Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/268

256 son is no captain; by human substance, eminent manhood, bravery, skill, is the new man made captain; not by the historic accident of legitimate descent from an old captain. To be born well is to be well born; tall men are of a high family. The corpora?s child, yea, the sons of rank and file, are also men. In the woods of nature, new humanity takes precedence of all the artificial distinctions of old time. The crime of the father must work no attainder in the baby’s blood; by the sour grapes of his own eating only shall a man^s teeth be set on edge. Estates must not be entailed in perpetuity. Land must be held in fee-simple, with no quit-rents, or other servitudes of vassalage; on terms which all can understand. The vicarious land-tenures of the middle ages are for ever broken. All men may hold land; and cheaply convey it to whom they will. For the first time the majority have a stake in the public hedge; the medieval "noble," the conventional "gentleman," gradually withdraws and moves out from New England. "It is not a good place for gentlemen," so a governor wrote two hundred years ago. Everybody is "Mr;" then "Esquire;" The born magistrate vanishes, the "select men" are annually voted in. Still the social aristocracy, bottomed on accident, is far from being ended. But it rests no longer on the immovable accident of birth, but on the changeable block of money, and like that can be struggled for and acquired by all. It rests on golden sands or fickle votes.

IV. There yet remains the protest against Despotocracy—the adverse rule of the master over the servant, the hostile subordination of the weak to the strong in the family. In a military despotism, war confers dignity: "it is the part of a man to fight," says Homer, "of a slave to work;" and they "who exercise lordship are called benefactors." In a Theocracy, the priest is a sacred person: his work is "divine service," he enters the temple; but the people are profane, and must stand without; their work is menial! In a Theocracy, Monarchy, Aristocracy—founded and maintained by violence or cunning—labour is thought degrading; the labourer is for the State, not it also for him. This exploitering of the weak by the strong belongs to the essence of those three institutions. Domestic slavery coheres therewith, and in dark ages this adverse rule of the