Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/263

250 who got their bread by making bows and arrows, opposed the use of gunpowder and cannon; thus the scribes of the fifteenth century opposed printing, and said Dr. Faustus was "possessed by the devil." In England, two hundred years ago, every top-sawyer resisted the use of saw-mills to cut logs into boards, and wanted to draw off the water from the ponds. Forty years ago, the hand-weaver of England opposed power-looms. In 1840, the worshipful company of ass-drivers in Italy begged the Pope of Rome not to allow a single railroad in his territory, because it would injure their property invested in packsaddles and jackasses. The Pope consented, and no steam-engine dared to scream and whistle in the Papal States. In Boston, twenty years ago, the Irishmen objected to steam pile-drivers, and broke them to pieces; just now, the stevedores of Boston insist that ships shall not be unladen by horses or steam-power, but that a man, who yet has a head, shall live only by the great muscles in his arms; that all merchandise shall be taken out of ships by an Irishman hanging at the end of a rope. All these men consider that their exceptional position and accidental business is a finality of human history, a natural right, which the top-sawyer, the scribe, and the others have to stop mankind. The stevedore and hand-loom weaver must have no competitors in the labour-market; the steam-engine must be shoved off the track, in order that the donkey may have the whole country wherein to bray and wheeze.

In Europe, at this day, the regressive force is lodged chiefly in the twofold aristocracy which exists there, ecclesiastical and political. In the sixteenth century, mankind, and especially the Teutonic family, longed to have more Christianity: the priestly class, with the Pope at their head, refused, hewed the people to pieces, burnt them to ashes at Madrid and Oxford. The priest stood between the people and the Bible, and said, "The word of God belongs to us: it is for the priests only, not for you, you infidels; down with you!" He counted his stand as the stopping-place of mankind: the human race must not go an inch further—he would kill all that tried. The result attained was a finality. So the thinker must be burned alive, that the ass-driver might have the whole world to snap his fingers in and cough to his donkey! Even now