Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Politics volume 4 .djvu/200

practically greater than that of any monarch in Europe, save Nicholas, William, and Ferdinand, yet at his death all the power passes into the hands of his successor, with no noise, no tumult, not even the appearance of a street constable. I think that was a sublime sight—the rule over twenty millions of people, jealous of their rights, silently, by due course of law, passes into the hands of another man at dead of night, and the next morning the nation is just as safe, just as quiet and secure as before, no fear of change perplexing them. That was a sublime sight—one of the fair things which comes of a democracy. Here the ruler is servant, and the people master; so the death of a President like Mr. Van Buren, or any of his successors, Harrison or Tyler or Polk, would really have been a very unimportant event; not so momentous as the death of one of the ablest doctors in Boston, for should the physician die, your chance of life is diminished by that fact. If Dr. Channing had died at the age of forty, before he wrote his best works, his death would have been a greater calamity than that of any or all of the four Presidents just named, as soon as their inaugural address was delivered; for Dr. Channing had some truths to tell, which there was nobody else to deliver at that time. No President since Jefferson, I think, has done the nation so much good as the opening of the Erie Canal in New York, or the chief railroads in Massachusetts, or the building up of any one of the half dozen large manufacturing towns in New England. Mr. Cunard, in establishing his line of Atlantic steamers, did more for America than any President for five-and-twenty years. The discovery of the properties of sulphuric ether, the devising of the magnetic telegraph, was of more advantage to this nation, than the service of any President for a long time. I think I could mention a few men in Boston, any one of whom has been of more service than four or five Presidents ; and, accordingly, the death of any one of those would be a greater calamity than the demise of all those Presidents the day after election. With us the President is only one spoke in the wheel, and, if that is broken, we always have a spare spoke on hand, and the wheel is so made that, without stopping the mill, the new spoke drops into the place of the old one and no one knows the change till told thereof.