Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/266

 no considerable influence yet appears in the collective character, ideas, or institutions of the North. A hundred years hence, the ethnologic fruits of this other seed will show themselves.

These Northern Saxons, moreover, are mainly descended from men who fled from Europe because they had ideas, at least sentiments, of Christianity and democracy which could not be carried out at home. They are born of Puritan pilgrims, who were the most progressive portion of the most progressive people, of the most progressive stock, in all Christendom. They came to America, not for ease, honour, money, or love of adventure, but for conscience sake, for the sake of their Christianity and their democracy. Such men founded the chief Northern colonies and institutions, and have controlled the doctrines and the development thereof to a great degree.

We see the result of such parentage: more than all other nations of the earth, the North has cut loose from the evil of the past, and set its face towards the future. At one extreme, it has no lordly class, ecclesiastical or political, exclusively and permanently to shun labour and monopolize government, vicariously to enjoy the result of work, vicariously to rule; and, at the other extreme, there is no class slavishly and unwillingly to do the work, and have none of its rewards; to suffer all the obedience, and enjoy none of the command. No class is permanent, highest or lowest. The Northern States are progressively Christian, also progressively democratic, in the sense just given of Christianity and democracy. No people on earth has such material comfort, such enjoyment of natural rights of body and spirit already possessed, such general development of the human faculties. But the attainment does not satisfy us; for we share this instinct of progress to such a degree, that no achievement will content us. Be the present harvest never so rich, our song is—

No nation has such love of liberty, such individual Variety of action, or such national unity of action; nowhere is such respect for law; nowhere is property so secure, life so safe, and the individual so little disturbed. And, with