or their
purse, now let them show it.
Let us ask the General Court of Massachusetts to cancel every commission
which the Governor has given to the officers of the volunteers. Let us
ask them to disband the companies not yet mustered into actual service;
and then, if you like that, ask them to call a convention of the people
of Massachusetts, to see what we shall do in reference to the war; in
reference to the annexation of more territory; in reference to the
violation of the Constitution! (Loud groans from crowds of rude fellows
in several parts of the hall.) That was a tory groan; they never dared
groan so in Faneuil Hall before; not even the British tories, when they
had no bayonets to back them up! I say, let us ask for these things!
Your President tells us it is treason to talk so! Treason is it? treason
to discuss a war which the government made, and which the people are
made to pay for? If it be treason to speak against the war, what was it
to make the war, to ask for 50,000 men and $74,000,000 for the war? Why,
if the people cannot discuss the war they have got to fight and to pay
for, who under heaven can? Whose business is it, if it is not yours and
mine? If my country is in the wrong, and I know it, and hold my peace,
then I am guilty of treason, moral treason. Why, a wrong,--it is only
the threshold of ruin. I would not have my country take the next step.
Treason is it, to show that this war is wrong and wicked! Why, what if
George III., any time from '75 to '83, had gone down to Parliament and
told them it was treason to discuss the war then waging against these
colonies! What do you think the Commons would have said? What would the
Lords say? Why, that King, foolish as he was, would have been lucky, if
he had not learned there was a joint in his neck, and, stiff as he bore
him, that the people knew how to find it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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