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be king and ruler, you are not certain of the right ordering, for he sees the progess which is desirable, which, indeed, shall some day be, but not always that which is practicable immediately. And when you have no prophet, but some imbecile slip of the past, whose eyes are in the back of his head,-what law of progress can you have uttered by such? Truly not even an attempt at

utterance.

The People must decide upon its own life. The Majority must command. There and there alone dwells the true interpretation of God's law of progress, -the decision of not merely that which is best to be done, but of that which may best be done at each succeeding moment.

Let it not be objected that the wisest are ever in the minority. If wisdom cannot make itself manifest to the majority, whose is the fault? Something is surely lacking in the wisdom. The wisest are those who can best regulate today's work, not forgetting the future.

And the conscience of a whole people is never at fault. There have been panics and madnessess of multitudes, popular crimes and errors; but never a whole people, even in the lowest state of a people, unitedly wrong upon any great matter. Religious and other wars, massacres, and persecutions,-these are royal, aristocratic, and sacerdotal work. Villainies innumerable rest upon the castes who have misgoverned nations; but the peoples' hands are clean. When kings and priests provoked and carried on that desolating war against the Hussites, the popular conscience upheld the right. And in the wildest period of the French Revolution, the People's judgment was sound and just. Never has it swerved unless seduced by priests or tyrants, and oft-times even then it has indignantly turned upon and rebuked its infamous leader. The history of the current popular struggle, from February, 1818, to the recent just denunciation of woman-flogging Haynau, by the sturdy, right-feeling brewers of Bankside, is one continuous vindication aud series of examples of the true conscience of the Peoples. The lowest masses are better than the privileged now; and how unspeakably better still will be the People, when, instead of being ill-taught, or left in ignorance by despicable or detested pretenders, they shall be educated by those whom they can revere and honestly and lovingly obey, 'those whom genius and virtne have pointed out to them as their best.'

But we believe that there are limits to the power of even the government of a majority: the limits of INDIVIDUAL RIGHT. The majority may not enslave the minority, either by disposing of their bodies or coercing their consciences, in violation of the original equality of human brotherhood. Every attempt upon the rights of individuals, by the most overwhelming majority, is an attempt against the very bond of society, which exists in virtue of the mutual sacredness of it and of each of its members. If the free growth of any is suppressed, there is a hinderance of the progress of the whole,—the progress whose sced must ever be first planted in the hearts of the few. Government is the enlightened conscience of to-day, organizing and directing present means for to-day's work. But the 'few' of to-day may so manifest their growth and superiority, that to-morrow the 'many' shall be with them, and to-morrow's higher work need a new direction. When such a Government can be obtained,―that is to say, when the Govern

ment (I do not say merely a part of it) shall be chosen by the whole people, there need not be occasion to trammel its progress with the clogs which men hang at the heels (better sometimes if they were round the necks) of their governors in what are pleasantly called constitutional states. There need be no jealousy of those who are chosen by an educated People. It will not then be necessary that the general progress should be stayed for fear a too powerful Government should encroach upon individual liberties. It will then be seen that Society is as sacred as Individuality, needs as much protection; that it is not enough to make every man's house 'his castle,' (your private castles, do not keep out the burglar, or the unjust tax-collector, or the extortioner,) but to make every man a true soldier, servant, and office-bearer in the nation, which will then need no private castles. This mutual sacredness of the individual and society will then become possible then, when the people are all free and equal, and when their own chosen governors marshall them on the way of progress,-not by nice balancing of interests,―nor by dictation of the minutest matters of life,-not by endeavouring to stereotype their subjects, to make them run in parallel grooves of happiness or duty, but by obeying the dictates of the popular conscience and helping the national genius to unfold itself; careful not so much to dictate the work as to provide that the work be done by healthy, strong, and faithful men, conscious of their mission and anxious that it should be fulfilled. The nation itself will decide upon the work to do; and be it peace or war, will know how to decide rightly.

INDIVIDUAL DUTY.

'We believe in the duty of the individual to make use of the elements of material, intellectual, and moral work, with the utmost concurrence ofhis faculties.'

The ground upon which I have advocated the duties of a State toward its members, in supplying them with the means of growth and work, has been that of the necessity of organization, in order to insure the more regular and rapid and certain progression of the whole of Humanity. The duty of a State toward its members implies, of necessity, corresponding duties of the members toward the State. If the State supplies means of work, secures property and growth, those so furnished and secured are bound to maintain the same advantages for others. Parts of the body politic, accepting the advantage of belonging to it, their duty is manifestly to maintain its integrity. Indeed their own position is untenable unless they do so. For the State only exists as a combination. If all work for one, one owes a return to all. But again I say that it is not upon this mere footing of a bargain, which might imply choice, that we must place the duty of the individual; but upon the moral basis of his position as a part of one comprehensive whole, a position which is not a matter of choice, but necessitated by the very fact of his birth, and from which he can never be released except by death. It cannot be too often repeated that the Individual is a part of Humanity, an inseparable link of the one vast chain hanging from the throne of God. Man has not the choice of being his brother's keeper,' or not. He cannot dissolve the brotherhood. He has not the option of bargaining so much duty for interest. He has by his very birth appropriated the interest, and he owes the duty of his life in repayment of that. Unless he would be a thief.

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The Past has lent to the Present; and the Future demands payment. A feather out of a wing, a bone out of a body, a leaf out of a book,-is not more absurdly isolated than a human soul that would detach itself from the upward soaring of its race, a man denying his duty to the body politic, or a life which fancies that its thought or speech or action can be torn unnoticed and without detrimental consequence from the history of mankind, We believe therefore that it is ever the duty of the individual to devote the utmost energies of his being to the ser-. vice of his race: to the Beloved first (though whoever loves needs no such reminding); to the Children next; then to his immediate fellows in the Workshop. or Farm, in the Hamlet, Municipality, or Commune; then, the circles of duty widening ever as-like a drop of rain flung into still water-his active life impels the waves of circumstance around him, to the City or County, his Country, and the World. For the business of man's life is service to his kind. Service even now, when, wanting organization, each must mark out for himself the route upon which his unaided thought decides that he can best serve; service still, when Society, becoming organized, shall learn how to economize his powers, to prevent his efforts from being wasted, as so much of endeavour is wasted through want of direction now, from being left to fight and to labour alone, or with but the chance and random help of the casual passers-by.

GOD'S LAW

'We believe, to resume, in a social State having GOD AND HIS LAW at the summit, the People, the universality of the citizens free and equal at its base, progress for rule, association as means, devotion for baptism, genius and virtue for lights upon the way.

GOD'S LAW: it is not the doctrine of an individual or a sect; it is not the dogma of a Church (even of the truest), nor the 'act' of a Parliament (be it never so equally constituted). Though doctrine, dogma, and act, may each be, less or more, an enunciation of God's law. It is the revelation which enlightens the Prophets and Apostles of Humanity, the instinct which impels the universal conscience of mankind. Wherever the revelation and the instinct, wherever genius and universality, wherever the Voice of God' and the Voice of the People are in unison,-there, be sure, is a law of God.

GOD'S LAW: God's holiest preachers and martyrs have proclaimed it, with their words and with their lives; and the heart of man in all climes and in all ages has recognized its divinity—its truth. It is this:

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GROW HEALTHILY! LOVE! ASPIRE! PROGRESS!

GROW HEALTHILY!-It is the first necessity of being. That was a true insight which shut out the blemished or unclean from the service of the priesthood. How shall any be God's priest in his impurity or weakness? Be pure for health's sake! Be strong for the sake of growth! Grow healthfully,-which is naturally, vigorously, and beautifully,-that so thy nature may be perfected, and thy life be a fit and acceptable worshipper in this temple of the Eternal, which men call Earth,-worthily serving at the altar, whatever name may be inscribed thereon, whether Family, Country, or Man.

LOVE! It is the stepping beyond the narrow prison-house, the chrysalis tomb of Self. Capacity for love constitutes the difference between the gentle

and the churl, the human and the brute. The brute desires, seeks, and has possession, asserting the right of his limited nature, the right of health and growth: but he cannot soar out of the bestial Self. He cannot love. Live not like brute beasts without understanding, when God has breathed into your souls the angelic faculty of Love.-Love the Mother, upon whose smooth rounded bosom you first dreamed of beauty and of heaven! Love the Father who taught you to be strong and daring! Love her who led you into the innermost sanctuary of delight-whose maiden smile first whispered to your enraptured soul how chaste and holy and self-sacrificing Love may be! Love her Children,the Children of the Beautiful, whom also thou wilt teach how to love! Love thy Country-the land of thy young days of home-the land whose speech is the music of the Beloved-the land where rest the bones of Heroes, thy sires; love it with the active love of a patriot's ever anxious service! Love not only persons, places, or things; but love the Beautiful, the Noble, the Enduring! Love the memory of those Great Ones who have lived and suffered for thee! Love is gratitude-the full-handed gratitude that returns one benefit by benefiting a thousand. Love, and scorn not those new ideas which are continually dawning upon the world! For Love is reverence. It was Love that worshipped at the Poor Man's feet, wiping them with her hair, and kissing them. Love believeth. ASPIRE! Indeed, Love is aspiration: the longing search after the Most Beautiful. Ever as thou reachest the summit of a truth, look upward to the truth beyond! Ever on the ladder of improvement, which leans on the edge of heaven, as thou gainest round after round, look upward! And when thou pilest another day of worth upon thy past life, rest not as one whose mission is accomplished; but know and recollect that man's mission is to aspire!

For

PROGRESS;-Yes! believe that the healthily-grown, the lover, the aspirer, must progress. Up and down, the mountain-climber advances toward the top. Let him not, in the mountain hollows, look back complaining-'How much higher I was.' He but descends to mount again. It is no level path, nor smooth unvarying ascent, the way of progress.

But we believe in the possibility of a social state in which the ascent, though not altogether evened, shall yet be smoothed of its worst roughnesses; when the whole race shall be fellow-workers, aiding each other in their advance. We believe that it shall not always be left to individuals to toil painfully up the steep and narrow path, in sadly isolated endeavour to fulfill God's law; but that, when Nations are free, their Governments shall be able to provide the educational means through which mankind shall be aided in their combined endeavours to grow healthily, to love, to aspire, and to progress: when progress shall be recognized as the normal condition of life, when organized association shall supply the requisite means, when individuals, baptized in the faith of devotion to God and Humanity, shall know how best to avail themselves of those means, and when Genius and Virtue, borne upon the shoulders of the advancing crowd (as of old they chose their generals), shall light us upon our way. When the whole earth shall be a holy altar, and human life as the flame of a sacrifice, continually ascending to the heaven of God.

NATIONS.

And that which we believe to be true for a single people, we believe to be true for all. There is but one sun in heaven for the whole earth: there is but one law of truth and justice for all who people it.

'Inasmuch as we believe in Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Association for individuals composing the State, we believe also in the Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and Association of Nations.

We believe that the map and organization of Europe are to be remade.

'We believe, in a word, in a general organizantion having God and his law at the summit, Humanity, the universality of Nations free and equal at its base, common progress for end, alliance for means, the example of those peoples who are most loving and most devoted for encouragement on the way?

We do not believe that men can righteously band together to commit wrong; nor that by any combination or assembling of numbers, they can escape from the individual responsibility of their moral being.

We believe that Wrong is wrong, whether perpetrated by individuals or by nations that Right does not alter its character, whether its pursuer be one or a multitude.

A Nation is an assemblage and combination of individuals: each of whom is endowed with conscience, each of whom is bound by his very nature to combat evil, each of whom is impelled by the divine law of his being to seek good and to maintain the right. Their very assembling and combination as a body is that they more effectually combat evil, seek good, and maintain and perpetuate the right.

To grow healthily, to love, to aspire, and to progress,-this is as much the destiny of Nations as of the individuals of which Nations are composed.

If equal liberty is the right of each member of the Nation in relation to his fellows, not only in the Nation but throughout the whole world,so is it the right of the collective body-the Nation, in relation to all other Nations. If one Nation may be shut out of the pale of national liberty, what becomes of the universal equality and liberty of mankind?

If it is the duty of Man in his Nation to serve Humanity, it is equally the duty of the Nation, as an organization of Men, to serve Humanity. Else the individual serves not Humanity, but some national egotism.

'Peoples are the individuals of Humanity.' As men differ from one another in character, aptitude, or calling, so also do Peoples. [Their national organization is the means, not only of perfecting that special character, but of applying the various aptitude and calling toward one great object-the progress of the whole of life. England, if an organization of healthy, high-thoughted men, would recognize itself as the world's servant; would toil for that, not for the wretched aggrandizement of England against the world, or without care for the world. England, now stealing in every corner of the earth for the most wretched aggrandizement of Self, would then be no more hated or despised as a bullying ruffian or an unprincipled eyeless-needle-selling pedlar, but loved and honoured as the brave champion of Freedom and ablest civilizer of the time. But what would become then of the miserable doctrine of NON-INTERVENTION,-the refuge or pretence of Whig knaves, the shallow subterfuge of traders who care nothing if

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