Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/281

Rh for money as soon as lie has got it; the Whig is an old Democrat who once hurrahed for the majority—"Down with money! that is a despot! and up with the desire for it! Down with the rich, and up with the poor! "The young man, poor, obscure, and covetous, in 1812 was a Democrat, went a-privateering against England; rich, and accordingly "one of our eminent citizens," in 1851 he was a Whig, and went a-kidnapping against Ellen Craft and Thomas Sims. Bedini's hand is "thicker than itself with brother's blood." Young Democrats very properly burnt him in effigy. Old Democrats, wanting to be president, took him to their hearts. The young ones will also grow up in time to honour such future Nuncios of the Pope. I once new a crafty family which had two sons; both men of ability, and of remarkable unity of "principle." The family invested one in each party, and as it had a head on either side of the political penny thrown into the air, the family was sure to win. A New England family, wise in its generation.

Now, I do not mean to say that all Democrats or all Whigs are of this way of thinking. Quite the contrary. There is not a Whig or a Democrat who would confess it. The majority, so far as they have convictions, are very different from this; but the Whig would say in his convention, that I told the truth of the Democratic party; the Democrat, in his convention, would say, I told the truth of the Whigs. These ideas,—they reside in the two parties, as botany in this camelia, as chemistry in the water, as in the drop the gravitation which brings it to the ground: not a conviction, but a fact. Each of these parties has great good to accomplish. Both seem indispensable. Money must be looked after. It is a valuable thing; the human race could not do without property. It is the ladder whereby we scale the heavens of manhood. But property alone is good for nothing. The will of the majority must be respected. I honour the ideas of the Democratic party, and of the Whig party, so far as they are just. But man is not made merely for money; the majority are the standard of power, not of right. There is a law of God which directs the chink of every dollar; it cannot roll except by the laws of the