Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 8.djvu/91

Rh vices they are too. You may read of them in Hume and Alison. They are painted black as night and bloody as battle in Tory journals of England and the more vulgar Tory journals of America. Democracy wrought terrible evils in Britain in Cromwell's time, in France at her Revolution. But to the vices, the crimes, the sins of aristocracy, of Conservatism—they are what the fleeting lust of the youth is to the cool, hard, calculating, and indomitablo ambition of the grown man. Radicalism pillaged Governor Hutchinson's house, threw some tea into the ocean: Conservatism set up its Stamp Act, and drove America into revolution. Radicalism helped Shadrach out of court: Conservatism enacted the Fugitive Slave Bill. Radicalism sets up a republic that is red for six months: Conservatism sets up a red monarchy covered with blood for hundreds of years. Judge you from which we have the most to fear.

Such are the safeguards of society, such our condition. What shall we do? Nobody would dare pretend to build a church except on righteousness; that is, the rock of ages. Can you build a State on any other foundation—that house upon the sand? What should you think of a minister of the Church who got his deacons together, and made a creed, and said, “There is no higher law, no law of God. You, laymen, must take our word for your guidance, and do just as we bid you, and violate the plainest commands of conscience?” What would be Atheism in a minister of the Church, is that patriotism in a minister of the State? A bad law is a most powerful instrument to demoralize and debauch the people. If it is a law of their own making, it is all the worse. There is no real and manly welfare for a man, without a sense of religious obligation to God; none in a family, none in a Church, none in a State. We want righteousness in the people, in their establishments, in their officers. I adjure you to reverence a government that is right, statutes that are right, officers that are right, but to disobey everything that is wrong. I entreat you, by your love for your country, by the memory of your fathers, by your reverence for Jesus Christ, yea, by the deep and holy love of God, which Jesus taught, and you now feel.