Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/26

22 considerably greater than our whole population when we declared Independence, yet how much talk will a tariff make, or a public dinner: how little the welfare of three million men! Said I not truly, our most famous politicians are, in the general way, only mercantile party-men? Which of these men has shown the most interest in those three million slaves? The man who in the Senate of a Christian Republic valued them at twelve hundred million dollars! Shall respectable men say, "We do not care what sort of a Government the people have, so long as we get our dividends." Some say so; many men do not say that, but think so, and act accordingly! The Government, therefore, must be so arranged that they get their dividends.

This class of men buys up legislators, consciously or not, and pays them, for valued received. Yes, so great is its daring and its conscious power, that we have recently seen our most famous politician bought up, the stoutest understanding that one finds now extant in this whole nineteenth century, perhaps the ablest head since Napoleon. None can deny his greatness, his public services in times past, nor his awful power of intellect. I say we have seen him, a senator of the United States, pensioned by this class, or a portion thereof, and thereby put mainly in their hands! When a whole nation rises up and publicly throws its treasures at the feet of a great man who has stood forth manfully contending for the nation, and bids him take their honours and their gold as a poor pay for noble works, why that sight is beautiful, the multitude shouting hosanna to their King, and spreading their garments underneath his feet! Man is loyal, and such honours so paid, and to such, are doubly gracious; becoming alike to him that takes and those who give. Yes, when a single class, to whom some man has done a great service, goes openly and makes a memorial thereof in gold and honours paid to him, why that also is noble and beautiful. But when a single class, in a country where political doings are more public than elsewhere in the whole world, secretly buys up a man, in high, place and world-famous, giving him a retaining fee for life, why the deed is one I do not wish to call by name! Could such men do this without a secret shame? I will never believe it of my country-