The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Introduction to the Third Edition.
• On Civil Liberty and Self-government.
• Chapter I.: Introductory.
• Chapter II.: Definitions of Liberty.
• Chapter III.: The Meaning of Civil Liberty.
• Chapter IV.: Ancient and Modern Liberty.—Ancient, Medieval, and Modern States.
• Chapter V.: Anglican Liberty.
• Chapter VI.: National Independence—Personal Liberty.
• Chapter VII.: Bail.—Penal Trial.
• Chapter VIII.: High Treason.
• Chapter IX.: Communion.—Locomotion, Emigration.
• Chapter X.: Liberty of Conscience.—Property:—Supremacy of the Law.
• Chapter XI.: Quartering Soldiers.—The Army.
• Chapter XII.: Petition.—Association.
• Chapter XIII.: Publicity.
• Chapter XIV.: Supremacy of the Law.—Taxation.—Division of Power.
• Chapter XV.: Responsible Ministers.—Courts Declaring Laws Unconstitutional.—Representative Government.
• Chapter XVI.: Representative Government, Continued.—Basis of Property.—Direct and Indirect Elections.
• Chapter XVII.: Parliamentary Law and Usage.—The Speaker.—Two Houses.—The Veto.
• Chapter XVIII.: Independence of the Judiciary.—The Law Jus, Common Law.
• Chapter XIX.: Independence of Jus, Self-development of Law, Continued.—Accusatorial and Inquisitorial Trials.—Independence of the Judge.
• Chapter XX.: Independence of Jus, Continued.—Trial By Jury.—The Advocate.
• Chapter XXI.: Self—Government.
• Chapter XXII.: American Liberty.
• Chapter XXIII.: In What Civil Liberty Consists, Proved By Contraries.
• Chapter XXIV.: Gallican Liberty.—Spreading of Liberty.
• Chapter XXV.: The Institution.—Its Definition.—Its Power For Good and Evil.
• Chapter XXVI.: The Institution, Continued.—Institutional Liberty.—Institutional Local Self-government.
• Chapter XXVII.: Effects and Uses of Institutional Self-government.
• Chapter XXVIII.: Dangers and Inconveniences of Institutional Self-government.
• Chapter XXIX.: Advantages of Institutional Government, Farther Considered.
• Chapter XXX.: Institutional Government the Only Government Which Prevents the Growth of Too Much Power.—Liberty, Wealth, and Longevity of States.
• Chapter XXXI.: Insecurity Op Uninstitutional Governments.—Unorganized Inarticulated Popular Power.
• Chapter XXXII.: Imperatorial Sovereignty.
• Chapter XXXIII.: Imperatorial Sovereignty, Continued.—Its Origin and Character Examined.
• Chapter XXXIV.: Centralization.—Influence Of Capital Cities.
• Chapter XXXV.: Vox Populi Vox Dei.
• Appendix.
• Appendix I.: A Paper On Elections, Election Statistics, and General Votes of Yes Or No.
• Appendix II.: A Paper On the Abuse of the Pardoning Power.
• Appendix III.: A Paper On Subjects Connected With the Inquisitorial Trial and the Laws of Evidence.
• Appendix IV.: Magna Charta of King John, Fifteenth Day of June, In the Seventeenth Year of the King's Reign, A.d. 1215.
• Appendix V.: The Petition of Right. 1
• Appendix VI.: An Act For the Better Securing the Liberty of the Subject, and For Prevention of Imprisonments Beyond the Seas, Commonly Called “the Habeas Corpus Act.” 1
• Appendix VII.: Bill of Rights, Passed 1 William and Mary, Sess. 2, Ch. 2, 1689.
• Appendix VIII.: A Declaration By the Representatives of the United States of America In Congress Assembled.
• Appendix IX.: Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union Between the States.
• Appendix X.: Constitution of the United States of America.
• Appendix XI.: The French Constitution, Adopted and Proclaimed On the Twenty-fourth of June 1793. the First Republican Constitution
• Declarations of the Rights of Man and of Citizens.
• Constitution of the Twenty-fourth of June, 1793.
• Appendix XII.: French Charter of Louis XVIII. And That Adopted In the Year 1830.
• Appendix XIII.: Constitution of the French Republic. Adopted November, 1848.
• Appendix XIV.: The Present Constitution of France.
• Appendix XV.: Report of the French Senatorial Committee On the Petitions to Change the Republic Into an Empire, In November, 1852, 1 and the Senatus-consultum Adopted In Conformity With It.
• Appendix XVI.: Letter of the French Minister of the Interior, Mr. De Morny, Addressed to the Prefects of the Deparments In the Year 1852.

chapter xv.

responsible ministers.—courts declaring laws unconstitutional.—representative government.

24.It is not only necessary that every officer remain individually answerable for his acts, but it is equally important that no act be done for which some one is not responsible. This applies in particular, so far as liberty is to be protected, to that branch of government which directs the military. It is important, therefore, that no decree of government go forth without the name of a responsible person; and that the officers, or single acts of theirs, shall be tried, when trial becomes necessary, by regular action at law, or by impeachment; and that no positive order by the supreme executive, even though this be a king, as in England, be allowed as a plea for impunity. A long time elapsed before this principle came clearly to be established in England. Charles I. reproved the commons for proffering their loyalty to his own person, while they opposed his ministers, and measures which he had personally ordered. England in this, as in almost all else that relates to constitutional liberty, had the start of the continent by two hundred years and more.1 same complaints were heard on the continent of Europe when lately attempts were made to establish liberty in monarchies; and more will be heard when the time of new attempts shall have arrived. Responsible ministers, and a cabinet dependent upon a parliamentary majority, were the objects of peculiar distaste to the present emperor of the French, as they have been to all absolute monarchs. His own proclamations distinctly express it, and his newspapers continue to decry the servile position of government when ministers are “in the service of a house of representatives,”1 which means dependent on a parliamentary majority.

In unfree countries, the principle prevails that complaints against the act of an officer, relating to his public duty, must be laid before his own superiors. An overcharge of duty on imported goods cannot there be tried before a common court, as is the case with us.

25. As a general rule, it may be said that the principle prevails in Anglican liberty, that the executive may do that which is positively allowed either by the fundamental or other law, and not all that which is not prohibited. The royal prerogatives of the English crown doubtless made the evolution of this principle difficult, and may occasionally make clear action upon it still so; but the modern development of liberty has unquestionably tended more and more distinctly to establish the principle that for everything the executive does there must be the warrant of the law. The principle is of high importance, and it needs hardly to be added that it forms one of the prominent elements of American liberty. Our presidents, indeed, have done that for which many citizens believed they had no warrant in law, for instance, when General Jackson removed the public deposits from the bank of the United States; but the doubt consisted in the question whether the law warranted the measure or not. It was not claimed that he could do it because it was nowhere prohibited. The Constitution of the United States declares that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people;” and the principle which I have mentioned may be considered as involved in it; but in the different states, where the legislature certainly has the right, as a general rule, to do all that seems necessary for the common welfare and is not specifically prohibited,1 the mentioned principle prevails regarding the executive.2

26. The supremacy of the law requires that where enacted constitutions1 form the fundamental law there be some authority which can pronounce whether the legislature itself has or has not transgressed it in the passing of some law, or whether a specific law conflicts with the superior law, the constitution. If a separate body of men were established to pronounce upon the constitutionality of a law, nothing would be gained. It would be as much the creature of the constitution as the legislature, and might err as much as the latter. Quis custodiet custodes? Tribunes or ephori? They are as apt to transgress their powers as other mortals. But there exists a body of men in all well-organized polities, who, in the regular course of business assigned to them, must decide upon clashing interests, and do so exclusively by the force of reason, according to law, without the power of armies, the weight of patronage or imposing pomp, and who, moreover, do not decide upon principles in the abstract, but upon practical cases which involve them—the middle men between the pure philosophers and the pure men of government. These are the judges—courts of law.

When laws conflict in actual cases, they must decide which is the superior law and which must yield; and as we have seen that according to our principles every officer remains answerable for what he officially does, a citizen, believing that the law he enforces is incompatible with the superior law, the constitution, simply sues the officer before the proper court as having unlawfully aggrieved him in the particular case. The court, bound to do justice to every one, is bound also to decide this case as a simple case of conflicting laws. The court does not decide directly upon the doings of the legislature. It simply decides, for the case in hand, whether there actually are conflicting laws, and, if so, which is the higher law that demands obedience when both may not be obeyed at the same time. As, however, this decision becomes the leading decision for all future cases of the same import, until, indeed, proper and legitimate authority shall reverse it, the question of constitutionality is virtually decided, and it is decided in a natural, easy, legitimate, and safe manner, according to the principle of the supremacy of the law and the independence of justice. It is one of the most interesting and important evolutions of the government of law, and one of the greatest protections of the citizen. It may well be called a very jewel of Anglican liberty, one of the best fruits of our political civilization.1

27. Of all the guarantees of liberty there is none more important, and none which in its ample and manifold development is more peculiarly Anglican, than the representative government. Every one who possesses a slight acquaintance with history knows that a government by assembled estates was common to all nations arising out of the conquests of the Teutonic race; but the members of the estates were deputies or attorneys sent with specific powers of attorney to remedy specific grievances. They became nowhere, out of England and her colonies, general representatives—that is, representatives for the state at large, and with the general power of legislation. This constitutes one of the most essential differences between the deputative medieval estates and the modern representative legislatures—a government prized by us as one of the highest political blessings, and sneered at by the enemies of liberty on the continent, at this moment, as “the unwieldy parliamentary government.” I have endeavored thoroughly to treat of this important difference; of the fact that the representative is not a substitute for something which would be better were it practicable, but has its own substantive value; of political instruction and mandates to the representative, and of the duties of the representative, in the Political Ethics, to which I must necessarily refer the reader.

With reference to the great subject of civil liberty, and as one of the main guarantees of freedom, the representative government has its value as an institution by which public opinion organically passes over into public will, that is law; as one of the chief bars against absolutism of the executive on the one, and of the masses on the other hand; as the only contrivance by which it is possible to induce at the'same time an essentially popular government and the supremacy of the law, or the union of liberty and order; as an invaluable high school to teach the handling and the protection and to instil the love of liberty; as the organism by which the average justice, on which all fair laws must be based, can be ascertained; as that sun which throws the rays of publicity on the whole government with a more penetrating light the more perfect it becomes; and as one of the most efficacious preventives of the growth of centralization and a bureaucratic1 government—as that institution without which no clear division of the functions of government can exist.

Before we consider the most prominent points of a representative government, so far as it is a guarantee of liberty, it may be proper to revert to two subjects just mentioned.

There was a time when, it seems, it was universally believed, and many persons believe still, that a representative government is indeed a very acceptable substitute, yet only a substitute, for a state of things which would be the perfect one, but which it is physically impossible to obtain at present, namely, the meeting of the people themselves, instead of an assembly of their representatives. A secondary value only is thus allowed to the representative system. This is a grave error. Even were it physically or locally possible to assemble the entire American people and rule by the Athenian pebble or by cheirotonia, (the show of hands,) we must still cling to the representative system as a substantive institution. The market government belongs to antiquity—the period of city-states—not to our period of national states; and national states have not only a meaning relating to physical extent of country.

It has been observed that the period of nationalization of tribes toward the close of the middle ages was one of the most important in the progress of civilization and modern political development, as a period of medieval disintegration and division would be the necessary effect of denationalization. Rome perished of a political bankruptcy, because the ancient city-state was incompatible with an extensive empire. A representative government could alone have saved it; for its recollections and forms of liberty prevented a full-blown centralization, the only other form which could have given it a Russian stability. Constantine, indeed, established a centralized court government; but it was then too late. The decree had gone forth that the vessel should part amidst the breakers.

The market democracy is irreconcilable with liberty as we love it. It is absolutism which exists wherever power, unmitigated, undivided, and unchecked, is in the hands of any one or any body of men. It is the opposite of liberty. The people, which means nothing more than an aggregate of men, require fundamental laws of restraint, as much as each component individual does. Unless we divide the power into two parts—into the electing power, which periodically appoints and recalls, and into the power of elected trustees appointed to legislate, and who, as trustees, are limited in their power—absolutism is unavoidable. Absolutism is the negation of protection; protection in its highest sense is an essential element of liberty.1 It is the trusteeship that gives so high a value to the representative government. When the Athenians, trying the unfortunate generals after the battle of Arginusse, were reminded that they acted in direct contradiction to the laws, they exclaimed that they were the people; they made the laws, why should they not have the privilege of disregarding them?2

Every one feels his responsibility far more distinctly as trustee than otherwise. Let a man in an excited crowd be suddenly singled out and made a member of a committee to reflect and resolve for that crowd, and he will feel the difference in an instant. How easy it would be to receive the most lavish and most dangerous money grants from an undivided and absolute multitude!Is it necessary to remind the reader that liberty has been lost quite as often from false gratitude toward a personally popular man as from any other cause?Trustees, carefully looking around them, and conscious that they have to give an account of themselves, are not so easily swayed by ravishing gratitude. The trusteeship in the representative government is the only means yet discovered to temper the rashness of the democracy and to overcome the obstinacy of monarchs.

How necessary for modern liberty a national1 representative government is—a representative system comprehending the whole state, and throwing liberty over it broadcast—will appear at once, if we remember that local self-government exists in many Asiatic countries, where, however, there is no union of these many insulated self-governments, and no state self-government, and therefore no liberty. We shall also presently see that where there is only a national representative government without local self-government, there is no liberty as we understand it.

Nor must we forget two facts, which furnish us with an important lesson on this subject. Wherever estates or other bodies have existed, no matter how great their privileges were or how zealously they defended their liberties, civil liberty has not been firmly established; on the contrary, it has been lost in the course of time, unless the estates have become united into some national or state representative system. Where are the liberties of Aragon, and where is the freedom of the many Germanic polities?It was one of the greatest political blessings of England that favorable circumstances promoted an early national fusion of the estates into two houses. On the other hand, we find that those governments which can no longer resist the demand of liberty by the people, yet are bent on yielding as little as possible, always have tried as long as was feasible to grant provincial estates only. Some monarchs of this century have shown a real horror of national representation, and would rather have periled their crown than granted it; yet some of these monarchs have readily granted an urban self-government of considerable extent. Their ministers and servants have frequently gone so far as to extol local self-government and to proclaim the idea that liberty consists far more in the “administration” being left to the people, than in any general representative government. In doing so, they pointed to countries in which the latter, existing alone, had brought no real liberty. Asia, as was before stated, furnishes us with innumerable instances of local self-government, which are there neither a source nor a test of liberty.1 True liberty stands in need of both, and of a bona fide representative government largely and minutely carried out.2

[1.][The importance of the power of impeachment for obeying a king's unlawful commands would have been practically destroyed in England, if either a pardon had been pleadable against impeachment, or the dissolution of a house of commons had put an end to proceedings in such sort that a new house must commence them de novo. The earl of Danby had been saved for the time by Charles II., by means of a dissolution of the impeaching parliament, and when a new parliament revived the proceedings, pleaded a pardon in bar of the prosecution of the case. (1679.) It was decided in the act of settlement of13 Wm. III. that “no pardon under the great seal of England be pleadable to an impeachment of the commons in parliament.” The question whether an impeachment could survive a dissolution was decided, during the impeachment of Warren Hastings, by very large majorities of both houses in the affirmative. (1791.) After sentence on trial by impeachment, the king can pardon; and, in fact, the house of lords, in 1715, when six peers, involved in the rebellion of that year, had been by this process convicted, begged the king to exercise this prerogative, which he did by pardoning three of the number. Hallam, ii. 555-570. Thus a king can save his minister from the results of a legal sentence by impeachment, but not until he stands convicted before the country, and suffers, it may be, a lifelong loss of reputation.]

[1.]It is sufficiently remarkable to be mentioned here, that Napoleon III., when the sanguinary coup d'etat had been perpetrated, supported his demand of a cabinet exclusively dependent upon the chief of the state, by the example of the American president, not seeing or not mentioning that congress has a controlling power.

The following extract of a letter, written by Lord Liverpool to Lord Castle-reagh, (October 23, 1818,) and taken from Correspondence, Despatches, and other Papers of Viscount Castlereagh, second Marquis of Londonderry, 12 vols., London, 1853, is interesting, if we consider how thorough a tory minister Lord Liverpool was:

“Bathurst's despatch and letter of Tuesday, and my letter of to-day, will put you entirely in possession of our sentiments upon the present state of the negotiations. The Russians must be made to feel that we have a parliament and a public to which we are responsible, and that we cannot permit ourselves to be drawn into views of policy which are wholly incompatible with the spirit of our government.

“Ever sincerely yours,

Liverpool.”

[1.][Such specific checks on legislative power are coming more and more into use. The people are beginning to distrust the legislatures, as they formerly did the executives.]

[2.]I have already mentioned the judgment given by the French court, with reference to the opening of letters by the police in order to find out the tracrs of offences. I now give an extract, and shall italicize those passages which bear upon the subject above:

“Considering that if, by the terms of existing legislation, and particularly by art. 187 of the penal code, functionaries and agents of the government, and of the post-office administration, are forbidden either to suppress or to open Setters confided to the said administiation, this disposition cannot reach the prefect of police, acting by virtue of powers conferred upon him by art. 10 of the Code of Criminal Instruction:

“Considering that the law, in giving to him the mission to investigate offences, to collect evidence in support of them, and to hand their authors over to the tribunals charged with punishing them, has not limited the means placed at his disposition for attaining that end;*

“That, in fact, the right of perquisition in aid of judicial instructions is solemnly affirmed by numerous legal dispositions, and that it is of common law in this matter:

“That the seizure in question was made in order to follow the trace of an offence; that it resulted in the discovery of useful and important facts; that, finally, the authors of the said letters have been prosecuted in a court of justice:

“Considering, moreover, that the court is not called upon to inquire into the origin of documents submitted to this appreciation; that its mission is merely to establish their authenticity or their sincerity; that, in fact, the letters in question are not denied by their authors:

“For these reasons the letters are declared admissible as evidence,” etc.

It is pleasing to read by the side of this remarkable judgment so simple a passage as the following, which was contained in an English paper at the same time that the French judgment was given. It relates to a London police regulation concerning cabmen:

“Now, we have no wish to palliate the bad conduct of a class who at least furnish amusing topics to contemporaries. By all means let the evils be remedied; but let the remedy come within the limits of law. It will be an evil day for England when irresponsible legislation and police law, even for cabmen, are recognized and applauded by a certain public because in a given example it happens to be convenient to them. If the ordinary law is not sufficient, let it be reformed; but do not leave the making of penal laws to the police, and the execution of those laws to the correctional tribunal of the same authority.”—Spectator, April 2, 1853.

[1.]They are generally called written constitutions; but it is evident that the essential distinction of constitutions, derived from their origin, is not whether they are written or unwritten, which is incidental, but whether they are enacted or cumulative. The English constitution—that is, the aggregate of those laws and rules which are considered of fundamental importance, and essential in giving to the state and its government those features which characterize them, or those laws and institutions which give to England her peculiar political organic being—consists in cumulated usages and branches of the common law, in decisions of fundamental importance, in self-grown and in enacted institutions, in compacts, and in statutes embodying principles of political magnitude. From these the Americans have extracted what has appeared important or applicable to our circumstances; we have added, expanded, and systematized, and then enacted this aggregate as a whole, calling it a constitution—enacted, not by the legislature, which is a creature of this very constitution, but by the people. Whether the constitution is written, printed, carved in stone, or remembered only, as laws were of old, is not the distinctive feature. It is the positive enactment of the whole at one time, and by distinct authority, which marks the difference between the origin of our constitutions and those of England or ancient Rome. Although the term written constitution does not express the distinctive principle, it was nevertheless natural that it should have been adopted, for it is analogous to the term lex sciipta, by which the enacted or statute law is distinguished from the unenacted, grown, and cumulative common law. [The distinguishing featuie of the English constitution is that the people have no direct voice in saying what it shall be; the parliament has theoretically an uncontrolled power of adding to or taking away from the fundamental laws.]

[1.]The ancient justicia of Aragon had the power of declaring laws unlawful, or unconstitutional, as we call it, against the king and estates, but it was done without the trial of a specific case and specific persons. He was therefore simply in these cases above king and estates, that is, king himself; and it became necessary in course of time to suppress this feature. See Pol. Ethics, vol. ii. p. 281

[1.]The term bureaucracy is called by many barbarous, nor has it, so far as I know, been introduced into dictionaries of great authority. Be it so; but, while we have innumerable words compounded of elements which belong to different languages, a term for that distinct idea which is designated by the word Bureaucracy has become indispensable in the progress of political science, because the thing which must be named has distinctly developed itself in the progress of centralization combined with writing. In spite, therefore, of the want of lexical authority, it is almost universally used; for necessity presses. I am under this necessity, and shall use it until a better and more acceptable term be proposed. Mandarinism would not be preferable. Mandannism would express indeed a government by mandarins, by officials, but it would not designate the characteristics which it is intended to point out by the term bureaucracy, namely, a government carried on not only by a hierarchy of officials, but also by scribbling bureaus. All bureaucracies must be mandarinisms, I take it; but every mandarinism reed not be a bureaucracy. I observe that the French, from whom indeed the term has been received, freely use it, even in their best writings. It is to be regretted that we Americans frequently use the French term Bureau for the old term Board. There are different associations of ideas connected with each of these words.

[1.]To refer to books on such a subject is very difficult; for it almost comprehends the whole history of modern liberty.

I have treated on many points connected with the representative system, in the Political Ethics. The reader will peruse with interest M. Guizot's Histoire des Origines du Gouvernement repiésentatif en Europe, Paris, 1851. It is interesting to learn the views of a Frenchman of such celebrity on a subject of vital interest to us. Regarding the deputative principle, the Histoire de la Formation et des Progiès du Tiers-Etat, by Augustin Thierry, Paris, 1853, is instructive. I am sorry that I have not been able to read Mr. George Harris's True Theory of Representation in a State, London, 1852.

[2.][Xen., Hellen., i. cap. 7, § 12, comp. 15. It ought, however, to be remarked that the Athenians checked the action of the ecclesia by requiring previous action of the senate, (probouleumata,) and by having laws emanate, in the first instance, not from the ecclesia proper, but from a large committee of the people.]

[1.]I take here the term national in the sense of relating to an entire society spread over the territory of an extensive state, and as contradistinguished from what belongs to a city-state, or from the system of the middle ages, which was deputative, on the one hand, (see my Political Ethics on Representative System,) and from a system of juxtaposition rather than of pervading organization, like the Chinese language compared to our grammatical languages. In this sense, then, the government of Virginia or New York would be national, although we use the word in America as synonymous with federal. It were well if we could adopt a distinct term for national in the first sense. See the note at the end of this chapter.

[1.]A curious picture of Asiatic local self-government, without any liberty, has lately been given to the public, in Lieutenant-Colonel C. G. Dixon's Sketch of Maiwara, giving a Brief Account of the Origin and Habits of the Mairs, etc, London, 1851.

[2.]National representation is closely connected with the idea of country, indispensable for high modern civilization. Nations and Countries appear to me so much elements of modern civilization and of modern liberty that I may be permitted to give an extract relating to this topic, from my Inaugural Speech in 1858:

“Our government is a federal union. We loyally adhere to it and turn our faces from centralization, however brilliant, for a time, the lustre of its focus may appear, however imposingly centred power, that saps self-government, may hide for a day the inherent weakness of military concentrated polities. But truths are truths. It is a truth that modern civilization stands in need of entire countries; and it is a truth that every government, as indeed every institution whatever, is, by its nature, exposed to the danger of gradually increased and, at last, excessive action of its vital principle. One-sidedness is a universal effect of man's state of sin. Confederacies are exposed to the danger of sejunction,as unitary governments are exposed to absorbing central power—centrifugal power in the one case, centripetal power in the other. That illustrious predecessor of ours, from whom we borrowed our very name, the United States of the Netherlands, ailed long with the paralyzing poison of sejunction in her limbs, and was brought to an early grave by it, after having added to the stock of humanity the worsLipful names of William of Orange, De Witt, Grotius, De Ruyter, and William III.* There is no German among you that does not sadly remember that his country, too, furnishes us with bitter commentaries on this truth; and we are not exempt from the dangers common to mortals. Yet, as was indicated just now, the patria of us moderns ought to consist in a wide land covered by a nation, and not in a city or a little colony. Mankind have outgiown the ancient city-state. Countries are the orchaids and the broad acres where modern civilization gathers her grain and nutritious fruits. The narrow garden-beds of antiquity suffice for our widened humanity no more than the shoit existence of ancient states. Moderns stand in need of nations and of national longevity, for their literatures and law, their industry, liberty, and patriotism; we want countries to work and write and glow for, to live and to die for. The sphere of humanity has steadily widened, and nations alone can nowadays acquire the membership of that great commonwealth of our race which extends over Europe and Amenca. Has it ever been sufficiently impressed on our minds how slender the threads are that unite us in a mere political system of states, if we are not tied together by the far stronger cords of those feelings which arise from the consciousness of having a country to clmg to and to pray for, and unimpeded land and water loads to move on?

“Should we, then, not avail ourselves of so well proved a cultuial means of fostering and promoting a generous nationality, as a comprehensive university is known to be?Shall we never have this noble pledge of our nationality?All Athens, the choicest city-state of antiquity, may well be said to have been one great university, where masters daily met with masters; and shall we not have even one for our whole empire, which does not extend from bay to bay like little Attica, but from sea to sea, and is destined one day to link ancient Europe to still older Asia, and thus to help completing the zone of civilization around the globe?All that has been said of countries and nations and a national university would retain its full force even if the threatened cleaving of this broad land should come upon us. But let me not enter on that topic of lowering political reality, however near to every citizen's heart, when I am bidden by you to discourse on political philosophy, and it is meet for me not to leave the sphere of inaugural generalities.”

[2.]I have already mentioned the judgment given by the French court, with reference to the opening of letters by the police in order to find out the tracrs of offences. I now give an extract, and shall italicize those passages which bear upon the subject above:

“Considering that if, by the terms of existing legislation, and particularly by art. 187 of the penal code, functionaries and agents of the government, and of the post-office administration, are forbidden either to suppress or to open Setters confided to the said administiation, this disposition cannot reach the prefect of police, acting by virtue of powers conferred upon him by art. 10 of the Code of Criminal Instruction:

“Considering that the law, in giving to him the mission to investigate offences, to collect evidence in support of them, and to hand their authors over to the tribunals charged with punishing them, has not limited the means placed at his disposition for attaining that end;*

“That, in fact, the right of perquisition in aid of judicial instructions is solemnly affirmed by numerous legal dispositions, and that it is of common law in this matter:

“That the seizure in question was made in order to follow the trace of an offence; that it resulted in the discovery of useful and important facts; that, finally, the authors of the said letters have been prosecuted in a court of justice:

“Considering, moreover, that the court is not called upon to inquire into the origin of documents submitted to this appreciation; that its mission is merely to establish their authenticity or their sincerity; that, in fact, the letters in question are not denied by their authors:

“For these reasons the letters are declared admissible as evidence,” etc.

It is pleasing to read by the side of this remarkable judgment so simple a passage as the following, which was contained in an English paper at the same time that the French judgment was given. It relates to a London police regulation concerning cabmen:

“Now, we have no wish to palliate the bad conduct of a class who at least furnish amusing topics to contemporaries. By all means let the evils be remedied; but let the remedy come within the limits of law. It will be an evil day for England when irresponsible legislation and police law, even for cabmen, are recognized and applauded by a certain public because in a given example it happens to be convenient to them. If the ordinary law is not sufficient, let it be reformed; but do not leave the making of penal laws to the police, and the execution of those laws to the correctional tribunal of the same authority.”—Spectator, April 2, 1853.

[2.]National representation is closely connected with the idea of country, indispensable for high modern civilization. Nations and Countries appear to me so much elements of modern civilization and of modern liberty that I may be permitted to give an extract relating to this topic, from my Inaugural Speech in 1858:

“Our government is a federal union. We loyally adhere to it and turn our faces from centralization, however brilliant, for a time, the lustre of its focus may appear, however imposingly centred power, that saps self-government, may hide for a day the inherent weakness of military concentrated polities. But truths are truths. It is a truth that modern civilization stands in need of entire countries; and it is a truth that every government, as indeed every institution whatever, is, by its nature, exposed to the danger of gradually increased and, at last, excessive action of its vital principle. One-sidedness is a universal effect of man's state of sin. Confederacies are exposed to the danger of sejunction,as unitary governments are exposed to absorbing central power—centrifugal power in the one case, centripetal power in the other. That illustrious predecessor of ours, from whom we borrowed our very name, the United States of the Netherlands, ailed long with the paralyzing poison of sejunction in her limbs, and was brought to an early grave by it, after having added to the stock of humanity the worsLipful names of William of Orange, De Witt, Grotius, De Ruyter, and William III.* There is no German among you that does not sadly remember that his country, too, furnishes us with bitter commentaries on this truth; and we are not exempt from the dangers common to mortals. Yet, as was indicated just now, the patria of us moderns ought to consist in a wide land covered by a nation, and not in a city or a little colony. Mankind have outgiown the ancient city-state. Countries are the orchaids and the broad acres where modern civilization gathers her grain and nutritious fruits. The narrow garden-beds of antiquity suffice for our widened humanity no more than the shoit existence of ancient states. Moderns stand in need of nations and of national longevity, for their literatures and law, their industry, liberty, and patriotism; we want countries to work and write and glow for, to live and to die for. The sphere of humanity has steadily widened, and nations alone can nowadays acquire the membership of that great commonwealth of our race which extends over Europe and Amenca. Has it ever been sufficiently impressed on our minds how slender the threads are that unite us in a mere political system of states, if we are not tied together by the far stronger cords of those feelings which arise from the consciousness of having a country to clmg to and to pray for, and unimpeded land and water loads to move on?

“Should we, then, not avail ourselves of so well proved a cultuial means of fostering and promoting a generous nationality, as a comprehensive university is known to be?Shall we never have this noble pledge of our nationality?All Athens, the choicest city-state of antiquity, may well be said to have been one great university, where masters daily met with masters; and shall we not have even one for our whole empire, which does not extend from bay to bay like little Attica, but from sea to sea, and is destined one day to link ancient Europe to still older Asia, and thus to help completing the zone of civilization around the globe?All that has been said of countries and nations and a national university would retain its full force even if the threatened cleaving of this broad land should come upon us. But let me not enter on that topic of lowering political reality, however near to every citizen's heart, when I am bidden by you to discourse on political philosophy, and it is meet for me not to leave the sphere of inaugural generalities.”

[*]Does not this argument from the absence of restriction remind the reader of that Baron Viereck, who consented to his daughter's marrying the King of Denmark, the undivorced queen living, and who replied to an expostulating friend that he could find no passage in the Bible prohibiting kings of Denmark from having two wives?

[*]Every historian knows that William of Orange, the founder of the Netherlands' republic, had much at heart to induce the cities of the new union to admit representatives of the country; but the “sovereign” cities would allow no representatives unless noblemen to the farmers and land-owners, who, nevertheless, were taking their full share in the longest and most sanguinary struggle for independence and liberty; but the following detail, probably, is not known to many. The estates of Holland and West Friesland were displeased with the public prayers for the Prince of Orange. which some high-calvinistic ministers were gradually introducing, in the latter half of the seventeenth century, and in 1663 a decree was issued ordaining to pray first of all “for their noble high mightinesses, the estates of Holland and West Friesland, as the true sovereign, and only sovereign power after God, in this province; next, for the estates of the other provinces, their allies, and for all the deputies in the assembly of the States General, and of the Council of State,”“Separatismus, as German historians have called the tendency of the German princes to make themselves as independent of the empire as possible, until their treason against the country reached “sovereignty,” has made the political history of Germany resemble the river Rhine, whose glorious water runs out in a number of shallow and muddy streamlets, having lost its imperial identity long before reaching the broad ocean.