have ceased to be the doctrine of progress, and may yet need its soldiers, battles, and martyrs. But here its mission is ended, and its work done. Here it is the doctrine of yesterday and not of to-morrow. To assert it, is not to deny the sovereignty of kings, hierarchies, and nobilities; for kings, hierarchies, and nobilities, thank God! are not at home on American soil; and, if by some mischance they should be transplanted hither, they would not thrive, they would soon droop, die, and be consumed in the fires of freedom, every where burning. The assertion of the sovereignty of the people with us, can be only the assertion of the right of the majority to tyrannize at will over the minority, or the assertion that the people, taken individually, are the absolute slaves of the people, taken as a whole. No; the sovereignty of the people, has achieved its work with us, and the friends of freedom and progress must anoint a new king. Democracy to-day changes its word, and bids its sentinels require of those who would enter its camp, not "The sovereignty of the people," but "The sovereignty of Justice."

Democracy, as we understand it, we have said, is, on the one hand, the denial of absolute sovereignty to the state, whatever the form of government adopted, and on the other hand, the assertion of the absolute sovereignty of Justice. It therefore commands both the people and the individual to be just. It subjects both to one and the same law; and, while it commands the citizen to obey and serve the state with all fidelity, so long as it keeps within its legitimate province, it takes care not to forget to remind the state, that it must leave the citizen, as a man, free to do or to enjoy whatever justice permits, commands, or does not forbid.

According to our definition of it, democracy reconciles conflicting theories, and paves the way for the universal association of the human race. By enthroning justice it accepts and explains the leading ideas of theories apparently the most contradictory. Every

theory, which obtains or ever has obtained currency, embraces some essential element of truth. He, who has yet to learn that the human mind never does, never can believe unmixed falsehood, has no reason to boast of his progress in philosophy. The monarchist has a truth. His truth is that sovereignty is necessarily absolute, one and indivisible. This truth the democrat accepts. In declaring justice the sovereign, he declares the sovereign to be absolute, one and indivisible. The authority of justice is unbounded, and there are not two or more justices, but one justice, one God. The error of the monarchist is in confounding the absolute sovereign, in practice at least, with the man whom men call a king. This error the democrat escapes.

The theocrat has a truth, a great truth. His truth is that the Highest and Best, God, is the sovereign. The democrat asserts the same thing. Justice is the political phasis of God, it is identical with God, and in asserting its sovereignty, the democrat asserts precisely the same sovereignty as does the theocrat. The error of the theocrat is in making the priesthood the symbol of this sovereignty and the authoritative expounders of its decrees. This error the democrat escapes by adopting no symbol of sovereignty, but the universal Reason which is ever shining in the human soul, and in making the people in a few instances, and the individual in all the rest, the only authoritative expounders of its decrees.

The truth of the aristocrat is that some men are greater and better than others, and that the greatest and best should govern; that is, that wisdom and virtue, not vice and folly should rule. This truth the democrat by no means rejects. He believes as strongly as any aristocrat, that there are diversities and even inequalities of gifts, that in all communities. there are a few men, God-patented nobles, who stand out from the rest, the prophets of what all are one day to be; and he contends that these are the natural chiefs of the people, and that they ought to govern.

In asserting that justice is sovereign, he necessarily asserts that they in whom justice is most manifest, in whom God dwells in the greatest perfection, should have the most influence, the most power; but at the same time, he asserts as a necessary consequence of this, that their power should be moral, spiritual, not physical. The error of the aristocrat is in looking for these God-patented noblemen in a particular class, in an hereditary order, or in a special corporation; and in seeking to give them in addition to the superior power with which they are naturally endowed, the physical power of the state and the factitious authority of an established régime. This error the democrat avoids. He proclaims equal chances to equal merit, and leaves every man free to find the place and to wield the authority for which nature-God has fitted him.

The old-fashioned democrat's truth is, that there shall be no political authority in the state which does not emanate from the people, and which is not accountable to the people; that where there must be state action, it shall be the action of the whole people, not of one man, or of a few men, who may have an interest directly hostile to the interests of the great body of the people. His error is in the fact, that he does not take sufficient care to mark the bounds of the people's authority, and to preserve to the citizen his rights as a man. The democrat, in our sense of the word, accepts the truth, and avoids the error.

It may be seen from these few examples, that democracy accepts and explains all. It is not monarchy, it is not aristocracy, it is not theocracy, in the sense in which the word has been appropriated, nor is it democracy as some would teach us to understand it, but it is a sort of chemical compound of them all. It is a higher and a broader truth than is contained in any one of these systems, one which comprehends and finally absorbs them all.

Democracy is the doctrine of true liberty. The highest conception of liberty is that which leaves every man free to do whatever it is just to do, and not free

to do only what it is unjust to do.

Freedom to

do that which is unjust according to the laws of God or, - which is the same thing, the law of nature, is license, not liberty, and is as much opposed to liberty, as lust is to love. "A free government," say the Old English lawyers, "is a government of laws," and they say right, if law be taken absolutely, and not merely as the enactment of the human legislature. Where there is an arbitrary will above the law, be it the will of the one, the few, or the many, there is, in theory at least, absolutism, and the room for pure despotism. A free government must be a government, not of the will of one man, nor of the will of any body of men, but a government of law; not of a law which a human authority may make or unmake, but of that which is law in the very nature, constitution, and being of this system of things to which we belong. Under a government of law in this sense, where authority may never do, command, or permit, only what the immutable law of justice ordains, men are free; they live under the "perfect law of liberty," and may attain to the full and harmonious development of all their faculties.

Governments have not yet been brought under this law. Hitherto, they have all been more or less arbitrary, and have sought to make the law, rather than to discover and publish it. They have, therefore, often declared that to be law which is not law, imposed burdens on the individual, for which nature - God never designed him, and attempted to do what they have no capacity to do, what ought not to be done at all, or if done, to be done by the individual. Forgetful of their legitimate province, transcending the bounds which nature had marked out for them, they have created an artificial state of society, disturbed the natural relations between man and man, invaded the individual's rights in all directions, and cursed the human race with the unutterable woes tyranny and oppression. The democrat enlightened by the study of past ages, and still more by the study

of

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of human nature as it unrolls itself to the observer, in the consciousness of the individual, comes forward. to-day, and summoning all governments, - whatever their forms, to the bar, tells them in the name of God and Humanity, that they have no law-making power, that they must limit their legislative functions. to the discovery and promulgation of the law, that they must lay aside the robe and diadem, the sceptre and the sword, and sit down at the feet of Nature, as simple disciples; that they must study to conform their enactments to the enactments of God, which are written in God's book, the universe, and especially in the universe in man; and that they must deem it their duty and their glory, to leave man and society free to achieve the destiny to which God hath appointed them. It will be long before this lesson will be heard or regarded. The mania for governing has become too universal to be speedily cured. But we need not despair. The world rolls on, and becomes wiser with each revolution. Governments are meliorating themselves. The doctor of medicine begins to admit that, notwithstanding the efficacy of his drugs, nature is the best physician; and the time may not be so far distant as our fears would indicate, when the doctor of laws shall own that nature is the best and only lawgiver. That time must come. The human and divine laws must become identical, the Son must be one with the Father, and the God-Man be realized.

Democracy takes care not to lose the man in the citizen. In the free states, or rather free cities, of antiquity, there were rights of the citizen, but no rights of man. As a citizen, the individual might use his personal influence and exertions in making up the decision of the city; but when the decision was once made up, he was bound in conscience, as well as compelled by physical force, to yield it, whatever it might be, the most unqualified submission. He had no rights sacred and inviolable, beyond the legitimate authority of the city. In a question between the city and himself, he could demand nothing as his right. The city

VOL. I. NO. I.

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