Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/267

Rh self-rule of modern times. On the 30th of January, 1648, the executioner held up the head of Charles I. with a "Behold the head of a traitor," and "Royalty disappeared in front of Whitehall:" a ghastly, dreadful sight. Peasant Luther pushed the Latin Mass-book aside with his German Bible, saying, "Thus I break the succession of the priests." With his sword Cromwell, the brewer, pushed aside the Crown of England, "Thus I break the succession of Kings."

New England loved Cromwell; and while dwelling in the wilderness exercised the rights of sovereignty many times before it was known what she did, both destroying and building,—as likewise do all of us,—greater and wiser than she knew. Luther's hammer broke also the neck of kings, who disappear, and in their place came up governors and presidents not born to adverse rule, but voted in for official service.

III. Then came the protest against "Aristocracy. God made men not in classes but as individuals—each man a person with all the substantive rights of humanity: the same law must serve for all; all must be equal before it and the social institutions of the community. That was the dim utterance of many a man who grumbled in his beard:—

How idly they dreamed—looking back for the Paradise that lay before them! But between it and them Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and a fourth stream, nameless as yet, rolled torrents of blood; and a fiery sword of selfishness turned every way to keep men from the tree of life, whose very leaves are for the healing of the nations—could they but get to it. Could they—ay! Can they not?

Little by little, man's nature prevailed over Aristocracy, one accident of his development. The Anglo-Saxon Briton had restricted the nobility he brought with him from the continent;—only the eldest son inherits his father's land, title, and rank, the later-born all commoners. The Anglo-Saxon American broke up primogeniture: the children are equal in blood and rank; the first son has no more of his father in him than the last; all must share equally in his goods. Bank is not heritable. If a coward, the captain's