Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/241

228 in our veins; and, secondly, the excess of foreign ideas in the American consciousness. Well, it was necessary there should be that party. It has a very important function; because it is possible for a people to take so much foreign blood in its veins, and so many foreign ideas to its consciousness, that its nationality perishes.

In part, this principle comes from the national instinct; and that is always stronger in the great mass of the people than it is in any class of men with "superior education:" for the superior education consists almost wholly, in development of the understanding, — ^the thinking part,—not in culture of the conscience, the affections, and the religious element. Therefore, for the national instinct, I never look to lawyers, ministers, doctors, literary and scientific men, or, in short, to the class of men who have what is called the "best education:"I look to the great mass of the people. It seems to me that the national instinct of the Saxon had something to do in making this principle of the American party so popular.

However, I do not think the chief devotion to this principle comes from that source, but from one very much corrupter than that,—a source a great deal lower than the uneducated mass of the Northern people. It comes from political partisans,—men who want office. There are two ways of getting into high office. One is to fly there: that is a very good way for an animal furnished with wings. The other is to crawl there: that is the only way left for such as have no wings, and no legs, and no arms. Well, there was a class of men at the North who could not fly into office; and when the way which led up to the office was perpendicular, and went up straight, they could not crawl; they were so slippery, that they fell off: there was not strength enough in their natural gluten to hold up their natural weight. Such men could not fly there; they could not crawl there, so long as the road went straight up; so they took the Know-Nothing plank, which sloped up pretty gradually; and on it Mr. Gardner crawled into the governorship of Massachusetts. A good many men, in various other States, wormed up on that gently sloping inclined plane, who else never would have been within sight of any considerable office. Now, it is this class of men, who caught sight of that principle demanded by the national