Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/33

20 ceedings of the courts of law, so instructive to jurors and spectators; the local legislatures of the States—each consisting of from two to four hundred members, and in session four or five months of the year; the politics of the nation brought home to every voter in the land,—all these things form an educational power of immense value, for such a development of the lower intellectual faculties, as men esteem most in these days.

But, the Oligarchic idea is also at work. You meet this in all parts of the land, diligently seeking to organize itself. It takes no new forms, however, which are peculiar to America. It re-enacts the old statutes which have oppressed mankind in the eastern world: it attempts to revive the institutions that have cursed other lands in darker days. Now the few tyrannize over the many, and devise machinery to oppress their fellow-mortals; then the majority thus tyrannize over the few, over the minority. There are two forms of Democracy—the Satanic and the Celestial: one is Selfishness, which knows no higher law; the other Philanthropy, that bows to the justice of the infinite God, with a "Thy will be done." In America we find both—the democratic Devil and the democratic Angel.

The idea of the North is preponderatingly democratic in the better sense of the word ; new justice is organized in the laws ; government becomes more and more of aU, by all, and for all. You trace the progress of humanity, of liberty, equality, and fraternity in the constitution of the free States from Massachusetts to "Wisconsin.

But in the Southern States the Oligarchic idea prevails to a much greater extent, and becomes more and more apparent and powerful. The South has adopted the institution of slavery, elsewhere discarded, and clmgs to it with strange tenacity. In South Carolina, the possession of slaves is made the condition, sine qua non, of eligibility to certain offices. The constitution provides that a citizen shall not "be eligible to a seat in the House of Representatives, unless legally seized and possessed in his own right of a settled freehold estate of five hundred acres of land, and ten negroes.