Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/280

268 eagle and the lightning could gain its top. Now its easy slope allows the girl to look down from its summit. What is true in the world of matter holds also good in the world of man. There is no leap, a slope always; never a spring. The continuity of historical succession is never broke. Newtons and Shakspeares do not come up among Hottentots and Esquimaux, but among young nations inheriting the old culture. Even the men of genius, who brood like a cloud over the vulgar herd, have their predecessors almost as high, and the continuity of succession holds good in the Archimedes, the Gallileos, the Keplers, the Newtons, and the La Places. Christianity would not have been possible in the time of Moses; nor Protestantism in the days of St. Augustine; nor a New England Plymouth in the days of Luther; nor any national recognition of the American Idea in 1620. That Idea could not become a national Fact in 1776. No, not yet is it a fact.

First comes the Sentiment—the feeling of liberty ; next the Idea—the distinct notion thereof; then the Fact—the thought become a thing. Buds in March, blossoms in May, apples in September—that is the law of historical succession.

The Puritans enslaved the Indians. In 1675, the Indian apostle petitioned the "Honourable Grovernor and Council sitting at Boston, this 13th of the 6th, '75," that they would not allow Indians to be sold into slavery. But John Eliot stood well-nigh alone in that matter. For three months later, I find the Governor, Leveret, gives a bill of sale of seven Indians, "to be sold for slaves," and affixes thereto the "Publique Scale of the Colony."

Well, there has been a great progress from that day to the 12th of April, 1851, when the merchants of Boston had to break the laws of Massachusetts, and put the court house in chains, and get the chains over the neck of the Chief Justice, and call out the Sims brigade, before they could kidnap and enslave a single fugitive from Georgia.

But it would not be historical to expect a nation to realize its own Idea at once, and allow all men to be "equal" in the enjoyment of their "natural and unalienable rights." Still, there has been a great progress