Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/251

Rh ticians in the land go at all beyond the Whig idea of protecting the property row accumulated, or tho democratic idea of insuring tho greatest material good of the greatest number? Where are we to look for the representative of justice, of tho unalienable rights of all the people and all the nations? In the triple host of article-makers, speechmakers, lay and clerical, and makers of laws, you find but few who can be trusted to stand up for the unalienable rights of men; who will nover write, speak, nor vote in the interests of a party, but always in the interest of mankind, and will represent tho justice of God in the forum of the world. This literature, like the other, foils of the nigh end of writing and of speech; with more vigour, more freedom, more breadth of vision, and an intense nationality, the authors thereof are just as far from representing the higher consciousness of mankind, just as vulgar as the tame and well-licked writers of the permanent literature. Here are the men who have out their own way through the woods, men with more than the average intelligence, during, and strength; but with less than the average justice which is honesty in the abstract, less than the average honesty which is justice concentrated upon small particulars.

Examine both these portions of American literature, the permanent and the fleeting—you see their educated authors are no higher than the rest of men. They are the slaves of public opinion, as much as the gossip in her little village, it may not be the public opinion of a coterie of crones, but of a great party; that makes little odds, they are worshippers of the same rank, idolaters of the same wealth; the gossipping granny shows her littleness the size of life, while their deformity is magnified by the solar microscope of high office. Many a popular man exhibits his pigmy soul to the multitude of a whole continent, idly mistaking it for greatness. They are swayed by vulgar passions, seek vulgar ends, address vulgar motives, use vulgar means; they may command by their strength, they cannot refine by their beauty or instruct by their guidance, and still less inspire by any eminence of manhood which they were born to or have won. They build on the surface-sand for to-day, not on the rock of ages for ever. With so little conscience, they heed not