Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/297

284 society, helping forward the welfare and the progress of all, aiding the organization of Christianity and Democracy. What a development there will be of agriculture, mining, manufactures, commerce! What farms and shops! What canals and railroads! What schools, newspapers, libraries, meeting-houses! Yes, what families of rich, educated, happy, and religious men and women! In the rear 1900, there will be 2,000,000 men in Kansas, with cities like Providence, Worcester, perhaps like Chicago and Cincinnati. She will have more miles of railroad than Maryland, Virginia, and both the Carolinas can now boast. Her land will be worth £20 an acre, and her total wealth will be $500,000,000 of money; 600,000 children will learn in her schools.

5. There will be a ring of Freedom all round the slave States, and in them Slavery itself will decline. The theory of bondage will be given up, like the theory of theocracy and monarchy; and attempts will be made to get rid of the fact. Then the North will help the Southern States in that noble work. There will never be another Slave State nor another Slave President; no more kidnapping in the North; no more chains round the Court House in Boston; no more preaching against the first principles of all humanity.

Three hundred years ago, our fathers in Europe were contending for liberty. Then it was freedom of conscience which the progressive force of the people demanded. Julius the Third had just been Pope, who gave the cardinalship, vacated at his election, to the keeper of his monkeys; and Paul IV. sat in his stead in St. Peter's chair, and represented in general for all Europe the regressive power; while bloody Mary and bloodier Philip sat on England's throne, and, incited thereto by the Pontiff, smote at the rights of man.

Two hundred years ago, our fathers in the two Englands—old and new—did grim battle against monarchic despotism: one Charles slept in his bloody grave, another wandered through the elegant debaucheries of the Continent; while Cromwell and Milton made liberal England abidingly famous and happy. One hundred years ago, other great battling for the