Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/25

Rh This same preference of money over men appears in many special statutes. In most of our manufacturing companies the capital is divided into shares so large that a poor man cannot invest therein! This could easily be avoided. A man steals a candlestick out of a church, and goes to the State prison for a year and a day. Another quarrels with a man, maims him for life, and is sent to the common gaol for six months. A bounty is paid, or was until lately, on every gallon of intoxicating drink manufactured hero and sent out of the country. If we begin with taking care of the rights of man, it seems easy to take care of the rights of labour and of capital, to begin the other way is quite another thing. A nation making laws for the nation is a noble sight. The government of all, by all, and for all, is a Democracy. When that government follows the eternals laws of God, it is founding what Christ called the kingdom of heaven. But the predominating class making laws not for the nation's good, but only for its own, is a sad spectacle; no reasoning can make it other than a sorry sight. To see able men prostituting their talents to such a work, that is one of the saddest sights! I know all other -nations have set us the example, yet it is painful to see it followed, and here.

Our politics, being mainly controlled by this class, are chiefly mercantile, the politics of pedlers. So political management often becomes a trick. Hence we have many politicians, and raise a harvest of them every year, that crop never failing, party-men who can legislate for a class; but we have scarce one great statesman who can step before his class, beyond his age, and legislate for a whole nation, leading the people and giving us new ideas to incarnate in the multitude, his word becoming flesh. We have not planters, but trimmers! A great statesman never came of mercantile politics, only of politics considered as the national application of religion to life. Our political morals, you all know what they are, the morals of a huckster. This is no new thing; the same game was played long ago in Venice, Pisa, Florence, and the result is well known. A merely mercantile politician is very sharp-sighted, and perhaps far-sighted; but a dollar will cover the whole field of his vision, and he can never see through it. The number of slaves in the United States is