Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/150

Rh of freedom and prosperity. That is the second hypothesis.

Here is the third: The idea of Slavery may destroy Freedom, with all its accidents—attendant and consequent. Then the nation will become an integer; only it will be a unit of despotism. This involves, of course, the destructive revolution of all our liberal institutions. State as well as national. Democracy must go down; the free press go down; the free church go down; the free school go down. There must be an industrial despotism, which will soon become a military despotism. Popular legislation must end; the Federal Congress will be a club of officials, like Nero's senate, which voted his horse first consul. The State legislature will be a knot of commissioners, tide-waiters, postmasters, district attorneys, deputy-marshals. The town-meeting will be a gang of government officers, like the "Marshal's Guard," revolvers in their pockets, soldiers at their back. The Habeas Corpus will be at an end; trial by jury never heard of, and open courts as common in America as in Spain or Bome. Commissioners Curtis, Loring, and Kane will not be exceptional men; there will be no other "judges;" all courts, courts of the kidnapper; all process summary ; all cases decided by the will of the Government; arbitrary force the only rule. The constable will disappear, the soldier come forth. All newspapers will be like the "Satanic press" of Boston and New York, like the journal of St. Petersburg, or the Diario Romano, which tell lies when the ruler commands, or teU truth when he insists upon it. Then the wicked will walk on every side, for the vilest of men will be exalted, and America, become the mock and scorn and hissing of the nations, will go down to worse shame than was ever heaped upon Sodom; for with her lust for wealth, land, and power, she will also have committed the crime against nature. Then America will be another Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, yea, like Gomorrah—for the Dead Sea will have settled down upon w with nothing living in its breast, and the rulers will proclaim peace where they have made solitude.

Which of these three hypotheses shall we take?

I. Will there be a separation of the two elements, and