Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/253

Rh wealthy men, to instruct their ignorance or rebuke their sin. Hence the aristocracy of wealth, illiterate and vulgar, goes unrebuked, and debases the natural aristocracy of mind and culture which bows down to it. The artist prostitutes his pencil and his skill, and takes his law of beauty from the fat clown, whose barns and pigs, and wife, he paints for daily bread. Tho preacher does the saint; and though the stench of the rum-shop infests the pulpit, and death hews down the leaders of his flock, the preacher must cry, "Peace, peace," or else be still, for rum is power! But this power of wealth has its antagonistic force—the power of numbers. Much depends on the dollar. Nine-tenths of the property is owned by one-tenth of all these men—but much also on tho votes of the million. The few are strong by money, the many by their votes. Each is worshipped by its votaries, and its approbation sought. He that can get tho men controls the money too. So while one portion of educated men bows to the rich, and consecrates their passion and their prejudice, another portion bows, equally prostrate, to the passions of the multitude of men. The many and the rich have each a public opinion of their own, and both are tyrants. Here the tyranny of public opinion is not absolutely greater than in England, Germany, or France, but is far greater in comparison with other modes of oppression. It seems inherent in a republic; it is not in a republic of noble men. But here this sirocco blows flat to the ground full many on aspiring blade. Wealth can establish banks or factories; votes can lift the meanest man into the highest political place, can dignify any passion with the name and force of human law; so it is thought by the worshippers of both, seeking the approbation of the two, that, public opinion can make truth of lies, and right even out of foulest wrong. Politicians begin to say, there is no law of God above the ephemeral laws of men. There are few American works of literature which appeal to what is best in men; few that one could wish should go abroad and live. America has grown beyond hope in population, the free and bond, in riches, in land, in public material prosperity, but in a literature that represents the higher elements of manliness far less than wise men thought. They looked for the fresh new child; it is