that if the people wanted him to cont he should do it, and all his adherents the people being the masters could liked, which reminds us of the Athen patiently exclaimed: "Can we not do v when reminded that there was a law they were going to do.

Π

The division of power, which was alre as an important point in all governn master of all that know," is invariably as far as possible by the absolutists. is interfered with whenever its slow pro probable results irritate the power-hold tory of all nations from the earliest ti

"Soldiers, the history of nations is in great på armies. On their success, or on their reverses, de civilization and of country. When they are van either invasion or anarchy; when victorious, glory

"In consequence, nations, like armies, pay a reli to the emblems of military honor, which sum up whole past existence of struggles and of triumphs

"The Roman eagle, adopted by the Emperor commencement of the present century, was the mo fication of the regeneration and grandeur of Fran

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leon the Third's taking the trial on the legality of the Orleans' spoliation out of the hands of the judiciary, proves it on every page.

Self-government, general as well as local, is indispensable to our liberty, but interference and dictation are the essence of absolutism. Monarchical absolutisms presume to do everything and to provide for everything, and Robespierre, in his " great speech" for the restoration of the supreme being, said: The function of government is to direct the moral and physical forces of the nation. For this purpose the aim of a constitutional government is the republic.3

Liberty requires that every one should be judged by his common court. All despots insist on extraordinary courts, courts of commission, and an easy application of martial law.

Forcible expatriation or deportation "beyond the seas" by the executive is looked upon with peculiar horror by all freemen. The English were roused by it to resistance; Napoleon the Third began his absolute reign with exile and deportation. So did the Greek factions, because no "opposition" was known, invariably banish their opponents when they had the power of doing so. With them it was the bungling business of factions; moderns know better, and if they return to it, it is because despotism is a thing full of fear and love of show.

How great an offence it is to deprive a man of his

3 The words of Robespierre are perfectly clear as an illustration of what has been stated in the text; otherwise, I own, the sense is not perfectly apparent.

lawful court and to judge him by aught else than by the laws of the land, now in the middle of the nineteenth century, will appear the more forcibly, if the reader will bring to his mind that passage of Magna Charta which appeared to Chatham worth all the classics, and if he will remember the year when the Great Charter was carried. The passage, so pregnant to the mind of Chatham, is this:

"No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we (the king) pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man, justice or right."

Publicity is a condition without which liberty cannot live. The moment it had been concluded by the present government of France to root out civil freedom, it was ordained that neither the remarks of the members of the legislative corps, nor the pleadings in the courts of justice, should be reported in the papers. Modern political publicity, however, consists chiefly in publication through the papers. We acknowledge this practically by the fact that, although our courts are never closed, yet, for particular reasons arising out of the case under consideration, the publication of the proceedings is sometimes prohibited by the judge until the close of the trial, but never beyond it.

4 Very scandalous judicial cases, offensive to public morals, are, in France, conducted with closed doors.

Liberty stands in need of the legal precedent, and Charles the First pursued Cotton because he furnished Pym and other patriots with precedents, while the present French government has excluded instruction in history from the plan of general education. History, in a certain point of view, may be called the great precedent. History is of all branches the most nourishing for public life and liberty. It furnishes a strong pabulum and incites by great examples removed beyond all party or selfish views. The favorite book of Chatham was Plutarch, and his son educated himself upon Thucydides. The best historians have been produced by liberty, and the despot is consistent when he wishes to shackle the noble muse.

Sincere civil liberty requires that the legislature should have the initiative. All governments reluctant to grant full liberty have withheld it, and one of the first things decreed by Louis Napoleon after the second of December was that the "legislative corps" should discuss such propositions of laws only as the council of state should send to it. The council of state, however, is a mere body of officers appointed and discharged at the will of the ruler.

Liberty requires that government do not form a body permanently and essentially separated from the people; all modern absolute rulers have resorted to a number of distinctions-titles, ribbons, orders, peacock feathers and buttons, uniforms, or whatever other

5 So bishop Tomlinson tells us in the Life of his pupil.

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fluence of the government.

Liberty requires, as we have seen, well-guaranteed trial for treason; all de ments, on the contrary, endeavor to brea guarantees in particular, and either t power of condemning political offenders or at least to strip the trial for treas guarantees.

But we might go through the whol guards and principles of liberty, and fir case absolutism does the opposite.

If the American peruses the Declar pendence, he will find there, in the com forefathers, almost a complete list of privileges and guarantees which they and most essential to liberty; for they nearly every guarantee had been assai