to the Individual his freedom, to local Governments their minor life centres, and to the nation Power, Balance, and Unity.

You cannot get deeper than Individual Freedom and Development, you cannot build safer than by allowing no bastard sub-sovereignties of Church or of "State Right" to mock at individual freedom, or to out-balance, hamper, or defy the aggregate Sovereignty. You cannot invent a completer Executive Unit than a President, you cannot have a broader foundation than the universal suffrage of the universally educated, nor a safer society or more stable Government than is formed by an universal habit of association, which forecasts the national policy and forms opinions abreast of facts.

It is a Unity reposing on nature, and on a basis of truths, interests, and forces, universally shared and understood.

Writing from a country which in thirty years has made such great advances towards Democracy, -and of a country which shows us the only Democracy in the world, it is necessary here shortly to notice their relative positions.

England progresses in Freedom, but will probably never reach Equality.

Our Diplomacy is more open, our taxation more direct, our suffrage will soon be extended, and toleration is more complete. But six Englishmen in seven are still unrepresented; we have no House

of "Commons,” religion is still endowed by unbelievers, and established by the State.*

Europe stops half way between Development and Association. We have secured partial Freedom, and our neighbours an equality tempered with Despotism. Development has prepared for Association, but the hierarchical principle everywhere interposes minor Associations of corporate bodies, to negative those of the People.

It is in vain to speculate as to whether remote ages will or will not find England still an aristocracy. All her Independencies are becoming democratic, and this at least is certain respecting herself, she will become comparatively depopulated or comparatively Democratic. But in England and Europe the Revolution and the Reformation have been arrested.

Men of confused thought, and of too much or too little education, or taught to admire institutions and constitutions of a narrow and restricted tendency, separate the means, Democracy, and the end, good Government, and actually consider them hostile the one to the other.

They are accustomed to say that "your conclusions depend on your point of view, and that the points of view are, either the necessity of giving

* "The History of the Reformation does not close where many European authors have imagined. It made another enormous stride when at the American Revolution the State and the Church were solemnly and openly dissevered from one another That (toleration) is perhaps as far as the movement has at this time advanced in Europe."—Draper's “Intellectual Development of Europe,” v. ii, p. 220.

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to individuals their civil rights, or to Society, good Government."

This is the pitfall for those who hiccup about the British Constitution, without knowing that that Constitution reasonably adapted to the present times, is the very last thing which they, as the opponents of Democracy, would wish for.

When will statesmen learn that it is impossible to permanently secure good results by bad agents? The only way to secure "good Government" is to develop by education the minds and the manhood of those for whom you would claim "civil rights.” Until the majority are fit for self-Government, Democracy is impossible, and until Democracy be possible, good Government is not possible, for Government by, is always and everywhere Government for.

In a Democratic nation there are two forces which naturally balance or neutralize each other's evil action, and which cannot otherwise be balanced.

The first may be called the vis inertiæ and of flunkeydom. The tendency of all persons in comfortable circumstances and position to avoid all extremes, all great efforts; to renounce and abjure the ideal and the absolute; to look to the lead of those above, not to the wants of those below ; and to consider the convenient rather than the right.

The second principle comes up against this in the shape of the almost revolutionary energies of

men in contact with the soil and with reality, and who are protected by no realised property from the immediate personal pressure of evil institutions and of want.

Where the all have the vote-power, this principle becomes loyalty and a true conservatism. Where they have it not, their work can only be done by agitation or revolution, and after perhaps, as in England, thirty years of the former.

As the all obtain power the oscillations become less vehement. We approach a balance of one excess by the other, and we recede from war.

Moreover in all countries where the all do not govern, there exists the immutable basis of an alliance between certain alternate governing factions, against the People. There is the fact of the People's exclusion, and the wish to perpetuate it.

In England the Whigs and Tories, the "Inns " and the "Outs," thus combine against the unenfranchised. In America, Slaveholders and Democrats, against the Negro. In all cases where the People do not govern, the combination exists. The holders of power may contend amongst themselves, but they will always unite against the People.

Taking the position and relations between Whigs and Tories to be to Englishmen the most intelligible application of this general principle, it is evident that representing between them the party and the cause of property, they can usually command the powers of the press, the purse, and the screw.

The Whig or more advanced section, is of the two decidedly the more dangerous to progress, for they obstruct progress in the name of progress, and divide liberalism against itself. They can always reckon on the Tories to plump or split with them against the Radical, and often on the Radical to split with them against the Tory, whilst they can effectually use against the Radical, force, intimidation, and corruption.

In such countries the powers of retrogression are always strong. There are but three parties ;— the Few who happen to be in; the Few who happen to be out; and the People, who are always out.

The first two know that with them it is only a question of interchange of position, and they know that if once they let the People in, the position will not be changed but destroyed.

There is therefore the hopelessly retrograde party that gets in between the accesses of the People's indignation and the epochs of their advances. There is also the party that from time to time uses the People to recover power. It is only by a determined and skilful use of their needs or of their terrors, that the third party, the People, can prevail; and in the order of providence, the millionaire, the owner of so many English boroughs, the furthest removed from sympathy with manhood, and the most determined unbeliever in it, is ever haunted with its approach, and shakes with fear at its apparition.

Yet till the power of the veritable People preponderates, it is evident that faction and not country