Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/213

200 only on the law of God, writ in the constitution of matter and mind; accordingly, the greatest of all political errors, and the most fatal to the existence of democracy, to the rights of man, and to the security of property, one of his indispensable accidents, is the idea that man has no obligation to respect the constitution of the universe ; and the declaration that there is no law above the statutes which men's hands have made. Where that idea prevails, there is a blow struck at every man's head, and at each dollar of property. Tyranny may be provisional; justice alone is ultimate; the point common to each and all, to man and God, whereon all rights balance.

Such is the difference between the theory of American civilization and that of the old civilizations of Asia and Europe;—ours is the theory of a society that is only pessible nineteen centuries after Christ ; nine centuries after it could not have been ; and nine centuries before it could not have been dreamed of; and such is its foundation in man and the nature of things. I have just said that, in virtue of certain causes, there is a progressive diminution of man's abnormal action, and a progressive moralization of mankind in England, France part of Germany, and the free States of America; but that in some other European countries this natural diminution of wrong is retarded by the crimes of the ruling power. Nay, even in England and France, man's moralization is largely retarded by the corruption and selfishness of the controlling classes of men, who spread abroad false ideas of paan's duty to himself, to his brother, and to his God;—sometimes doing it purposely, but most often, I have charity enough to think, doing it through mistake. Still this diminution goes on in the manner set forth.

Now, in America, in direct opposition to this progressive moralization of man, during the last few years there has been a rapid increase of certain great vices, which are also crimes; transgressions not only of God's law, but likewise of man's statutes,—vices of appalling magnitude. They are offences not committed by those two classes just mentioned as concentrating a great amount of what is commonly called vice and crime—the perishing class, whom poverty makes thieves and robbers, and the professional villains, who make rascality their vocation, Nor yet are