This place, which you traverse daily, on your way to this House, does it, then, teach you nothing? when, if you but stamped on the pavement, two paces from those deadly Tuileries, which you covet still,-but stamped on that fatal pavement, you could conjure up, at will, the scaffold from which the old Monarchy was plunged into the tomb, or the cab in which the new royalty escaped into exile. Ah, men of ancient parties! you will learn, ere long, that at this present time, in this nineteenth century, after the scaffold of Louis the Sixteenth, after the downfall of Napoleon, after the exile of Charles the Tenth, after the flight of Louis Philippe, in a word, after the French Revolution, that is to say, after this renewal, complete, absolute, prodigious, of principles, convictions, opinions, situations, influences, and facts, it is the Republic which is solid ground, and the Monarchy which is the perilous venture. RELIGIOUS LIBERTY SYDNEY SMITH From a speech on "Catholic Claims," delivered at a meeting of the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of the East Riding of Yorkshire, held at Beverley, England, April 11, 1825. We preach to known by its fruits. judge your system. our congregations that a tree is By the fruits it produces I will What has it done for Ireland? New Zealand is emerging-Otaheite is emergingIreland is not emerging-she is still veiled in darkness; RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 129 her children, safe under no law, live in the very shadow of death. Has your system of exclusion made Ireland rich? Has it made Ireland loyal? Has it made Ireland free? Has it made Ireland happy? How is the wealth of Ireland proved? Is it by the naked, idle, suffering savages, who are slumbering on the mud floor of their cabins? In what does the loyalty of Ireland consist? Is it in the eagerness with which they would range themselves under the hostile banner of any invader, for your destruction and for your distress? Is it liberty when men breathe and move among the bayonets of English soldiers? Is their happiness and their history anything but such a tissue of murders, burnings, hangings, famine, and disease, as never existed before in the annals of the world? This is a system which, I am sure, with very different intentions and different views of its effects, you are met this day to uphold. These are the dreadful consequences, which those laws your petition prays may be continued, have produced upon Ireland. From the principles of that system, from the cruelty of those laws, I turn, and turn with the homage of my whole heart, to that memorable proclamation which the head of our Church, the present monarch of these realms, has lately made to his hereditary dominions of Hanover That no man should be subjected to civil incapacities on account of religious opinions. There have been many memorable things done in this reign. Hostile armies have been destroyed, fleets have been captured, formidable combinations have been broken to pieces; but this sentiment, in the mouth of a king, deserves, more than all glories and victories, the notice of that historian who is destined to tell to future ages the deeds of the English people. I hope he will lavish upon it every gem which glitters in the cabinet of genius, and so uphold it to the world that it will be remembered when Waterloo is forgotten, and when the fall of Paris is blotted out from the memory of man. THE FINER FRUITS OF DEMOCRACY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL An extract from Mr. Lowell's address on "Democracy," delivered on the occasion of his inauguration as President of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, Birmingham, England, October 6, 1884. This quotation is taken from Vol. VI. of Lowell's "Prose Works," which contains his 'Literary and Political Addresses," and is here reprinted by special permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Company, the publishers. 66 Democracies can no more jump away from their own shadows than the rest of us can. They no doubt sometimes make mistakes and pay honor to men who do not deserve it. But is it democracies alone that fall into this error? I, who have seen it proposed to erect a statue to Hudson, the railway king, and have heard Louis Napoleon hailed as the savior of society by men who certainly had no democratic associations or leanings, am not ready to think so. But democracies have likewise their finer instincts. I have also seen the wisest statesman and most preg THE FINER FRUITS OF DEMOCRACY 131 nant speaker of our generation, a man of humble birth and ungainly manners, of little culture beyond what his own genius supplied, become more absolute in power than any monarch of modern times, through the reverence of his countrymen for his honesty, his wisdom, his sincerity, his faith in God and man, and the nobly humane simplicity of his character. And I remember another whom popular respect enveloped as with a halo, the least vulgar of men, the most austerely genial, and the most independent of opinion. Wherever he went he never met stranger, but everywhere neighbors and friends proud of him as their ornament and decoration. Institutions which could bear and breed such men as Lincoln and Emerson had surely some energy for good. No, amid all the fruitless turmoil and miscarriage of the world, if there be one thing steadfast and of favorable omen, one thing to make pessimism distrust its own obscure distrust, it is the rooted instinct in men to admire what is better and more beautiful than themselves. The touchstone of political and social institutions is their ability to supply them with worthy objects of this sentiment, which is the very tap-root of civilization and progress. There would seem to be no readier way of feeding it with the elements of growth and vigor than such an organization of society as will enable men to respect themselves, and so to justify them in respecting others. THE TRUE GREATNESS OF ENGLAND JOHN BRIGHT Mr. Bright, true to his Quaker principles, has always been a strenuous opponent of war. He energetically denounced the Crimean War in 1855. He was a member, and for many years the leader, of the Peace Society of Great Britain. I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live. Palaces, baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make a nation. The nation in every country dwells in the cottage; and unless the light of your constitution can shine there, unless the beauty of your legislation and the excellence of your statesmanship are impressed there on the feelings and conditions of the people, rely upon it you have yet to learn the duties of government. The most ancient of profane historians has told us that the Scythians of his time were a very warlike people, and that they elevated an old scimiter upon a platform as a symbol of Mars. To this scimiter they offered more costly sacrifices than to all the rest of their gods. I often ask myself whether we are at all advanced in one respect beyond the Scythians. What are our contributions to charity, to education, to morality, to religion, to justice, and to civil government, when compared with the wealth we expend in sacrifices to the old scimiter? We are assured, however, that Rome pursued a |