"Slavery in Massachussets" - читать интересную книгу автора (Thoreau Henry David)

dog that returns to his vomit.

The Liberator and the Commonwealth were the only papers in Boston,
as far as I know, which made themselves heard in condemnation of the
cowardice and meanness of the authorities of that city, as exhibited
in '51. The other journals, almost without exception, by their
manner of referring to and speaking of the Fugitive Slave Law, and the
carrying back of the slave Sims, insulted the common sense of the
country, at least. And, for the most part, they did this, one would
say, because they thought so to secure the approbation of their
patrons, not being aware that a sounder sentiment prevailed to any
extent in the heart of the Commonwealth. I am told that some of them
have improved of late; but they are still eminently time-serving. Such
is the character they have won.

But, thank fortune, this preacher can be even more easily reached by
the weapons of the reformer than could the recreant priest. The free
men of New England have only to refrain from purchasing and reading
these sheets, have only to withhold their cents, to kill a score of
them at once. One whom I respect told me that he purchased
Mitchell's Citizen in the cars, and then throw it out the window.
But would not his contempt have been more fatally expressed if he
had not bought it?

Are they Americans? are they New Englanders? are they inhabitants of
Lexington and Concord and Framingham, who read and support the
Boston Post, Mail, Journal, Advertiser, Courier, and Times? Are
these the Flags of our Union? I am not a newspaper reader, and may
omit to name the worst.

Could slavery suggest a more complete servility than some of these
journals exhibit? Is there any dust which their conduct does not lick,
and make fouler still with its slime? I do not know whether the Boston
Herald is still in existence, but I remember to have seen it about the
streets when Sims was carried off. Did it not act its part
well-serve its master faithfully! How could it have gone lower on
its belly? How can a man stoop lower than he is low? do more than
put his extremities in the place of the head he has? than make his
head his lower extremity? When I have taken up this paper with my
cuffs turned up, I have heard the gurgling of the sewer through
every column. I have felt that I was handling a paper picked out of
the public gutters, a leaf from the gospel of the gambling-house,
the groggery, and the brothel, harmonizing with the gospel of the
Merchants' Exchange.

The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East
and West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not send men
to Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and
sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty, while- I might
here insert all that slavery implies and is- it is the mismanagement