Towards democracy

46 Towards Democracy

To-day the slave goes first, in his chains, and the voiceless, and those that are without arguments and always in the wrong ;

And the prisoner with slouched head, and the suspected and insulted in rags, and those whose hearts bleed silently because of what they see ;

And the old forsaken mother, and the cast-aside woman, and the child, and the favorless and the drunkard shall go first ;

The mechanic to-day shall go before his master, the bricklayer shall be saluted in the street before the architect, the nayvy shall be accounted more than the politician, and I will give the illiterate the advantage of those that read and write.

The scouted and the exiled and the unheard-of, laborers in the fields and in mines, quarrymen and limekilners and brickburners and makers and cleaners of drains and household drudges, shall be nearest in honor: the burdened of every day, and the sufferers, the over-worked and hope-forlorn, and the concealers of sin and sorrow and despair, shall head the procession.

And with them One (of whom I have spoken) moving unseen hither and thither—side by side first with one and then with another—shall resume and make all plain, shall be himself the beginning and ending of it all.

XXXII When He descends, when He comes to take dominionDo you think that anything else will do? do you think that he will perhaps be put off by offers sufficiently liberal, and arguments?