of all conceit, and their manly calmness, will forever redound to their honor. It seems to me that while the English incline occasionally too much to the historical element, we, in turn, incline occasionally too much toward ab straction. However this may be, it is certain that we conceive of the rights of the citizen more in the abstract and more as attributes of his humanity. From this fact several features characteristic of our liberty naturally flow. I have also stated that our whole government has a more popular cast than that of England, and with reference to this fact, as well as to the one mentioned immediately before it, I would point out the following farther characteristics of American liberty. We have established everywhere voting by ballot. There is an annually increasing number of members voting in the English commons for the ballot. It is desired there to prevent intimidation. Probably it would have that effect in England, but certainly not in such a degree as they expect it. The ballot does not necessarily prevent the vote of a person from being known. Although the ballot is so strongly insisted 6 There is an instructive article on voting in the Edinburgh Review, of October, 1852, on Representative Reform. The writer, who justly thinks it all-important that every one who has the right to vote for a member of parliament should vote, proposes written votes to be left at the house of every voter, the blanks to be filled by him, as is now actually done for parish elections. There existed written votes in the early times of New England, and people were fined for not sending them. It was not necessary to carry it personally to upon in America, it is occasionally entirely lost sight of. Tickets" printed on paper whose color indicates the party which has issued it, are the most common things; and, in the place of my residence, it happened some years ago that party feeling ran to an unusual height, so much so that, in order to prevent melancholy consequences, the leaders came to an agreement. It consisted in this: that alternate hours should be assigned to the two parties, during which the citizens of one party only should vote. open defeat of the ballot was carried out readily and in good faith. This The constitution of the United States, and those of all the states, provide that the houses of the legislatures shall keep their journals, and that on the demand of a certain, not very large, number of members, the ayes and noes shall be recorded. The ayes and noes have sometimes a remarkable effect. It is recorded of Philip the Fourth, of Spain, that he asked the opinion of his council on a certain subject. The opinion was unanimously adverse, whereupon the monarch ordered every counsellor to send in his vote signed with his name, and every vote turned out to be in favor of the proposed measure. The ayes and noes have unfortunately sometimes a similar effect with us. Still, this peculiar voting may operate upon the fearful as often beneficially as otherwise; at any the poll. These written votes prevailed in the middle ages. For this and other subjects connected with elections, see the paper on the subject in the appendix. 7 Coxe's Memoirs of the Bourbons in Spain. rate, the Americans believe that it is proper thus to oblige members to make their vote known to the people. We never give the executive the right of dissolving the legislature. We have never closed the list of the states composing the Union, in which we differ from most other confederacies, ancient or modern; we admit freely those who are foreigners by birth to our citizenship, and we do not believe in inalienable allegiance. We allow, as it has been seen already, no attainder of blood. We allow no ex post facto laws. American liberty contains as one of its characteristic elements the enacted or written constitution. This feature distinguishes it especially from the English polity with its accumulative constitution. We do not allow our legislatures to be politically "omnipotent," as, theoretically at least, the British parliament is.9 8 The character of the English, and of our allegiance, is treated at length in the Political Ethics. I there took the ground that even English allegiance is a national one, whatever the language of the law books may be to the contrary. The following may serve as a farther proof that English allegiance, after all, is dissoluble. It appears from the New England charter, granted by James I., that he claimed, or had, the right "to put a person out of his allegiance and protection." Page 16, Compact, with the Charter and Laws of the Colony of New Plymouth, &c., Boston, 1836. 9 For the English reader I would add that the following works ought to be studied, or consulted on this subject: The Constitution of the United States, and the constitutions of the different states, which are published from time to time, collected in one volume; I may add perhaps, as a feature of American liberty, that the American impeachment is, as I have stated before, a political, and not a penal institution. It seems to me that I am borne out in this view by the Federalist.10 the Debates on the Federal Constitution; The Federalist, by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay; the Writings of Chief Justice Marshall, Boston, 1839; Mr. Justice Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States; Mr. Calhoun's and Mr. Webster's Works; Mr. Rawle's work on the Constitution, and Mr. Frederic Grimke's Considerations upon the Nature and Tendency of Free Institutions, Cincinnati, 1848. 10 No. LXV. CHAPTER XXII. IN WHAT CIVIL LIBERTY CONSISTS, PROVED BY 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, and history as well as our own pregnant times proves 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 been in their attacks upon the different guarantees enumerated in the preceding pages. We can |