Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/273

Rh them are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; it is the function of government to preserve all these natural, unalienable, and equal rights for each man; government is amenable to the people, deriving its sanction from the consent of the governed. In time of peace the thirteen distinct colonies could not have united in that Declaration of principles. The political ideal was a severe criticism on the actual legislation of the Americans. Talk of natural law and equal rights when every colony held slaves in perpetual bondage! when the North stole men in Africa to sell them in Carolina! But America was then in her agony and bloody sweat. European despotism was the angel which strengthened her. External violence pressed the colonies together into a confederation of States; that alone gave unity of action when there was no unity of humane sentiment or political idea. The union was only military—for defence.

The New conquered; but the Old did not die. Not every Tory went over to the British side. After the war was over, the nation must organize itself on that new platform of principles. But, alas, much of the old selfishness remained—theocratic, monarchic, aristocratic, and still more despotocratic; it would appear in the new government. There was no real unity of idea between the extreme South and the North, between Carolina and Connecticut. Nothing is done by leaps. In organizing the independence won in battle, the people proclaimed their programme of political purpose. It is the preamble to the Constitution: "To form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty." The purpose was as noble as the principles. But the means to that end, the Constitution itself, is by no means unitary; it is a provisional compromise between the ideal political principles of the Declaration, and the actual selfishness of the people North and South; it is a measure which did not so much suit the ideal right, as it favoured one great actual tyranny. National theocracy was given up. How could the Americans allow a "national religion"? Monarchy went also to the ground; the Puritan bosom that bore Cromwell—