Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/255

Rh its present character and condition. They founded schools and colleges; they trained up their children in a stem discipline which we shall not forget for two centuries to come. The remembrance of their trials, their heroism, and their piety affects our preaching to-day, and our politics also. The difference between New England and New York, from 1750 to 1790, is the difference between the sons of the religious colony and the sons of the worldly colony. You know something of New York politics before the Revolution, and also since the Revolution ; the difference between New York and New England politics at that time, is the difference between the sons of religious men and the sons of men who cared very much less for religion.

Just now, when I said that all the North is like New England, I meant substantially so. The West is our own daughter. New England has helped people the western part of the State of New York ; and the best elements of New England character mingling with others, its good qualities will appear in the politics of that mighty State.

The South, in the main, had a very different origin from the North. I think few if any persons settled there for religion's sake; or for the sake of freedom in the State. It was not a moral idea which sent men to Virginia, Georgia, and Carolina. "Men do not gather grapes of thorns." The difference of the seed will appear in the difference of the crop. In the character of the people of the North and South, it appears at this day. The North is not to be praised, nor the South to be blamed for this; they could not help it: but certainly it is an advantage to be descended from a race of industrious, moral and religious men; to have been brought up imder their training, to have inherited their ideas and institutions, — and this is a circumstance which we make quite too little account of. I pass by that.

6. There are other causes which depend on ourselves entirely. Much depends on the political and social organization of the people. There is no denying that government has a great influence on the character of the people; on the character of every man. The difference between the development of England and the development of Spain at this day, is mainly the result of different forms of