and it will yet make its way into Italy and Russia, and the Ottoman Empire itself.

The first step which I shall take in defending the ground which we as a nation have taken, will be carefully to define it. What, then, is the ground which we have taken? What is the principle of a democratic or representative government? It is, that no restraints, disabilities, or penalties, shall be laid upon any person, and that no immunities, privileges, or charters shall be conferred on any person, or any class of persons, but such as tend to promote the general welfare. This exception, be it remembered, is an essential part of our theory. Our principle is not, as I conceive, that no privileges shall be granted to one person more than to another. If bank charters, for instance, can be proved to be advantageous to the community, our principle must allow them. It is upon the same principle, that we grant acts of incorporation to the governors of colleges, academies, and hospitals, and to many other benevolent and literary societies: it is upon the ground that they benefit the public. And what is government itself, but a corporation possessing and exercising certain exclusive powers for the general weal. The President of the United States is, by our will, the most privileged person in the country: he holds, for the time being, an absolute monopoly of certain extraordinary powers. Will any man say, then, that no person shall enjoy any privileges which he does not enjoy? There may, doubtless, be monopolies and immunities which are wrong, unjust, and injurious. But whan the popular cry is, "down with all monopolies! down with all corporations and charters!" I hold, that it is a senseless cry; it is a senseless cry, because it is suicidal, because it is fatal to all government.

Again, I maintain, that our democratic principle is not that the people are always right. It is this rather; that although the people may sometimes be wrong, yet that they are not so likely to be wrong, and to do wrong, as irresponsible, hereditary magistrates and legislators; that it is safer to trust the many with the keeping of their own interests, than it is to trust the few to keep those interests for them. The people are not always right; they are often wrong. They must be so, from the very magnitude, difficulty, and complication of the questions that are submitted to them. I am amazed that thinking men, conversant with these questions, should address such gross flattery and monstrous absurdity to the people, as to be constantly telling them, that they will put all these questions right at the ballot-box; and I am no less amazed, that a sensible people should suffer such folly to be spoken to them. Is it possible that the people believe it? Is it possible that the majority itself of any people can be so infatuated as to hold that, in virtue of its being a majority, it is always right? Alas! for truth, if it is to depend on votes! Has the majority always been right in religion or in philosophy? But the science of politics involves questions no less intricate and difficult. And on these questions, there are grave and solemn decisions to be made by the people; great state problems are submitted to them; such for instance, as concerning internal improvements, the tariff, the currency, banking, and the nicest points of construction, which cost even the wisest men much study: and what the people require for the solution of these questions is, not rash haste, boastful confidence, furious anger, and mad strife, but sobriety, calm

ness, modesty-qualities, indeed, that would go far to abate the violence of our parties, and to hush the brawls of our elections. I do not deny, that questions of deep national concern may justly awaken great zeal and earnestness; but I do deny, that the public mind should be bolstered up with the pride of supposing itself to possess any complete, much less any suddenly acquired, knowledge of them. I am willing to take my fellow-citizens for my governors, with all their errors; I prefer their will, legally signified, to any other government; but to say or imply, that they do not err, and often err, is a doctrine alike preposterous in general theory, and pernicious in its effects upon themselves.

A popular government, then, is not to be represented as an unerring government, but only as less likely to err, less likely to oppress and wrong the people, than any other.

Errors there are, indeed, and enough of them, to make the people unfeignedly cautious and modest, in the great attempt to govern themselves. The violence and immorality of party strifes, the prostration of all social order beneath the feet of infuriated mobs, the taking of life without the forms of law-murder, indeed, in the open day, and with more than the impunity of ordinary concealment-these things fill us at times with alternate disgust and despair. Let the weight of public reprobation rest upon them. I would not lift one finger of the heavy hand which ought to lie upon them, and which ultimately must lie upon them. But let it not be thought, that strifes and tumults are the peculiar results of republican institutions. Will any one say that, during the period of our national existence, we have suffered more from the turbulence of the people than other nations under different forms of government? Have we forgotten the riots, the burning of hay-ricks, and destruction of machinery in England; the horrors of the successive revolutions in France; the tumults and secret societies of Germany; the Ottoman throne swaying to and fro to the pushing pikestaffs of lawless Janizaries; the atrocities of Russian despotism in Poland; the gentle tyranny of Austria, not so blood-thirsty-no, but only burying alive her noblest subjects in the graves of Spielburgh and Venice have we forgotten these things, that we are willing to exchange for such fortunes, the peaceful order of these free and happy States?

It is true, indeed, and lamentable as true, that this peaceful order is sometimes broken. It is true and lamentable, that some of our citizens have strangely forgotten the very principle on which our institutions are based-freedom-freedom of speech, freedom of publication, freedom of trial by jury as the only condition on which life, liberty, or property, in this country shall ever be touched. My blood runs cold in my veins, and I tremble as I look upon my children, to think, that my house or yours may yet be surrounded by an armed mob; that you or I may be shot down, without remorse, on our own threshold, simply for asserting our honest opinion. But I thank God, that this is yet a country, and, I trust in God, always will be a country, in which I can express my indignation alike against the despotism of a government, and the despotism of a populace. When it ceases to be such, be it no longer my country! Give me any tyranny, rather than that most monstrous of all the tyrannies ever heard of the bloody violence of a lawless people, with liberty on their lips and murder in their hearts. Let this body of mine sink under the Turkish bow-string,

or the

Russian knout, rather than be trodden out of life under the heels of a brutal populace. I am not an abolitionist in the technical sense of that word, and I say it now only that I may give my words the greater force -for if I thought every abolitionist in the country worthy of death, I should still say, that the hand which inflicted it without the forms of law, was the hand of a murderer; and wo and shame to the country, if such deeds can go unpunished!

I have said, that I am not an abolitionist; but let it not be supposed, on the other hand, that I am a friend to the system of slavery. With what face could I enter upon a defence of the doctrine of liberty, if I were so! The very despot could defend liberty upon that plan-that is, "liberty for me," he would say, "and bondage for you.' Slavery is, undoubtedly, an anomaly in our free institutions. And when I defend and eulogise our freedom, that, of course, must be set aside as a lamentable, though I trust that it is to be a temporary, exception.

Let me now proceed to speak of liberty as a blessing, and the highest blessing that can appertain to the condition of a people. This, you know, is denied. It is maintained, on the contrary, that liberty is a curse. I do not say that such a proposition is openly maintained in this country; but in other countries it is maintained-with a zeal to which we must, at least, allow the credit of sincerity-that the liberty we contend for is a curse; that it is not only a dream of enthusiasts, but a wild and dangerous dream, which must, sooner or later, wake to the fearful realities of disorder, anarchy, and bloodshed. We are called upon, therefore, with equal earnestness, to defend the ground which we, as a people, have taken. This defence, I will humbly, in my place, attempt.

And, in the first place, I value our political constitution, because it is the only system that accords with the truth of things, the only system that recognises the great claims, and inalienable rights of humanity. There may be nations who are not prepared to assert these claims and to enjoy these rights. I speak not for them. But for me it is a happiness that I live under a political system that is not based upon error, that involves no gross and palpable violation of the great and manifest rights of humanity. I might feel, in Austria or in Prussia, that I was no sufferer from the political system under which I lived; nay, I might be one of the favourites of that system; but I would not desire to be the favourite of a system which would be a constant reproach to my reason and my conscience. Why, I must naturally desire that even the machinery of a manufactory, were I engaged in one, should be the best-should exhibit the fittest adjustment of part to part; how much more must I desire this, concerning the machinery of that political constitution which involves not only interests, but rights and duties.

There is not, and there cannot be, any true system of political morality, which does not consult the greatest happiness of the greatest number; and no splendour of a nobility, no magnificence of a throne, can atone for the want of that principle. No sentiment of loyalty, however honourable and graceful it may seem, can stand in the place of the dignity of justice!

And what is that justice? The justice of a social system. What is the tenor of the law under which all men evidently hold life, and all the blessings of life, from the great Creator? Is it that one man's will

shall reign, a despotic sovereign, over the welfare of millions? Is it that any one class shall be raised to perpetual honour and power, while all other classes shall be proportionably depressed? Is this justice? I am not saying now what temporary expediency may be; but I say, is this justice? How is it manifestly the will of Heaven, that men, its children, should regard and treat one another? Must we quote written texts to prove that the great Being who reigns over all is no respecter of persons? Must we solemnly appeal to the universal sense of right in the human breast to show, that according to the will of God, the dispensation of wealth, happiness, honour, and all the blessings of existence, should come the nearest possible to the measure of distributive justice the nearest possible to being the reward of merit? That it cannot come precisely to this point, is true: but is that any argument for failing to come the nearest possible to it? Can any honourable and generous mind willingly consent to live-can it live happily, with monstrous social injustice all around it—with monstrous social injustice as the very basis of its distinction; and that injustice capable of a remedy? And is there not injustice in the social, the semi-feudal system of Europe-a system of immemorial preferences in church and state, in political employments, and social honours! What is it but to run a race, in which certain hereditary competitors have all the advantage? Would you send your sons so to run a race even in a May-day game? But what is this to the race of life, the race for happiness, which all men are running? Would you put out your children to an apprenticeship, or into a school, where certain of their fellows, by no merit of their own, were placed so far above them, that they could only by gracious permission, raise their eyes to them? But what would this be to the great discipline and school of life? These are not mere figures; they represent facts; they point to grievous burthens, heavy to be borne. Is it not a burthen to the Dissenter, that all the ecclesiastical revenues of a kingdom should be garnered up for a privileged church? Is it not a burthen to the commoner, that so many of the powers and honours of a state should be lavished upon a hereditary class? Is it not a burthen to the labourer or artisan, that so large a portion of the capital of a country should be for ever sequestered from their reach, for the ease and aggrandizement of a few? The capital of a country consists mainly in its soil, its mines, its woods, and waters. And now, to take the most prosperous example of feudal institutions in the worldwho, I ask, who own almost half of the soil and mines, the woods and waters of England? Her nobles; and by law they are permitted to hold them, in perpetual entail, in their own families, for their own advantage, and even free from attachment for debt? And in addition to this, by the custom and courtesy, should I not rather say the discourtesy of society, they are permitted to look down upon the whole surrounding world.

I thank Heaven that I live in a country of more equal institutions. I do not pretend here to judge of English Reforms. Whether they are too rapid or too slow, I am not qualified to decide; but I may, at least, thank Heaven that we do not need them. Perhaps I have a hearer, to whom even these candid allusions to England may not be agreeable. It may not be without some degree of irritation that he will ask, why I should say anything in disparagement of England, the most glorious

country, he may say, in the world. He may say this, and I shall not refuse to agree with him: but the glory of England is the work of time and position, and of a noble race of men, and not, I trust, of the inequality of her political constitution. Why, then, do I speak as I do, even of the fairest and most modified example of feudal institutions? I will answer. It is because I stand up for justice, as the dearest immunity of a civilized state; it is because I stand up for humanity, as the noblest claim in the world; it is because I contend for a dignity higher than that of kings and nobles-the dignity of truth; it is, in fine, because I am willing, and I wish to stand on earth as a man-beneath the equal and even canopy of heaven-in presence of the impartial justice and lovingkindness that reign in that heaven-there to discharge my lot, and to work out my welfare as a man. It offends me, to think that I, or any other man, should be bolstered up with hereditary advantages, or with social or religious immunities, that are denied to mine equals, my brethren, in the sight of God. That is my feeling, be it called Quixotism, or whatever else any one may call it. I have, in this matter, an unfortunate and strange way of thinking of others as if they possessed my own nature; and I cannot patiently bear, that the children of one common Father should be treated with a partiality that would revolt me, if it were introduced among the children of an earthly parentage. It is monstrous in the eye of reason: it is treason to gentle humanity; it is as truly unjust as if it were the oppression of bonds and burthens; and the time will come when it will be so regarded. The dignity of the English mind, I am certain, will not always bear it. In the mean time, I say it again, I thank Heaven that I am made no party, either better or worse, to the injustice of such a system.

II. In the next place I value our liberty, and deem it a just cause of thankfulness to Heaven, because it fosters and developes all the intellectual and moral powers of the country.

Freedom is the natural school of energy and enterprise. Freedom is the appropriate sphere of talent and virtue. The soul was not made to walk in fetters. To act powerfully, it must act freely; and it must act, too, under all the fair incentives of an honest and honourable ambition. This applies especially to the mass of the people. There may be minds, and there are, which find a sufficient incentive to exertion in the love of knowledge and improvement, in the single aim at perfection; but this is not, and cannot be, the condition of the mass of minds; they need other impulses. Open then, I say, freely and widely to every individual, the way to wealth, to honour, to social respect, and to public office, and you put life into any people. Impart that principle to a nation of Turks, or even of Hindoos, and it will be as a resurrection from the dead. The sluggish spirit will be aroused; the languid nerve will be strung to new energy; there will be a stir of action and a spring to industry all over the country, because there will be a motive. Alas! how many poor toilers in the world are obliged to labour without reward, without hope, almost without motive! Like the machinery amidst which they labour, and of which they are scarcely more than a part, they are moved by the impulse of blind necessity. The single hope of bettering their condition, which now, alas! never visits them, would regenerate them to a new life.

Now it is with such life that this whole nation is inspired. It is