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lities, our country is considered by general consent as the home and the citadel of civil freedom in a sense peculiar to itself; and as such is viewed with a jealous eye by many of the crowned heads of Europe. They have long consoled themselves with the belief that we would prove our own worst enemies, that our experiment of self-government would end in anarchy and blood; and every trifling outbreak between neighbors has been hailed as an omen that these sinister predictions were about to be fulfilled. There is one sure ground of hope. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" If we hold our free institutions from God; and if, after the example of our fathers,* we embalm them in our prayers as a gift from him, and are faithful to the trust he has reposed in us, then shall we still continue to possess them. They shall be ours from generation to generation. But if they come only from man, we have no such security. They may pass from us as a dream, and come to naught. May I not therefore hope to carry with me

personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided exertions and common sense of the citizens; the Russians centre all the authority of society in a single arm: the principle instrument of the former is freedom; of the latter servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”

* Note A.

the attention of rulers and ruled who hear me, while I endeavor to show the Divine origin of civil freedom?

Before entering upon the argument taken immediately from the Scriptures themselves, I would ask you to consider,

How fitly it corresponds with the uniform goodness of God, that he should give to the world a distinct revelation of his will on this subject. "Thy commandment is exceeding broad," says the Psalmist. There is an expansive power in the Bible which reaches every want and condition in life. Sometimes as in the Decalogue, and in the "Golden Rule," of" doing to others as we would that others should do unto us,” it states great general principles of duty in such brief language that young and old may remember them and carry them about as household words. But it does not stop here. It goes on to teach how these comprehensive precepts should be applied to the various relations, whether domestic, social or civil, which the well-being of society requires that men should sustain to each other. And we may here add, that unless the relations of rulers and of ruled are wisely regulated, men can have no security in either their social or domestic enjoyments. As tyranny existed in the world when the Hebrews were brought out of Egypt, it had become the sorest earthly curse that could afflict our race, and one

from which they could devise no adequate means of escape. If you would see how the despotism of that day carried bitterness and death into families and nations, let us take a survey of the cruelties then occurring every hour under the sceptre of the Pharaohs. Among the people of the Hebrews every "life was made bitter by hard bondage." But though driven to "make bricks without straw," this was but a small part of the suffering inflicted on them by their unfeeling king. How wide and heart-rending was the cry of anguish heard from every dwelling where " a son is born." It was like the "voice in Ramah," "Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted because they were not." The royal mandate had been issued, ordaining "every son that is born of a Hebrew woman, ye shall cast into the river;" and so rigidly was the command enforced that the Nile became a vast sepulchre for new-born babes; and the house of the bereaved mother was converted into a home of sorrow and tears by the cruel death of those whose lives would have rendered it the abode of gladness and mirth. And this, be it remembered, is but an example of the oppression and wrong which then afflicted all nations of the earth. Every where, the lives, the happiness, and the liberty of the subject, were at the will of the one man who wore the crown; and who, drunk with

the possession of irresponsible power, ruled over men as over the beasts of the field. Surely there was much in a degradation and wretchedness like this, rendering it fit for Him whose "tender mercies. are over all his works," to show how a nation may be governed so as best to guard against such grievous and consuming ills.

But farther: let us look at the influence of freedom on those higher faculties of man which reach beyond his domestic enjoyments. The sentiment so beautifully expressed,

""Tis liberty alone that gives the flower

"Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume,"

is verified by the history of nations, whether ancient or modern. History never misleads. It "is Philosophy teaching by example." Let us turn to it, and learn in what countries and under what kind of government the intellectual and moral faculties which adorn and dignify our nature have been most happily developed.

Allow me here to quote from a work among the most able in our language, and well known as a most unbending advocate of royalty and rank for perfecting the body politic. "Civilized democracy," it tells us, "is the great moving power in human affairs; the source of the greatest efforts of human

genius; and when duly restrained from running into excess, the grand instrument of human advancement. Its grand characteristic is energy, and energy not rousing the exertions merely of a portion of society, but awakening the dormant strength of millions; not producing merely the chivalrous valor of the high bred cavalier, but drawing forth the might that slumbers in a peasant's arm. The greatest achievements of genius, the noblest efforts of heroism that have illustrated the history of the species have arisen from the influence of this principle. Thence the fight of Marathon and the glories of Salamis-the genius of Greece and the conquests of Rome-the heroism of Sempach and the devotion of Harlæm the paintings of Raphael and the poetry of Tasso-the energy that covered with a velvet carpet the slopes of the Alps, and the industry which bridled the stormy seas of the German ocean. Why are the shores of the Mediterranean the scene to which the pilgrim from every quarter of the globe journeys to visit, at once, the cradles of civilization, the birthplace of arts, of arms, of philosophy, of poetry, and the scenes of their highest and most glorious achievements? Because freedom spread along its smiling shores; because the ruins of Athens and Sparta, of Rome and Carthage, of Tyre and Syracuse lie on its margin; because civilization advanc

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