Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/31

Rh thorn to be temporate, only that he may consume the value of their drink. He provided for them unsuitable broad and moat. He would not engage in the African slave trade, for he might lose his ships, and perhaps more; but he is always ready to engage in the American slave trade, and calls you a "fanatic" if you tell him it is ths worse of the two. He cares not whether he sells cotton or the man who wears it, if he only gets the money; cotton or negro, it in the same to him. He would not keep a drink-hole in Ann Street, only own and rent it. He will bring or make whole cargoes of the poison that deals "damnation round the land." He thinks it vulgar to carry, rum about in a jug, respectable in a ship. He makes paupers, and leaves others to support them. Tell not him of the misery of the poor, he knows better; nor of our paltry way of dealing with public crime, he wants more gaols, and a speedier gallows. You see his character in letting his houses, his houses for the poor. He is a stone in the lame man's shoe. He is the poor man's devil. The Hebrew devil that so worried Job is gone; so is the brutal devil that awed our fathers. Nobody fears them; they vanish before cock-crowing. But this devil of the nineteenth century is still extant. He has gone into trade, and advertises in the papers; his name is "good" in the street. He "makes money;" the world is poorer by his wealth. He spends it as he made it, like a devil, on himself, his family alone, or, worse yet, for show. He can build a church out of his gains, to have his morality, his Christianity preached in it, and call that the gospel, as Aaron called a calf—God. He sends rum and missionaries to the same barbarians, the one to damn, the other to "save;" both for his own advantage, for his patron saint is Judas, the first saint who made money out of Christ. Ask not him to do a good deed in private, "men would not know it," and "the example would be lost;" so he never lets a dollar slip out between his thumb and finger without leaving his mark on both sides of it. He is not forecasting to discern effects in causes, nor skilful to create new wealth, only spry in the scramble for what others have made. It is easy to make a bargain with him, hard to settle. In politics he wants a Government that will insure his dividends; so asks what is good for him, but ill for the rest.