Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/271

Rh wrappages of cloth; but I will let you see that I am shrunken and shrivelled to the bone. If the pulpit is no nearer heaven than the tavern-bar, let that fact appear. If tho desk in the counting-room is to give law to tho desk in the church, do not commit tho hypocrisy of putting tho pulpit-desk above the counting-room. Let us see where we are.

The consequence of such causes as are symbolized by these facts must needs appear in our civilization. Men tell us there is no law higher than mercantile! Do yon wonder at it? It was said in deeds before words; the architecture of Boston told it before the politicians. Money is tho god of our idolatry. Let the fact appear in his temples. Money is master now, all must give way to it,—that to nothing: the church, the State, the law, is not for man, but money.

Let the son of a distinguished man beat a watchman, knowing him to be such, and be brought before a justice (it would be "levying war" if a mulatto had done so to the marshal); he is bailed off for two hundred dollars. But let a black man have in his pockets a weapon, which the Constitution and laws of Massachusetts provide that any man may have, if he please, he is brought to trial and bound over for—two hundred dollars, think you? No! but for six hundred dollars! three times as much as is required of the son of the Secretary of State for assaulting a magistrate! The Secretary of State publicly declared, a short time since, that "The great object of government is the protection of property at home, and respect and renown abroad." I thank him for teaching us that word! That is the actual principle of the American government. In all countries of the world, struggles take place for human rights. But in all countries there is a class who desire a privilege for themselves adverse to the rights of mankind: they are commonly richer and abler-minded than the majority of men; they can act in concert. Between them and mankind there is a struggle. The quarrel takes various forms. The contest has been going on for a long time in Europe, There, it is between the aristocracy