Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/278

266 slave whom lie exploiters,—that has not yet shared the fate of Theocracy, Monarchy, and Aristocracy. It is still preserved; it leagues itself with money, and builds up anew in America the old corrupt family of the middle ages. In New York, it clothes the white flunkeys of the Hon. Dives Gotrich with an imitated livery; in New Orleans, and in more than half the land, it takes those whom nature has clothed in a sable livery, and makes them its slaves. Despotocracy alone could not accomplish this. The wickedness is foreign to the American idea of a State, a community, or a Church. But leaguing with money, which has taken the place of all those old institutions, it is this day the strongest power in the nation.

Money having taken the place of these three institutions, it must be politically represented in the nation by a party; for a party is the provisional organization of a tendency. So there is a party organized about the dollar as its central nucleus and idea. The dollar is the germinal dot of the Whig party; its motive is pecuniary; its motto should be, to state it in Latin, pecunia pecuniata, money moneyed, money made. It sneers at the poor; at the many; has a contempt for the people. It legislates against the poor, and for the rich; that is, for men pecuniarily strong; the few who are born with the desire, the talent, and the conventional position to become rich. "Take care of the rich, and they will take care of the poor," is its secret maxim. Everything must yield to money; that is to have universal right of way. Down with mankind! the dollar is coming! The great domestic object of government, said the greatest expounder of this party, "is the protection of property;"—that is to say, the protection of money moneyed, money got. With this party there is no absolute right, no absolute wrong. Instead thereof, there is expediency and inexpediency. There is no law higher than the power to wield money just as you will. Accordingly a millionaire is reckoned by this party as the highest production of society. He is the Whig ideal; he alone has attained "the measure of the stature of a perfect man."

Singular to say, most of the great public charities of America have been founded by men of this party; most of the institutions of learning, the hospitals and asylums of