Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/265

Rh "discuss" these things or not. The politicians are our masters, and may lay their fingers on our lips when they will.

2. The next false idea is,—That government is chiefly for the protection of property. This has long been the idea on which some men legislated, but on the 19th day of this month, the distinguished Secretary of State, in a speech at New York, used these words: "The great object of government is the protection of property at home and respect and renown abroad." You see what the policy must be where the government is for the protection of the hat, and only takes care of the head so far as it serves to wear a hat. Here the man is the accident, and the dollar is the substance for which the man is to be protected. I think a notion very much like this prevails extensively in the great cities of America, North and South. I think the chief politicians of the two parties are agreed in this—that government is for the protection of property, and everything else is subsidiary. With many persons politics are a part of their business; the state-house and the custom-house are only valued for their relation to trade. This idea is fatal to a good government.

Think of this, that "The great object of government is the protection of property." Tell that to Samuel Adams, and John Hancock, and Washington, and the older Winthrops, and the Bradfords and Carvers! Why! it seems as if the buried majesty of Massachusetts would start out of the ground, and with its Bible in its hand say—This is false!

3. The third false idea is this—That you are morally bound to obey the statute, let it be never so plainly wrong and opposed to your conscience. This is the most dangerous of all the false ideas yet named. Ambitious men, in an act of passion, make iniquity into a law, and then demand that you and I, in our act of prayer, shall submit to it and make it our daily life; that we shall not try to repeal and discuss and agitate it! This false idea lies at the basis of every despot^s throne, the idea that men can make right wrong, and wrong right. It has come to be taught in New England, to be taught in our churches—though seldom there, to their honour be it spoken, except in the churches of commerce in large towns—that if wrong is law, you and I must do what it demands, though con-