Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/275

Rh power to organize things and men comes out in the machines, ships, and mills, in little and great confederations, from a lyceum to the Federal Union of thirty-one States. The natural exclusiveness appears in the extermination of the red man, in the enslavement of the black man, in the contempt with which he is treated—turned out of the tavern, the church, and the grave-yard. The lack of high qualities of mind is shown in the poverty of American literature, the meanness of American religion, in the neglect and continual violation of the idea set forth in our national programme of principles and purpose. Since the Revolution, the immediate aim of America appears to have changed.

At first, during the period of Americans colonization and her controversy with England, and her afiirmation and establishment of her programme of political principles,—the great national work of the disunited provinces was a struggle for local self-government against despotic centralization beyond the sea. It was an effort against the vicarious rule of the middle ages, which allowed the people no power in the State, the laity none in the Church, the servant none in the family. It was a great effort—mainly unconscious—in favour of the direct government of each State by itself, of the whole people by the whole people; a national protest against Theocracy, the subordination of man in religious affairs to the accident of his history; Monarchy, the subordination of the mass of men to a single man; Aristocracy, the subordination of the many to the few, of the weak to the strong; yes, in part also against Despotocracy, the subordination of the slave who toils to the master that enjoys,—in their rights they were equal. This forced men to look inward at the natural rights of man; outward at the general development thereof in history. It led to the attempt to establish a Democracy, which, so far as measures are concerned, is the government of all, for all, by all; so far as moral principle is concerned, it is the enactment of God^s justice into human laws. There was a struggle of the many against the few; of man’s nature, with its instinct of progressive and perpetual development, against the accidents of man's history. It was an effort to establish the eternal law of God against the provisional caprice of tyrants. I do not mean to say