Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/144

140 are few, and not too great for the risk. In the North the trading class is held in great honour. It is industrial, and so in harmony with our institutions. It is likely to become rich, and so possessed of the object of youthful ambition and servile veneration. Here it is what the priests are in Italy, what the high soldiers are in Russia and France, and the nobility and gentry in England. The ablest practical talent does not go to science, literature, politics, but to trade.

This scheme of government works pretty well for us: it leads to welfare now, and promises progress for the future. I will not say that our industrial democracy secures all the advantages of each other form of government, and escapes from all their ills. It is a new experiment, not complete nor perfect. Its present form, even in the most enlightened State, is quite imperfect. What the steam-engine and printing-press were fifty years ago, compared with what they are now, that is the industrial democracy of this day, compared with its future glories. But two things are indisputable:—

First, it thrives best where it is purest, least mixed with any alloying element; and so in the North it produces more welfare and progress than in the South.

Second, it produces its most beneficial results where it has been longest at work. This appears by comparing the old States of New England with the new States of the West; for here the higher results of democracy appear in the form of science, literature, art, philanthropy, better developed character. All these things require time, for they are plants of slow growth.

So much for the general institutions of America, which distinguish our government from others.

Now see the effect of Slavery on the people under these peculiar institutions.

Slavery is an exceptional institution, which we have taken or kept from old time. It belongs to that rule of vicariousness, or rather to a time of barbarism before that. It is wholly foreign to a democracy, hostile to its fundamental principle. Slavery is property in man. By nature each man is a unit of human substance, having all the primitive, natural rights of humanity. By Slavery he is