Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/200

196 success of the enterprise, tho popular distinction acquired by some of the leaders, the high honour bestowed on one of its heroes,—all this makes the lesson of injustice attractive. It may be that a similar experiment will again be tried, and doubtless with like success. Certainly there is no nation this side of the water which can withstand the enterprise, the activity, the invention, industry, and perseverance of a people so united, and yet so free and intelligent. Another successful injustice of this character, on a large scale, will make right still less regarded, and might honoured yet more.

The force we employ out of our borders, might opposed to right, we employ also at home against our brethren, and keep three millions of them in bondage; we watch for opportunities to extend the institution of Slavery over soil unpolluted by that triple curse; and convert the Constitution, the fundamental law of the land, into an instrument for the defence of Slavery.

The men we honour politically, by choosing them to offices in the State, are commonly men of extraordinary force, sometimes, it is true, only or extraordinary luck, but of only ordinary justice; men who, perhaps, have mind in the heroic degree, but conscience of the most vulgar pattern. They are to keep the law of the United States when it is wholly hostile to the law of the universe, to the everlasting justice of God.

I am not speaking to politicians, professional representatives of the State ; not speaking for political effect; not of the State as a political machine for the government of the people. I am speaking to teachers, for an educational purpose; of the State as on educational machine, as one of the great forces for the spiritual development of the people. Now, by this preference of force and postponement of justice at home and abroad, in the selection of men for office, with its wealth, and rank, and honour, by keeping the law of the land to the violation of the law of God, it is plain we are teaching ourselves to love wrong; at least to be insensible to the right. What we practise on a national scale as a people, it is not easy to think wrong when practised on a personal scale, by this man and that.

The patriotism, also, which the State nurses, is little more than that Old Testament patriotism which loves