Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/130

Rh clutches at the people's throat. That is the first part of our scheme—we are aiming to found an industrial State.

Next, the national theory of the government is a democracy—the government of all, by all, for all. All officers depend on election, none are foreordained. There are to be no special privileges, only natural, universal rights.

It would be a fair spectacle,—a great industrial Commonwealth, spread over half the continent, and folding in its bosom one-fortieth of God's whole family! It is a lovely dream; nor Athenian Plato, nor English Thomas More, nor Bacon, nor Harrington, ever dared to write on paper so fair an ideal as our fathers and we have essayed to put into men. I once thought this dream of America would one day become a blessed fact ! We have many elements of national success. Our territory for quantity and quality is all we could ask ; our origin is of the Caucasian's best. No nation had ever so fair a beginning as we. The Anglo-Saxon is a good hardy stock for national welfare to grow on. To my American eye, it seems that human nature had never anything so good for popular liberty to be grafted into. We are already strong, and fear nothing from any foreign power. The violent cannot take us by force. No nation is our enemy.

But the question now comes. Is America to live or to die? If we live, what life shall it be? Shall we fall into the sepulchre of departed States — a new debauchee of the nations? Shall we live petrified to stone, a despotism many-headed, sitting—another sphinx—by the wayside of history, to scare young nations in their march and impede their progress? Or shall we pursue the journey—a great, noble-hearted Commonwealth, a nation possessing the continent, full of riches, full of justice, full of wisdom, full of piety, and full of peace? It depends on ourselves. It is for America, for this generation of Americans, to say which of the three shall happen. No fate holds us up. Our character is our destiny. I am not a timid man; I am no excessive praiser of times passed by; I seldom take counsel of my fears, often of my hopes;—but now I must say that since '76 our success was never so doubtful as at this time. England is in peril; the despots on the continent hate her free Parliament, which makes laws for the people—just laws; they hate her