Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/41

Rh nation; when all shall indeed be brothers, and all blest. Do this, you shall be worthy to dwell in this beautiful land; Christ will be near you; God work with you, and bless you for ever!

This present trouble with Mexico may be very brief; surely it might be even now brought to an end with no unusual manhood in your rulers. Can we say we have not deserved it? Let it end; but let us remember that war, horrid as it is, is not the worst calamity which ever befalls a people. It is far worse for a people to lose all reverence for right, for truth, all respect for man and God; to care more for the freedom of trade than the freedom of men; more for a tariff than millions of souls. This calamity came upon us gradually, long before the present war, and will last long after that has died away. Like people like ruler, is a true word. Look at your rulers, representatives, and see our own likeness ! We reverence force, and have forgot there is any right beyond the vote of a Congress or a people ; any good beside dollars; any God but majorities and force. I think the present war, though it should cost 50,000 men and $50,000,000, the smallest part of our misfortune. Abroad we are looked on as a nation of swindlers and men- stealers! What can we say in our defence? Alas! the nation is a traitor to its great idea,—that all men are born equal, each with the same unalienable rights. We are infidels to Christianity. We have paid the price of our shame.

There have been dark days in this nation before now. It was gloomy when Washington with his little army fled through the Jerseys. It was a long dark day from '83 to '89. It was not so dark as now; the nation never so false. There was never a time when resistance to tyrants was so rare a virtue; when the people so tamely submitted to a wrong. Now you can feel the darkness. The sack of this city and the butchery of its people were a far less evil than the moral deadness of the nation. Men spring up again like the mown grass; but to raise up saints and heroes in a dead nation corrupting beside its golden tomb, what shall do that for us? We must look not to the many for that, but to the few who are faithful unto God and man.

I know the hardy vigour of our men, the stalwart