I am glad that the churches are lower than the shops. I have said it many times, and I say it now. I am glad they are less magnificent than our banks and hotels. I am glad that haberdashers' shops look down on them. Let the outward show correspond to the inward fact. If I am pinched and withered by disease, I will not disguise it from you by wrappages of cloth; but I will let you see that I am shrunken and shrivelled to the bone. If the pulpit is no nearer heaven than the tavern-bar, let that fact appear. If the desk in the counting-room is to give law to the desk in the church, do not commit the hypocrisy of putting the pulpit-desk above the counting-room. Let us see where we are. * * * * * The consequence of such causes as are symbolized by these facts must needs appear in our civilization. Men tell us there is no law higher than mercantile! Do you wonder at it? It was said in deeds before words; the architecture of Boston told it before the politicians. Money is the god of our idolatry. Let the fact appear in his temples. Money is master now, all must give way to it,--that to nothing: the church, the State, the law, is not for man, but money. Let the son of a distinguished man beat a watchman, knowing him to be such, and be brought before a Justice (it would be "levying war" if a mulatto had done so to the marshal); he is bailed off for two hundred dollars. But let a black man have in his pockets a weapon, which the Constitution and laws of Massachusetts provide that any man may have if he please, he is brought to trial and bound over for--two hundred dollars, think you? No! but for six hundred dollars! three times as much as is required of the son of the Secretary of State for assaulting a magistrate![26] The Secretary of State publicly declared, a short time since, that "The great object of government is the protection of property at home, and respect and renown abroad." I thank him for teaching us that word! That is the actual principle of the American government. In all countries of the world, struggles take place for human rights. But in all countries there is a class who desire a privilege for themselves adverse to the rights of mankind: they are commonly richer and abler-minded than the majority of men; they can act in concert. Between them and mankind there is a struggle. The quarrel takes various forms. The contest has been going on for a long time in Europe. There, it is between the aristocracy of birth, and the aristocracy of wealth; for there it is not money, but birth, that makes noble. In this struggle the aristocracy of birth is gradually giving way to the aristocracy of gold. A long and brilliant rent-roll makes up for a short and obscure pedigree.