will have to give way to cooperation, and the rights and enjoyments of individuals to those of the abstract multitude, continually before their eyes: and they cannot abide the aspect of the phantom which their imagination has raised. They do not see that this ultimate destiny of European communities (if such it be) can be accomplished only under the controlling influence of some authority which may be able to enforce the laws of fraternity by more than human sanction, as the Church alone can do and has done witness not only the system of the early Christians and of the great monastic communities, but even the rough attempts of the Anabaptists of Germany, and the Shakers of your own country. To this great truth, which sheds such a ray of cheering light on the remotest speculations of the religious thinker, the political sceptics of whom I speak are necessarily blind. They see in democracy the only consistent solution of the social question; and they fear, at the same time, that it would bring to ruin the social fabric itself. Consequently they would find an escape through the adoption of ingenious expedients for coaxing his majesty the Demos into relinquishing a portion of that supremacy with which their theory inevitably invests him; constitutions in which cunningly contrived breaks and delays shall be interposed between the expression of the popular will and its execution; schemes for graduating the number of votes according to property; schemes for the so-called representation of minorities, whereby these may, under certain circumstances, by a dexterous juggle, outvote majorities; and the like; schemes as delusive as an attempt to stay running water by dams of water. The first instance in which electoral statistics fairly showed that the numerical majority was on one side, the constitutional majority on the other, would bring the whole

paper structure to the ground. The ordinary downward progress of democratic institutions may be held long in check by trifling obstacles of established law or usage, submitted to from superstition or feelings akin to it (as in ancient Rome), from reverence, from the strong influence of legal tradition, or from mere habit. But it is impossible that it can be held in check by devices intentionally constructed for the purpose, unless the people are themselves so highly educated, and so penetrated with a sense of the advantages of self-denial, that they will voluntarily curtail the exercise of their own franchise. And, if we can suppose the people educated up to such a pitch of asceticism as to be ready to part with a portion of their power for their own good, then the devices in question would become wholly unnecessary; for a people so advanced would be fit to be trusted with uncontrolled sovereignty. By the very supposition, a community which can make and keep laws restricting the rule of the majority, is one in which the majority may safely rule. All systems of a partial, balanced, restricted democracy (barring, as I have said, those which rest on ancient authority, that is, on some fragment of faith, not on mere reason), are demonstrably either impracticable or useless..

Franklin. I will not pretend to solve the difficulty which you have suggested; but I think I can cap it. The system of government by divine right may rest, for aught I know, on arguable grounds à priori. But in practice it could never be maintained (force apart), except among a people who really and honestly believed in divine right: believed, that is (to use the old whig's definition), that the larger part of mankind come into the world bridled and saddled, and the smaller part booted and spurred to ride them. But the people who believed these things in old days, believed them on authority only:

Q

because their fathers, or their church, had taught them so to believe. That is now impossible. One who now-adays believes in divine right and non-resistance must do so on convictions arrived at for himself, and in deliberate opposition to the general current of the world around him. To reconstruct, therefore, a state on these doctrines, you must first have instructed a community, enlightened for good and evil by modern education, into a thorough and rational belief in them. But when you have trained a community up to this point, it might quite as well be left to govern itself; for it would be a republic of pious philosophers. Although therefore it be but a commonplace mode of disputing, I must retort on your theocratic Utopia the sarcasm with which you visit my democratic one if it were possible, it would be unnecessary.

De Maistre. I never valued the privilege of the last word much in the upper world; and it is of still less importance in the leisure of the shades. Be it so, therefore; it seems that you and I may yet witness many a generation involved in similar profitless disputes, before society shall emerge out of the mists of that narrow valley of bewilderment in which it has hitherto wandered up and down, to the higher grounds on either side, with their purer atmosphere; too pure, as some think, for mere mortals to breathe in.

II.

SKETCHES FROM THE HISTORY OF THE

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

1. THE STREETS OF PARIS.

2. A VISIT TO LÜTZEN.

3. A VISIT TO MARSTON MOOR.