Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/337

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CONDITION OF AMERICA.
325

274,567 persons, considerably less than half the population of this city. But if South Carolina says to the State of New York, with three million men in it, Let us bring our slaves to New York, what will the "Hards" and the "Softs" and the "Silver Greys" answer? Gentlemen, we shall hear what we shall hear. I fear that not an office-holder of any note would oppose the measure. It might be carried with the present Supreme Court, or Congress, I make no doubt.

But this is not the end. After the Gadsden Treaty, the enslavement of Nebraska, the extension of slavery to the free States, the seizure of Cuba, with other islands—San Domingo, &c.,—there is one step more—the Re-establishment of the African slave trade.

A recent number of the Southern Standard thus develops the thought: " With firmness and judgment we can open up the African slave emigration again to people the whole region of the tropics. We can boldly defend this upon the most enlarged system of philanthropy. It is far better for the wild races of Africa themselves." "The good old Las Casas, in 1519, was the first to advise Spain to import Africans to her colonies…. Experience has shown his scheme was founded in wise and Christian philanthropy….The time is coming when we will boldly defend this emigration [kidnapping men in Africa and selling them in the 'Christian Republic'] before the world. The hypocritical cant and whining morality of the latter-day saints will die away before the majesty of commerce…. We have too long been governed by psalm-singing schoolmasters from the North…. The folly commenced in our own Government uniting with Great Britain to declare slave-importing piracy." ... "A general rupture in Europe would force upon us the undisputed sway of the Gulf of Mexico and the West Indies. . . . With Cuba and St Domingo, we could control the … power of the world. Our true policy is to look to Brazil as the next great slave power. …A treaty of commerce and alliance with Brazil will give us the control over the Gulf of Mexico and its border countries, together with the islands; and the consequence of this will place African slavery beyond the reach of fanaticism at home or abroad. These two great slave powers….ought to guard and strengthen their mutual interests.