this question, the peril is less when we take note of our natural defences. We are kept by better guards than the vigilance of such magistrates as we commonly elect. Society always consists, in greatest part, of young and foolish persons. The old, who have seen through the hypocrisy of courts and statesmen, die, and leave no wisdom to their sons. These believe their own newspaper, as their fathers did at their age. With such an ignorant and deceivable majority, States would soon run to ruin, but that there are limitations, beyond which the folly and ambition of governors cannot go. Things have their laws, as well as men ; and things refuse to be trifled with. Property will be protected. Corn will not grow, unless it is planted and manured; but the farmer will not plant or hoe it, unless the chances are a hundred to one that he will cut and harvest it. Under any forms, persons and property must and will have their just sway. They exert their power, as steadily as matter its attraction. Cover up a pound of earth never so cunningly, divide and subdivide it; melt it to liquid, convert it to gas; it will always weigh a pound; it will always attract and resist other matter, by the full virtue of one pound weight; and the attributes of a person, his wit and his moral energy, will exercise, under any law or extinguishing tyranny, their proper force, if not overtly, then covertly; if not for the law, then against it; if not wholesomely, then poisonously; with right, or by might.

non-proprietor will be the scribe of the proprietor. What the owners wish to do the whole power of property will do, either through the law, or else in defiance of it. Of course, I speak of all the property, not merely of the great estates. When the rich are outvoted, as frequently happens, it is the joint treasury of the poor which exceeds their accumulations. Every man owns something, if it is only a cow, or a wheelbarrow, or his arms, and so has that property to dispose of.

The same necessity which secures the rights of person and property against the malignity or folly of the magistrate, determines the form and methods of governing, which are proper to each nation, and to its habit of thought, and nowise transferable to other states of society. In this country, we are very vain of our political institutions, which are singular in this, that they sprung, within the memory of living men, from the character and condition of the people, which they still express with sufficient fidelity,and we ostentatiously prefer them to any other in history. They are not better, but only fitter for us. We may be wise in asserting the advantage in modern times of the democratic form, but to other states of society, in which religion consecrated the monarchical, that and not this was expedient. Democracy is better for us, because the religious sentiment of the present time accords better with it. Born democrats, we are nowise qualified to judge of monarchy, which, to our fathers The boundaries of personal influence it living in the monarchical idea, was also is impossible to fix, as persons are organs relatively right. But our institutions, though of moral or supernatural force. Under in coincidence with the spirit of the age, the dominion of an idea, which possesses the have not any exemption from the practical minds of multitudes, as civil freedom, or the defects which have discredited other forms. religious sentiment, the powers of persons Every actual State is corrupt. Good men are no longer subjects of calculation. A must not obey the laws too well. What nation of men unanimously bent on freedom, satire on government can equal the severity or conquest, can easily confound the arith- of censure conveyed in the word politic, metic of statists, and achieve extravagant which now for ages has signified cunning, actions, out of all proportion to their means; intimating that the State is a trick? as, the Greeks, the Saracens, the Swiss, the Americans, and the French have done.

In like manner, to every particle of property belongs its own attraction. A cent is the representative of a certain quantity of corn or other commodity. Its value is in the necessities of the animal man. It is so much warmth, so much bread, so much water, so much land. The law may do what it will with the owner of property, its just power will still attach to the cent. The law may in a mad freak say, that all shall have power except the owners of property; they shall have no vote. Nevertheless, by a higher law, the property will, year after year, write every statute that respects property. The

The same benign necessity and the same practical abuse appear in the parties into which each State divides itself, of opponents and defenders of the administration of the

government. Parties are also founded on
instincts, and have better guides to their
own humble aims than the sagacity of their
leaders. They have nothing perverse in
their origin, but rudely mark some real and
lasting relation. We might as wisely reprove
the east-wind, or the frost, as a political
party, whose members, for the most part,
could give no account of their position, but
stand for the defence of those interests in
which they find themselves.
Our quarrel
with them begins, when they quit this deep

natural ground at the bidding of some leader,
and, obeying personal considerations, throw
themselves into the maintenance and defence
of points, nowise belonging to their system.
A party is perpetually corrupted by person-
ality. Whilst we absolve the association
from dishonesty, we cannot extend the same
charity to their leaders. They reap the re-
wards of the docility and zeal of the masses
which they direct. Órdinarily, our parties are
parties of circumstance, and not of principle;
as, the planting interest in conflict with the
commercial; the party of capitalists, and that
of operatives; parties which are identical in
their moral character, and which can easily
change ground with each other, in the sup-
port of many of their measures. Parties of
principle, as, religious sects, or the party of
free-trade, of universal suffrage, of abolition
of slavery, of abolition of capital punish-
ment, degenerate into personalities, or would
inspire enthusiasm. The vice of our leading
parties in this country (which may be cited
as a fair specimen of these societies of
opinion) is, that they do not plant them-
selves on the deep and necessary grounds
to which they are respectively entitled, but
lash themselves to fury in the carrying of
some local and momentary measure, nowise
useful to the commonwealth. Of the two
great parties, which, at this hour, almost
share the nation between them, I should
say, that, one has the best cause, and the
other contains the best men. The philoso-
pher, the poet, or the religious man will, of
course, wish to cast his vote with the demo-
crat, for free trade, for wide suffrage, for the
abolition of legal cruelties in the penal code,
and for facilitating in every manner the
access of the young and the poor to the
sources of wealth and power. But he can
rarely accept the persons whom the so-called
popular party propose to him as represen-
tatives of these liberalities. They have not
at heart the ends which give to the name of
democracy what hope and virtue are in it.
The spirit of our American radicalism is
destructive and aimless; it is not loving; it
has no ulterior and divine ends; but is de-
structive only out of hatred and selfishness.
On the other side, the conservative party,
composed of the most moderate, able, and
cultivated part of the population, is timid,
and merely defensive of property. It vindi-
cates no right, it aspires to no real good, it
brands no crime, it proposes no generous
policy, it does not build nor write, nor
cherish the arts, nor foster religion, nor
establish schools, nor encourage science,
nor emancipate the slave, nor befriend the
poor, or the Indian, or the immigrant.
From neither party, when in power, has the

world any benefit to expect in science, art, or humanity, at all commensurate with the resources of the nation.

I do not for these defects despair of our republic. We are not at the mercy of any waves of chance. In the strife of ferocious parties, human nature always finds itself cherished, as the children of the convicts at Botany Bay are found to have as healthy a moral sentiment as other children. Citizens of feudal states are alarmed at our democratic institutions lapsing into anarchy; and the older and more cautious among ourselves are learning from Europeans to look with some terror at our turbulent freedom. It is said that in our license of construing the Constitution, and in the despotism of public opinion, we have no anchor; and one foreign observer thinks he has found the safeguard in the sanctity of Marriage among us; and another thinks he has found it in our Calvinism. Fisher Ames expressed the popular security more wisely, when he compared a monarchy and a republic, saying, "that a monarchy is a merchantman, which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; whilst a republic is a raft, which would never sink, but then your feet are always in water.' No forms can have any dangerous importance, whilst we are befriended by the laws of things. It makes no difference how many tons' weight of atmosphere presses on our heads, so long as the same pressure resists it within the lungs. Augment the mass a thousandfold, it cannot begin to crush us, as long as reaction is equal to action. The fact of two poles, of two forces, centripetal and centrifugal, is universal, and each force by its own activity develops the other. Wild liberty develops iron conscience. Want of liberty, by strengthening law and decorum, stupefies conscience. 'Lynch-law' prevails only where there is greater hardihood and self-subsistency in the leaders. A mob cannot be a permanency; everybody's interest requires that it should not exist, and only justice satisfies all.

"

We must trust infinitely to the beneficent necessity which shines through all laws. Human nature expresses itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads, and an abstract of the codes of nations would be a transcript of the common conscience. Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men. Reason for one is seen to be reason for another, and for every other. There is a middle measure which satisfies all parties, be they never so many, or so resolute for their own. Every man finds a sanction for his simplest claims and deeds in decisions of his own mind,

The movement in this direction has been very marked in modern history. Much has been blind and discreditable, but the nature of the revolution is not affected by the vices of the revolters; for this is a purely moral force. It was never adopted by any party in history, neither can be. It separates the individual from all party, and unites him, at the same time, to the race. It promises a recognition of higher rights than those of personal freedom or the security of property. A man has a right to be employed, to be trusted, to be loved, to be revered. The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried. We must not imagine that all things are lapsing into confusion, if every tender protestant be not compelled to bear his part in certain social conventions; nor doubt that roads can be built, letters carried, and the fruit of labour secured, when the government of force is at an end. Are our methods now so excellent that all competition is hopeless? could not a nation of friends even devise better ways? On the other hand, let not the most conservative and timid fear anything from a premature surrender of the bayonet, and the system of force. For, according to the order of nature, which is quite superior to our will, it stands thus; there will always be a government of force, where men are selfish; and when they are pure enough to abjure the code of force, they will be wise enough to see how these public ends of the post-office, of the highway, of commerce, and the exchange of property, of museums and libraries, of institutions of art and science, can be answered.

presence is hardly yet suspected. Malthus penalties of his own constitution, which and Ricardo quite omit it; the Annual work with more energy than we believe, Register is silent; in the Conversations' whilst we depend on artificial restraints. Lexicon, it is not set down; the President's Message, the Queen' Speech, have not mentioned it; and yet it is never nothing. Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world, alters the world. The gladiators in the lists of power feel, through all their frocks of force and simulation, the presence of worth. I think the very strife of trade and ambition are confession of this divinity; and successes in those fields are the poor amends, the fig-leaf with which the shamed soul attempts to hide its nakedness. I find the like unwilling homage in all quarters. It is because we know how much is due from us, that we are impatient to show some petty talent as a substitute for worth. We are haunted by a conscience of this right to grandeur of character, and are false to it. But each of us has some talent, can do somewhat useful, or graceful, or formidable, or amusing, or lucrative. That we do, as an apology to others and to ourselves, for not reaching the mark of a good and equal life. But it does not satisfy us, whilst we thrust it on the notice of our companions. It may throw dust in their eyes, but does not smooth our own brow, or give us the tranquillity of the strong when we walk abroad. We do penance as we go. Our talent is a sort of expiation, and we are constrained to reflect on our splendid moment, with a certain humiliation, as somewhat too fine, and not as one act of many acts, a fair expression of our permanent energy. Most persons of ability meet in society with a kind of tacit appeal. Each seems to say, 'I am not all here.' Senators and presidents have climbed so high with pain enough, not because they think the place specially agreeable, but as an apology for real worth, and to vindicate their manhood in our eyes. This conspicuous chair is their compensation to themselves for being of a poor, cold, hard nature. They must do what they can. Like one class of forest animals, they have nothing but a prehensile tail climb they must, or crawl. If a man found himself so rich-natured that he could enter into strict relations with the best persons, and make life serene around him by the dignity and sweetness of his behaviour, could he afford to circumvent the favour of the caucus and the press, and covet relations so hollow and pompous, as those of a politician? Surely nobody would be a charlatan, who could afford to be sincere.

The tendencies of the times favour the idea of self-government, and leave the individual, for all code, to the rewards and

We live in a very low state of the world, and pay unwilling tribute to governments founded on force. There is not, among the most religious and instructed men of the most religious and civil nations, a reliance on the moral sentiment, and a sufficient belief in the unity of things, to persuade them that society can be maintained without artificial restraints, as well as the solar system; or that the private citizen might be reasonable, and a good neighbour, without the hint of a jail or a confiscation. What is strange, too, there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude, to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the State on the principle of right and love. All those who have pretended this design have been partial reformers, and have admitted in some manner the supremacy of the bad State. I do not call to mind a single human being who has steadily denied the authority of the laws, on the