tain to civil
freedom. Of all things, the existence of civil liberty is most the
result of artificial institution. The proclivity of the natural man is
to domineer or to be subservient. A noble result, indeed, but in the
attaining of which, as in the instances of knowledge and virtue, the
Creator, for his own purposes, has set a limit beyond which we cannot
go.

But he who is most advanced in knowledge, is most sensible of his own
ignorance, and how much must forever be unknown to man in his present
condition. As I have heard it expressed, the further you extend the
circle of light, the wider is the horizon of darkness. He who has made
the greatest progress in moral purity, is most sensible of the
depravity, not only of the world around him, but of his own heart, and
the imperfection of his best motives; and this he knows that men must
feel and lament so long as they continue men. So when the greatest
progress in civil liberty has been made, the enlightened lover of
liberty will know that there must remain much inequality, much
injustice, much _slavery_, which no human wisdom or virtue will ever be
able wholly to prevent or redress. As I have before had the honor to say
to this Society, the condition of our whole existence is but to struggle
with evils--to compare them--to choose between them, and, so far as we
can, to mitigate them. To say that there is evil in any institution, is
only to say that it is human.

And can we doubt but that this long discipline and laborious process, by
which men are required to work out the elevation and improvement of
their individual nature and their social condition, is imposed for a
great and benevolent end? Our faculties are not adequate to the solution
of the mystery, why it should be so; but the truth is clear, that the
world was not intended for the seat of universal knowledge, or goodness,
or happiness, or freedom.

_Man has been endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights,
among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness._ What is
meant by the _inalienable_ right of liberty? Has any one who has used
the words ever asked himself this question? Does it mean that a man has
no right to alienate his own liberty--to sell himself and his posterity
for slaves? This would seem to be the more obvious meaning. When the
word _right_ is used, it has reference to some law which sanctions it,
and would be violated by its invasion. It must refer either to the
general l