Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/199

Rh neering on the part of its official rulers, no one of them for a long time being much in advance of the million; and, while it is so, it is certainly best that the million are very-much left to themselves. But if we could have a man as much in advance of the people in all these three qualities, and especially in the chief quality—as the skilful projector of a cotton mill is in advance of the girls who tend the looms, in all that relates to the projection of a cotton mill,—then we should know what it was to have a r^al leader, a ruler who could be the school-master of the nation, not ruling over our bodies by fear, but in the spirit of love, setting us lessons which we could not have devised, nor even understand without his help ; one who preserves all the good of the old, and adds thereto much new good not seen before, and so instructs and helps forward the people. But, as the good God has not sent such a man, and he is not to be made by men, only found, nor in the least helped in any of those three qualities by all the praise we can pour on him; so it comes to pass that an ordinary ruler is a person of no very great consequence. His importance is official and not personal, and as only the person dies, not the office, the death of such an one is not commonly an affair of much significance. Suppose after Mr. Tyler or Mr. Polk had taken the oath of office, he had appointed a common clerk, a man of routine and experience, as his factotum, with power to affix the presidential name to necessary documents, and then had quietly and in silence departed from this Kfe, how much would the nation have lost? A new and just political idea; an organization thereof? No such thing. If the public press had kept the secret, we should not have found out their death till this time. The obscure clerk could tend the mill as well as his famous master, who would not be missed.

Louis XIY. said, "The State! That is I." He was the State. So when the ruler dies, the State is in peril. If the King of Prussia, the Emperor of Russia or Austria, or the Pope of Rome were to die, there would be a revolution, and nobody knows what would come of it; for there the ruler is master of the people, who are subjects, not citizens, and the old master dying, it is not easy to yoke the people to the chariot of a new one. Here the people are the State; and though the power of General Taylor was