Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/264

Rh the same class of men repeat the old experiment; and, in Italy, Spain, and Spanish America, the regressive power carries the day.

In this century, when the people of Europe wished to move on a little nearer to Democracy than before, the political class of aristocrats revised to suffer it; they put men of political genius in gaol, or hung them. Kossuth and Mazzini were lucky men to escape to a foreign land; thousands fled to America. In Europe, at present, and especially on the continent, this regressive power carries the day, and the progressive force is held down. For priests, kings, and nobles, inheriting a position which was once the highest that mankind had attained to, and then taking it as a trust, now count it a right of their own, a finality of the human race, the end of man's progress.

When a nation permanently consents to this triumph of the regressive over the progressive force, allows one class to do all the government and shun all the labour, it is presently all over with that nation. Look at Italy, with Home and Naples; at Spain, which is too far gone even to be galvanized into life. See what already takes place in France, where the son of the nephew has just been born, and the little baby is recognised as Emperor. Look at an election-day in Massachusetts; where the people choose one of themselves to be their temporary governor, responsible to them, swearing him on their statute-book: compare that with the preparation which Napoleon the Little made to anticipate the birth of Napoleon the Least! Why, the garments got ready for this equivocal baby have already cost more than the clothes of all our Presidents since "a young buckskin taught a British general the art of fighting. Eighty thousand dollars is decreed to pay for baptizing this imperial bantling. If twice that sum could christen the father, it might not be ill spent, if thereto decreed. Look at New England, and then at Spain, to see the odds between a people that has the progressive force uppermost, and a nation where the regressive force has trod the people down, and become, as it must, destructive. The Romanic nations of Italy and Spain, and the Romanized Celts of France, consent to a despotism which puts all the labour on the people, and takes all the government from them: they easily enough accept the rule of the political and ecclesias-