The world has a continual tendency to fall over, either to one or the other of these extremes. Thus we have, on one side, authority coupled with blind obedience, and on the other a spirit of insurrection against all legitimate rule, making up to a great extent the history of human life. or oppress the other; the two constituting | State pursued the policy only of repressthus the force of a single life. Where this ing every aspiration in this direction, and inward organic conjunction of the elements sought to hold the world in perpetual now named is wanting, one of them either vassalage to mere power on their own side; excluding the other altogether, or at best as though a parent, long accustomed to enduring its presence only in an outward rule his children with absolute control, way, the whole idea must be to the same should, at last, insist on extending over extent necessarily overthrown. It matters their full adult life itself the same kind not, in such case, which of the two factors of rule, without any regard whatever to may thus prevail at the cost of its opposite, the wants and capabilities of their adthe result will be the same. In the one vanced state. The relation between audirection, we shall have authority turned thority and obedience became, in this into despotism; in the other, liberty con- manner, mechanical and altogether exterverted into licentiousness; both alike fatal | nal. Free authority and obedience fell to all true freedom. To be wholly bound, asunder, as though each belonged to a and to be wholly unbound, come here to different sphere from the other. The the same thing in the end. Either state is authority claimed to be of divine force for to be deprecated as slavery. itself, under a fixed outward form; while the merit of obedience was supposed to lie in its blind, uninquiring subjection to the will thus imposed upon it from abroad. In one word, the claims of the subjective were overwhelmed, and well nigh crushed by the towering pretensions of the objective. No wonder that this extreme should at length become insupportably onerous to the ripening consciousness of the Christian world. It opened the way gradually for a powerful reaction towards the opposite side. This gave birth finally, when the fullness of time had come, to the great fact of the Reformation; which may be regarded as a solemn Declaration of Independence, on the part of the human mind, against the tyranny by which it had been wronged for centuries, in the name of religion and law. A grand epoch certainly, in the history of the world's life, whose consequences must continue to fill the earth to the end of time. These belong of course, not simply to the Church in a separate view, but to every sphere, whether of thought or action, that is comprehended in our common human existence. Art, science, government, and social life, all have been affected by the change. A new stadium is in progress, for the universal life of the world; having for its object now the full assertion of what may be styled the subjective pole of freedom, in opposition to the long historical process that went before, in favor of its opposite side. Protestantism is the fountain thus of all modern liberty, religious and political alike. Its tendency has been, from the beginning, to break the chains of authority Our own age leans especially towards the extreme of exalting individual liberty at the expense of just authority. Time has been, when the whole civilization of the world showed an opposite character. It was necessary indeed, in the nature of the case, that the process of our modern culture, the fruit of Christianity, and the only culture that may be regarded as worthy of the name, should commence in this way. Its foundations were to be laid deep, in the first place, in the sense of law and a corresponding spirit of obedience to its authority. Long ages of discipline were required for this purpose, in the course of which it was hardly possible that wrong should not be done to the idea of freedom, by an undue depression of its opposite element, the liberty of the individual subject. The discipline became, in fact, as we all know, tyrannical and oppressive just in this way, by refusing to recognize the rights of those who were subjected to it, as the time of their minority came to an end, and made it proper that these rights should be brought into full and free exercise. Instead of making it their business to train their subjects for personal independence, the true design of all sound government, both Church and as previously established, and to engage the human mind to a bold vindication of its own rights in opposition to all blind obedience of whatever kind. Nor is it to be imagined at all, that the new position which has been reached in this way, can ever be surrendered again, in favor of the order which prevailed before. The period of blind submission to the sense of the objective, whether in Church or State, when priest and king were held to be superior by divine right, to the divine constitution itself by which they were created, we may well trust, has forever passed away. But it does not follow at once from this, that the past was all wrong, or that the present is all right. A just consideration of history would lead us rather to suppose, that the new direction it has taken, may itself be liable to abuse, in a way answerable to the wrong which existed before on the opposite side; which would not imply certainly, that we must fall back again to the things we have happily left behind, but only that we should so far right our course, as to steer clear of the rocks that threaten us from either side, and so press forward to the true and proper destiny of our race. That the principle of individual liberty has been, in fact, thus carried to an extreme, at least in some cases, in the progress of the Protestant era, is acknowledged on all sides; and it needs no very profound or extensive observation, to see that our own age in particular is peculiarly exposed to danger just in this direction. It leans constitutionally towards an undue assertion of the prerogatives of the individual life, over against the idea of authority as something absolute and universal. False liberty, in this form, does not consist, of course, in the open rejection of the law in itself considered. On the contrary, it usually affects to make great account of the law; but it is always only in a mechanical and outward way. The law is not viewed as a necessary constituent of freedom itself, but simply as an outward rule and measure of its supposed rights. The subject starts with his own independence as an interest full and complete in its separate character, and obeys the law accordingly in his way, not by entering it as a life beyond himself, but by requiring it to come first into subjection to his own private will. He has no conception of freedom as the union of liberty and authority. It is for him, at last, the exercise only of separate personal independence on his own part. By the right of private judgment, he means to assert the right of thinking for himself, regardless of the thoughts of all other men; and so also in the case of private will. He does not deny, indeed, that truth and right are universal in their nature, and as such not to be created or controlled by his particular mind. But the authority which belongs to them in this view, remains for him always more or less a mere abstraction. It does not come near to him under a concrete form, in the actual constitution of the world with which he is surrounded. He is without reverence accordingly for the powers by which it is properly represented. He sees nothing divine in history. The Church is to him the mere aggregation of a certain amount of private thinking on the subject of religion. The State is taken to be the creature only of its own members, standing by their permission, and liable of right to be taken down by them, or changed into a new form, at their own good pleasure. All this involves, of course, an immense error; though it is one which it must ever be difficult to bring home clearly to the consciousness of the popular mind. Liberty without law is licentiousness, whether in the sphere of thought or will; and law, to be real, must be the sense of a general concrete authority, actually comprehended in the constitution of the living world to which we belong. Where this may be wanting, it is not possible that there can be any true religious or political freedom. The exaltation of private independence, the rights of the individual as they are called, at the cost of all proper objective authority, is just as fatal here as the exaltation of authority at the cost of individual rights. There is a vast amount of cant and falsehood abroad on this subject, which it is important we should understand, and against which we have need to stand continually upon our guard. With any right conception of the nature of freedom as now explained, it will not be possible for us, on the other hand, to fall in with the views of those who would persuade us that the only remedy for the evils of a licentious individualism, is to be | ful parent who seeks to hold his children found in casting ourselves once more blind- in perpetual dependence upon his own ly into the arms of mere outward author- judgment, and in perpetual vassalage to ity. This were to fall backward to the his own will, instead of training them as period which preceded the Reformation, quickly as possible to think and act for when we should seek rather to make our themselves. So neither the State nor the own period the means of advancing to one Church can have any right to bind the unthat may be superior to both. It is well derstanding and will of their subjects in to see and admit the difficulties of the slavish obedience to mere authority. The present; but we are bound to remember case demands a different relation between also the difficulties of the past, that we the two interests with which it is concernmay look for salvation only in the form of ed. Though the authority should be never a brighter and more glorious future. It so benevolent and wise, and the subject of deserves to be continually borne in mind it never so well satisfied to be ruled by it that mere authority is as little to be trusted in this way, the result would still be slavery for securing the right order of the world, and not freedom. No man can fulfil his as mere liberty. They are the opposite true moral destiny, by a simply blind and poles of freedom, and neither can be true passive obedience to law. His obedience, to its constitution, except as this is made to be complete, must be intelligent and to include both in a perfectly inward and spontaneous. In other words, the law free way. The evils incident to private must enter into him and become incorpojudgment are not to be corrected by re- rated with his life. The remedy, then, for ferring us to an infallible public judgment, subjective license, is not such an exhibition ecclesiastical or political, that may do our simply of outward authority as may superthinking for us in every case, and then sede the necessity of private judgment almake it over to us in a merely outward together. Even an infallible authority in way, without any activity on our own part. this form would not be desirable; for the And just as little of course are the irregu- Divine will itself, if it were made merely larities of private will to be reformed, by to overwhelm the human as a foreign handing us over to the rule of a foreign force, must lead to bondage only, and not public will, as the measure of all right and to freedom. wrong for our conscience. It is not in this The case requires, then, such an underway, that Christianity especially proposes standing of the true nature of freedom, as to make us free. The imagination of a may serve to secure its constitution on both mechanical system of notions and rules sides. Mere theory, indeed, will not be brought near to the mind from abroad, to sufficient, here or elsewhere, to preserve be accepted by it in a blind way, on the life in its right form; but it is, at least, a ground of authority conceived to be di- most important auxiliary to this object. It vine, is wholly aside from the true charac- is much to know clearly, and still more, ter of the gospel. Christianity is indeed steadily to keep in mind, that liberty and a law; but it is at the same time the "law law, the activity of private will and the of liberty," comprehending in itself the restraining force of authority, are alike intrue normal mould of our general human dispensable to a right condition of human life, into which it must be cast in every life; that they are required to enter into case, in order that it may be complete; it always as polar forces, which organically but into which it can be cast, for this pur- complete each other; and that the exaltation pose, only by its own consent and choice. of either interest at the cost of its opposite, In truth, no government can be rational must prove alike fatal to true moral order. and good in the case of men, that does not It is much to know that the idea of freeaim at making them able to govern them- dom can never be reached by simply opselves. The only proper use of govern- posing one of these powers to the other ment is to educate its subjects for free- on either side, as though to insist upon dom, if they have not yet come to be capa- authority were necessarily to wrong libble of its exercise; and if this be not pro- erty; or as though to press the claims of posed, the government becomes to the this last, required a rejection of the no less same extent tyrannical. He is an unfaith-rightful pretensions of the first. That is at all times a very shallow philosophy, though it be unfortunately very common, which can see contradiction only in the polarity now mentioned, and is urged accordingly to affirm and deny with regard to it, in such a way as to exclude the possibility of any reconciliation between the tendencies thus opposed. No authority can be moral that does not seek liberty as its end; and no liberty can be free that is not filled with the sense of authority as the proper contents of its own life. of law from the cradle to the grave, and from the rudeness of savage life onward through all stages of subsequent social refinement; but it is only that he may be educated for the full use finally of his own proper personal independence, in being set free from all bondage, whether objective or subjective, by the clear spontaneous union of his private will with the law to which it is necessarily bound. It lies in the very conception of this vast educational process, including as it does not only all stages of the single life from infancy to old age, but all stages also of the general ethical life in the progress of nations, that the two great compound forces by which the problem of freedom is in the course of being solved, should sus tion, a constantly fluctuating relation; the pressure of authority being necessarily greater, and the sense of independence less, in reverse proportion to the actual development of the true idea of freedom in the subject. Here, of course, a wide field is thrown open for the exercise of That it may be difficult to bring this theory of freedom into practice, is readily admitted; but this forms no proper argument against the truth and value of the theory itself. The difficulty lies in the nature of the subject to which it belongs. Still, however, there is no other way intain to each other, in their legitimate acwhich it is possible for the end to be secured that is here in view. Man must be at once independent and bound, self-governed, and yet obedient to authority, in order that he may at all fulfil his own destiny, in distinction from the system of mere nature with which he is surrounded. For this he is to be educated and formed, un-political and ethical science, in determining der the influences which are comprehended in human society for the purpose. He comes not to moral freedom at once, but is required to rise to it by regular development, out of the life of nature in which his existence starts, and in which it continues always to have its root. In our present circumstances, moreover, the process is greatly embarrassed and obstructed by a false law of sin, which is found too plainly seated in our constitution. It becomes accordingly a most complicated problem, to bring our common human life, in this view, into its proper form; a problem, whose solution in fact runs through the history of the world's entire social constitution, from the beginning of time to its end. The family, the State, and the Church, are all comprehended alike in the service of this great design. They surround the human subject with the force the claims of duty and right, as related to each other in any given stadium of morality. On this, however, we are not called now to enter. It may be sufficient to conclude with the general rule, drawn from the whole subject, that no one can be true ethically to his own position, whether as a child or as a man, high or low, rich or poor, in power or out of power, who, in the use of his liberty, whatever it may be, is not ruled at the same time by a sentiment of reverence for the idea of an objective authority extended over him in some form, in the actual social organization to which he belongs. To be without reverence for authority, is to have always to the same extent the spirit of a slave. In no other element is it possible to think what is true, or to act what is right. J. W. N. FOREIGN IMMIGRATION: ITS NATURAL AND EXTRAORDINARY CAUSES; ITS CONNECTION WITH THE FAMINE IN IRELAND, AND SCARCITY IN OTHER COUNTRIES. THE Irish famine of 1846-7 will stand out upon the page of history as one of the most striking events of modern times. It will be recorded, not merely as a calamity which has swept away a vast multitude of human beings, but equally as a providential crisis in the history of this nation, which revealed more fully than ever before, the accumulated evils of centuries of misgovernment. For it was not created simply by the sudden destruction of a large portion of the nation's subsistence; it was that almost hopeless and depressed social condition of the people, that at once paralyzed the national energy, when this energy was to be directed into new channels as the only alternative against general starvation. There was then no self-reliance; hence no moral courage. There was hope, but it was hope which trembled over a wide-spread, increasing panic, and rested only on the arm of the national treasury. There was submission, but it was that of despair. There was unexampled patience and endurance, but these gave no creative energy to the people; they produced no enlightened forecast. The subjects of that famine were those, and those chiefly, whose minds had been used to the severest laws of servitude, and therefore dependence upon and direction by higher orders of intelligence had become the unchangeable condition of their being. This was their birthright-not the gift of Heaven, but entailed upon them by their masters through successive generations. And when by this signal providence, the possessions of every class became insecure, and the laws of tribute and servitude inoperative, there was to be found no method by which the soil could, at once, be made chargeable with its tenants. They had no power to fulfil legal obligation, while the burden of a higher and moral one, by reason of this inability, now rested with fearful force upon the master. But he had neither the strength to sustain this, nor the courage to direct the energies of his dependents. There were noble exceptions; yet such was the general condition, and such the two classes of mind. When the news of this their deplorable and melancholy condition had gone forth, the sympathies of the whole human family in every quarter of the globe were excited to a degree unparalleled in the history of the world. No famine in the history of mankind can be compared to it, unless it be the seven years' famine of Egypt. To this it bears a striking analogy, in the magnitude of the calamity, in the corresponding social condition of those who, in Egypt, were most exposed to suffering, and in the relations of the sufferers to the soil of the country. The first year in Egypt consumed their lands, their gold and silver. During the second, the unhappy Egyptians sold not only their lands, but themselves, as the price of food. The lands of the priests excepted, Joseph purchased for the crown the whole lands of lower Egypt. After the custom of the East, he allotted it into estates, supplied the seed for its tillage, and demanded one-fifth of the crop as rent, to be paid into the royal treasury. It was held by what is now called the Ryot tenure in Asia. It was by this process that the whole people of the Delta were brought into a state of legal slavery. We find here a kindred land tenure, a social condition not dissimilar, and, if not in the duration, in their intensity, a correspondence in the two calamities. In the last November issue of this Journal, we discussed the permanently existing causes of foreign immigration. They were, the constantly depressed condition of the poorer classes in Europe, the easy land |