Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/129

116 bad, her religion worn out, her morals desperate; northern nations came upon her. "Wheresoever the body is, thither the eagles will be gathered together."

In Europe there are nations in this state of decay, from moral or political vice. All the Italo-Greek populations, most of the Celto-Roman, all the Celtic, all the old Asiatic populations—the Hungarians and Turks. The Teutonic and Slavic families alone seem to prosper, full of vigorous, new life, capable of making new improvements, to suit the altered phases of the world.

In America there is only one family in a condition of advance, of hardy health. Spanish America is in a state of decay; she has a bad form of religion, and bad morals; her republics only "guarantee the right of assassination;" an empire is her freest state. But in the north of North America the Anglo-Saxon British colonies rapidly advance in material and spiritual development, and one day doubtless they will separate from the parent stem and become an independent tree. The roots of England run under the ocean; they come up in Africa, India, Australia, America, in many an island of all the seas. Great fresh, living trunks grow up therefrom. One day these offshoots will become self-supporting, with new and independent roots, and ere long will separate from the parent stem; then there will be a great Anglo-Saxon trunk in Australia, another in India, another in Africa, another in the north of our own continent, and yet others scattered over the manifold islands of the sea, an Anglo-Saxon forest of civilization. But in the centre of the North American continent, the same Anglo-Saxons have passed from their first condition of scattered and dependent colonies, and become a united and independent nation, five-and-twenty millions strong. Our fellow-countrymen here in America compose one-fortieth part of all the inhabitants of the globe. We are now making the greatest political experiment which the sun ever looked down upon.

First, we are seeking to found a State on industry, and not war. All the prizes of America are rewards of toil, not fighting. We are ruled by the constable, not by the soldier. It is only in exceptional cases, when the liberal institutions of America are to be trodden under foot, that the constable disappears, and the red arm of the soldier