Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/153

140 From these two, with their mercantile and political selfishness, we are to expect no comprehensive morality, which will secure the rights of mankind; no comprehensive policy, which will secure expedient measures for a long time. Both will unite in what serves their apparent interest, brings money to the trader, power to the politician,—whatever be the consequence to the country. As things now are, the Union favours the schemes of both of these classes of men; thereby the politician gets power, the trader makes money.

If the Union were to be dissolved and a great Northern Commonwealth were to be organized, with the idea of freedom, three quarters of the politicians. Federal and State, would pass into contempt and oblivion; all that class of Northern demagogues who scoff at God's Law, such as filled the offices of the late Whig administration in its day of power, or as fill the offices of the Democratic administration to-day—they would drop down so deep that no plummet would ever reach them; you would never hear of them again.

Gratitude is not a very common virtue; but gratitude to the hand of Slavery, wmch feeds these creatures, is their sole and single moral excellence ; they have that form of gratitude. When the hand of Slavery is cut off, that class of men will perish just as caterpillars die when, some day in May, the farmer cuts off from the old tree a great branch to graft in a better fruit. The caterpillars will not vote for the grafting. That class of men will go for the Union while it serves them.

Look at the other class. Property is safe in America: and why? Because we have aimed to establish a government on natural rights, and property is a natural right; say oligarchic Blackstone and socialistic Proudhon what they may, property is not the mere creature of compact, or the child of robbery; it is founded in the nature of man. It has a very great and important function to perform. Nowhere in the world is it so much respected as here.

But there is one kind of property which is not safe just now:—Property in men. It is the only kind of property which is purely the creature of violence and law; it has no root in itself.

Now, the Union protects that "property." There are