MY DEAR BOY,

You are now sixteen; in five years you will have the right and duty to vote not only for (or against) persons, but also upon measures of public policy. I should like you to vote and perform the other duties of citizenship intelligently, and not ignorantly; and to do this it is necessary that you shall understand something of the principles upon which our government was established, and upon which, of course, it ought to be conducted. This is the more necessary, because, if you are right, you will sometimes be in the minority, and when the right cause is in the minority, it is of great importance that its adherents shall be able to give pertinent and convincing reasons for their course: for thus only can a minority hope to become a majority. In a free state every great political struggle is a contest of principles; and you have only to read such a book as the Debates between Lincoln and Douglas to see of what extreme importance to freedom and constitutional government is the ability to comprehend for yourself, and to expose clearly to others, the fundamental principles of free government.

Moreover, you must understand that to the citizen of a free state, politics concern themselves in the largest

sense with the liberty and the prosperity of the people, which are sure to be affected by bad laws-and bad laws are often adopted with the best motives, and urged and supported by men who are as truly patriotic and benevolent as they are ignorant.

It is one of the great merits of our political system in the United States that, though it appears at first view complicated, it is in fact sufficiently simple to be understood by all the citizens. In what follows I mean to explain to you the general principles on which free government rests, and the manner in which those principles are applied in our own country; and I shall try to do this in such a way that, with a little attention and study, you will, I hope, be able to understand all that is needful.

At the foundation of all government is SOCIETY, and of this I must first tell you something.

I.

OF SOCIETY.

1. God does not appear to have created men by chance, for we find all mankind to possess certain qualities, faculties, and desires, which move and rule them, whether they are savages or call themselves civilized, and whether they are black, brown, yellow, or white.

2. One of the principal and most important qualities of mankind is gregariousness. This means that men have a propensity to gather in flocks or herds; a propensity also of many animals, as sheep, cattle, horses, blackbirds, elephants, and some monkeys. This desire for the society of their kind leads animals to go in droves-as the buffaloes upon the plains; and it collects savage men into tribes, and civilized men into nations, which are only larger and more highly organized tribes.

3. But as man has received from God qualities, faculties, and desires which the beasts have not, men are able to do something more than herd together; and the rudest tribe of savages has laws or rules for the conduct of its members which the most highly developed society of apes or blackbirds or elephants of which we know is without.

4. Animals have, 1, desire to live; 2, desire for sufficient food; 3, desire to propagate their kind and to protect their young; and, 4, desire to avoid pain, and to live, therefore, in the circumstances for which their nature best fits them: in other words, to be comfortable. When you see more of men, you will discover that some men are very much like animals, and have no aspirations or desires which can not properly be ranged under the above heads. Such a man I do not want you to be.

5. Besides the desires which we have in common with

beasts, and which are necessary to us in order to preserve our species from extinction, God has given men other desires, and faculties which, if they wish, they may use for their fulfillment. These higher qualities of our lives are not needed for the mere preservation of life. Some of those which by general consent are regarded as the highest, lead inevitably to the lessening of many of our pleasures, and not unfrequently to the surrender of an individual's comfort, happiness, and even life, to increase, as he may believe, the welfare of his fellow-men. Looking at these higher motives, desires, and aspirations, and at the degree in which they interfere with the happiness or comfort of the body alone, it is reasonable to believe, what Jesus taught, that men have something immortal, destined to live on after the body perishes, and capable, after its release from the body, of still greater development and higher enjoyments. This something we call the Soul.

6. Take notice that the soul of man should not obey the law of living, but the law of duty. For instance, of all the friends of your father and mother who served in the late great war, there was not one who, if he had obeyed the mere law of living the animal instinct of self-preservation—would not have remained at home, and pursued his usual calling, in comfort, with his family about him, and his wealth increasing. Instead of that they abandoned their professions, broke up the careers they had planned for themselves, left their families and their comfortable homes, and undertook to face hardships to which they were unaccustomed, and not a few died on the field of battle. They did and suffered thus, not to benefit themselves, or to gratify any of the desires or passions which men have in common with the beasts, but in the hope of helping to maintain a form of government which they believed to be pre-eminently calculated to elevate mankind, and increase the happiness of their fellows. A buffalo would be incapable of such motives: if he fought, it would be from greed for food, from a desire for a more comfortable lodgment, out of jealousy, or in self-defense, supplemented eventually by rage.

7. A creature believing himself to possess an immortal part, or soul, destined to survive the body, would reasonably seek to prepare this immortal part for the conditions under which it is to exist. And as the future life is, as we are taught, to be lived without the help of the body, it is evident that training the soul or spirit consists in increasing by cultivation our capacity for those enjoyments which do not depend upon the body. To curb the body, therefore, and keep it under control, to restrain the lower passions-those which we have in common with beasts—and to weed out of ourselves envy, greed, spite, covetousness, jealousy, hypocrisy, ill-temper—all tending to disregard for the rights of others-would appear, aside from the commands and instructions of religion, to be the reasonable and prudent course of every man who believes himself to have an immortal part, or soul.

8. But God has so made the world, and so formed mankind that they naturally and inevitably respect and esteem most highly those who most consistently act upon this theory of life. The whole world is combined to honor Washington; and it is equally unanimous in execrating a merely vulgar and selfish trader or politician..

9. Now I wish you to remember, as a FUNDAMENTAL TRUTH IN AMERICAN POLITICS, that the course of life which is thus calculated to fit your immortal part for the future and spiritual life is also that course which will make you a good citizen of the United States.

10. To be a good citizen means not merely that you shall give such prudent obedience to the laws as would keep you out of jail. It means that you shall in all parts of your life live moderately and virtuously; that you shall "love your neighbor as yourself," and therefore do him no wrong; that you shall pursue your aims in life with such moderation as to avoid interfering with the happiness of others; that you shall endeavor by your actions, whenever occasion serves, to benefit your fellow-men: for selfishness breeds selfishness, covetousness corrupts those who behold it, and liberty can only be maintained among a people who practice self-sacri