Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/208

Rh of mankind goes on continally; the proportionate quantity of vice is lessened, and its quality bettered, in England, France, part of Germany, and in free America. In some of the other countries of Christendom, there is one great cause which hinders man's instinct of progressive development, and prevents the advancing diminution of vice, namely ; the institutional tyranny exercised by the church, by society, by the state, by priests, kings, and nobles. That cause retards the normal action of the people in Russia, Turkey, Austria, the other part of Germany, in Italy, Portugal, and Spain, where the progress of man is far less rapid than in those four other countries just named. This tyranny retards also man's advance in riches, for despotism is always costly; vice is a spendthrift, and, other things being equal, a moral people will have the most power over the material world, and consequently be the richest, and advance in riches with the greatest rapidity,—for wealth is an unavoidable accident of man's development, indispensable for future progress, and the hoarded result of the past. But here, in America, there is one cause which tends to check the progressive diminution of abnormal action, and the advancing moralization of man, and which actually is now leading to a frightful development of vice in most hateful and dangerous forms; indeed, a cause which tends to demoralize the people here, even more rapidly than tyranny itself is doing in Russia, Austria, Turkey, Italy, Portugal, and Spain* Here is the cause: it is the prevalence of an immoral principle, a false idea of man's duty, boldly set forth by men of great prominence, and within the last few years very widely spread. To understand this false idea the better, and see how fatally it operates against us, look a little at the circumstances of the nation, wherein we differ from the other families of men. The old civilizations of Europe had two distinctive characteristic marks. First, they were oligarchic, having a government of all but by a few, and for the sake of a few. Sometimes it was a theocratic oligarchy—the rule of priests over the people; sometimes a monarchic oligarchy—the rule of kings over the subjects; sometimes an aristocratic oli-