Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/256

244 government; for three centuries ago the Spaniards were as noble a race as the English.

A government is carried on by two agencies: the first is public opinion, and the next is public law,—the fundamental law which is the Constitution, and the subsidiary-laws which carry out the ideas of the Constitution. In a government like this, public opinion always precedes the laws, overrides them, takes the place of laws when there are none, and hinders their execution when they do not correspond to public opinion. Thus the public opinion of South Carolina demands that a free coloured seaman from the North shall be shut up in gaol, at his employer's cost. The public opinion of Charleston is stronger than the public law of the United States on that point, stronger than the Constitution, and nobody dares execute the laws of the United States in that matter. These two things should always be looked at, to understand the causes of a nation's condition—the public opinion, as well as the public law. Let me know the opinions of the men between twenty-five and thirty-five years of age, and I know what the laws will be.

Now in public opinion and in the laws of the United States, there are two distinct political ideas. I shall call one the Democratic, and the other the Despotic idea. Neither is wholly sectional ; both chiefly so. Each is composed of several simpler ideas. Each has enacted laws and established institutions. This is the democratic idea: that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain natural rights, which only the possessor can alienate; that all men are equal in these rights; that amongst them is the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that the business of the government is to preserve for every man all of these rights until he alienates them.

This democratic idea is founded in human nature, and comes from the nature of God who made human nature. To carry it out politically is to execute justice, which is the will of God. This idea, in its realization, leads to a democracy, a government of all, for all, by all. Such a government aims to give every man all his natural rights; it desires to have political power in all hands, property in all hands, wisdom in all heads, goodness in all hearts, religion in all souls. I mean the religion that makes a