all the larger empires of the European continent, when the first French revolution broke out. It was one of the most important provisions of the act of confederation, agreed upon at Vienna, in 1815, between the Germanic states, that immediate steps should be taken, to make the river navigation in Germany free, but the desired object had not been obtained as late as in 1848.1 The long dispute about the navigation of the river Scheldt has become famous in the history of law and of human progress. In this case, however, a foreign power, the Netherlands, denied free navigation to those in whose country the river rises and becomes navigable.2 Magna Charta declares, indeed, what has been called "the freedom of the rivers," but, on the one hand, English rivers are, comparatively speaking, of little importance to navigation, and, on the other hand, England had not to overcome the difficulty which arises out of the same river passing through different states. It was therefore a signal step in the progress of our species, when the wise framers of our constitution enacted, that vessels bound to, or from one state, shall not be obliged to enter, clear or pay duties in another, and every one who cherishes his country and the essential interests of our species must be grateful that subsequent legislation, and decisions by courts have firmly established' the inestimable right of free navigation in a country, endowed with a system of rivers more magnificent and more benign, if left free and open, than

1 I owe to the friendship of Mr. Kapp, (author of the Life of Baron Steuben,) a book of remarkable interest, in many respects: Gottlieb Mittelberger's Journey to Pennsylvania in the year 1750 and Return to Germany in 1754; Frankfurt, 1756. Mittelberger was organist and schoolmaster. He was seven weeks on his way from Wurtemberg to Rotterdam, chiefly on the Rhine. The Journal of Albert Durer, the great painter, gives the same lamentable account of his journey on the Main and Rhine.

2 A time may come-I believe it will-when the international law of our family of nations, will acknowledge that those who border on a navigable river, have a right, by nature, to sail down that river to the sea without hindrance, toll or inconvenience.

3 Constitution of the United States, section 9.

See, among others, Duer's Lectures on the Constitutional Jurisprudence of the United States, 2d edition, page 258 and sequ.

that of any other country. An able writer and comprehensive statesman says:

"It was under the salutary instruction thus afforded by the Scheldt, and just before the French revolution broke its shackles, that our thirteen confederated states acquired the Mississippi.

“In March, 1785, Rufus King, then a delegate from Massachusetts in the congress of the confederation, received from Timothy Pickering a letter containing these emphatic and memorable words:

"The water communications in that country will always be in the highest degree interesting to the inhabitants. It seems very necessary to secure the freedom of navigating these to all the inhabitants of all the states. I hope we shall have no Scheldts in that country."

"The high duty of carrying into effect that great suggestion, immediately occupied the attention of Mr. King and his associates. The honor of framing the clause-which secures, 'not for a day, but for all time,' freedom of commerce over an unbroken net-work of navigable water spread out for more than sixteen thousand miles-was shared between Massachusetts and Virginia, then standing shoulder to shoulder, where they had stood throughout the Revolution.

"The clause was formally introduced into the Congress by Mr. Grayson, of Virginia, and seconded by Mr. King, of Massachusetts. Listen to its words, so broadly national, so purely American:

"The navigable waters leading into the Mississippi and St. Lawrence, and the carrying places between the same, shall be common property, and FOREVER FREE, as well to the inhabitants of the said country, as to the citizens of the United States, and those of any other states that may be admitted into the confederacy-WITHOUT ANY TAX, DUTY, OR IMPOST THEREFOR.'

1 The original is in the possession of Dr. Charles King, president of Columbia College, New York.

"The clause was immediately incorporated into the ordinance, and passed by the congress on the 13th day of July, 1787.

"Here, then, we behold the Magna Charta of the internal navigation of America," which we enjoy, and have first enjoyed, of all confederacies, ancient or modern. It gives the absolutely free use of the noblest river system extending over a continent.

1 This passage is copied from a Defence of the Right and the Duty of the American Union to improve the Navigable Waters, by Samuel B. Ruggles, a speech delivered in October, 1852. The speaker has given his views on this and kindred topics, more extensively in a state paper of rare excellence, whether the contents, the historical survey and statistic knowledge, or the transparency of the style and language be considered. The paper bears the title, Memorial of the Canal Board and Canal Commissioners of the State of New York, asking for the Improvement of the Lake Harbors by the General Government, Albany, N. Y., 1858, and was, as such, adopted by the legislature of New York and presented to congress.

CHAPTER XXIII.

IN WHAT CIVIL LIBERTY CONSISTS, PROVED BY CONTRARIES.

I HAVE endeavored to give a sketch of Anglican liberty. It is the liberty we prize and love for a hundred reasons, and which we would love if there were no other reason than that it is liberty. We know that it is the political state most befitting to conscious man. History as well as our own pregnant times prove to us the value of those guarantees; their necessity, if we wish to see our political dignity secure, and their effect upon the stability of government, as well as on the energies of the people. We are proud of our self-government and our love of the law as our master, and we cling the faster to all these ancient and modern guarantees, the more we observe that, wherever the task which men have proposed to themselves is the suppression of liberty, these guarantees are sure to be the first objects of determined and persevering attack. It is instructive for the friend of freedom to observe how uniformly and instinctively the despots of all ages and countries have assailed the different guarantees enumerated in the preceding pages. We can learn much in all practical matters by the rule of contraries. As the arithmetician proves his multiplication by division, and his subtraction by addition, so may we learn what those who love liberty. ought to prize, by observing what those who hate freedom suppress or war against. This process is made peculiarly easy as well as interesting at this very period, when the government of a large nation is avowedly engaged in suppressing all liberty and in establishing the most uncompromising monarchical absolutism.

I do not know a single guarantee contained in the foregoing pages, which might not be accompanied by a long historical

commentary showing how necessary it is, from the fact that it has been attacked by those who are plainly and universally acknowledged as having oppressed liberty or as having been, at least, guilty of the inchoate crime. It is a useful way to turn the study of history to account, especially for the youth of free nations. It turns their general ardor to distinct realities, and furnishes the student with confirmations by facts. We ought always to remember that one of the most efficient modes of learning the healthful state of our body and the normal operation of its various organs, consists in the study of their diseased states and abnormal conditions. The pathologic method is an indispensable one in all philosophy and in politics. The imperial time of Rome is as replete with pathetic lessons for the statesman as the republican epoch.

It would lead me far beyond the proper limits of this work, were I to select all the most noted periods of usurpation, or those times in which absolutism, whether monarchical or democratic, has assumed the sway over liberty, and thus to try the gage of our guarantees. It may be well, however, to select a few instances.

In doing so I shall restrict myself to instances taken from the transactions of modern nations of our own race; but the student will do well to compare the bulk of our liberty with the characteristics of ancient and modern despotism in Asia, and see how the absence of our safeguards has there always prevented the development of humanity which we prize so highly. He ought then to compare this our own modern liberty with what is more particularly called antiquity, and see in what we excel the ancients or fall behind them, and in what that which they revered as liberty differed from ours. He ought to keep in mind our guarantees in reading the history of former free states, and of the processes by which they lost their liberty, or of the means to which the enemies of liberty have resorted, from those so masterly delineated by Aristotle, down to Dr. Francia and those of the present time, and he ought again to compare our broadcast national liberty with the liberties of the feudal age. He ought lastly to present clearly to his mind