Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/10

6 merchants; trade is the great thing. Nobody trios to secure the favour of the army or navy— -but of the merchants.

Once there was a permanent class of fighters. Their influence was supreme. They had the power of strong arms, of disciplined valour, and carried all before them. They made the law and broke it. Men complained, grumbling in their beard, but got no redress. They it was that possessed the wealth of the land. The producer, the manufacturer, the distributor, could not get rich: only the soldier, the armed thief, the robber. "With wealth they got its power; by practice gained knowledge, and so the power thereof; or, when that failed, bought it of the clergy, the only class possessing literary and scientific skill. They made their calling "noble," and founded the aristocracy of soldiers. Young men of talent took to arms. Trade was despised and labour was menial. Their science is at this day tho science of kings. When graaiers travel they look at cattle; weavers at factories; philanthropists at hospitals; dandies at their equals and coadjutors; and kings at armies. Those fighters made the world think that soldiers were our first men, and murder of their brothers the noblest craft in the world; the only honourable and manly calling. The butcher of swine and oxen was counted vulgar—the butcher of men and women great and honourable. Foolish men of the past think so now; hence their terror at orations against war: hence their admiration for a red coat; their zeal for some symbol of blood in their family arms; hence their ambition for-military titles when abroad. Most foolish men are more proud of their ambiguous Norman ancestor who fought at the battle of Hastings—or fought not— than of all the honest mechanics and farmers who have since ripened on the family tree. The day of the soldiers is well-nigh over. The calling brings low wages and no honour. It opens with us no field for ambition. A passage of arms is a passage that leads to nothing. That class did their duty at that time. They founded the aristocracy of soldiers—their symbol the sword. Mankind would not stop there. Then came a milder age and established the aristocracy of birth—its symbol the cradle, for the only merit of that sort of nobility, and so its only distinction, is to have been born. But mankind who stopped not at the sword, delays but little longer at the