Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/137

Rh intensified towards one special people—not that we love mankind less, but our country more. It is the application of justice to our own nation.

The Americans are making a new experiment in human history. The discovery of the continent was not more strange in 1492 than the American Republic is now. This, also, is a New World amongst the governments of the earth. Great abstract truths become great facts in the institutions of the people; the word becomes flesh; what at first is a great thought is at last to be millions of men, their character moulded by the institutions.

Commonly, political parties in any country agree in the end they seek, varying only in the means thereto. So the difference between them is not moral, belonging to the ethics of government; but economical, belonging to the technics of administration: it relates to measures, not principles. But to-day it is not so with us. There are two parties in America, neither yet completely understanding its principles or its destination. One is the party of Freedom, tending to democracy, which must secure welfare and progress to the whole people; the other is the party of Slavery, tending to despotism, which must diminish progress, lessen welfare, and end in the ruin of the people.

On this great day, remembering that we are all Americans, each having his stake in the common fence, religiously owing great patriotism to our common country, let us look at our special duty as citizens of this new republic; and so I ask your attention to some thoughts on “The Effect of Slavery on the American People.” I shall say much of principles, ideas, and facts; of individual men very little.

To understand the matter fully, and see the effect of Slavery, look a minute at some of the chief peculiarities of our political institutions.

In the middle ages, throughout the greater part of Europe, there prevailed a form of government which looks strange to you and me. Vicariousness was the general rule in religion and politics: neither Church nor State was amenable to the people.

First, the clergy were responsible for the religion of the