in the same
personage. The explanation is simple. Justice inspired the one; the
other was the child of simple envy. But this passion of envy, if it
becomes permanent and popular, may avenge itself, like all other sins. A
nation may say to itself, "Provided we have no superiors to fall our
pride, we are content. Liberty is a slight matter, provided we have
equality. Let us be slaves, provided we are all slaves alike." It may
destroy every standard of humanity above its own mean average; it may
forget that the old ruling class, in spite of all its defects and crimes,
did at least pretend to represent something higher than man's necessary
wants, plus the greed of amassing money; never meeting (at least in the
country districts) any one wiser or more refined than an official or a
priest drawn from the peasant class, it may lose the belief that any
standard higher than that is needed; and, all but forgetting the very
existence of civilisation, sink contented into a dead level of
intellectual mediocrity and moral barbarism, crying, "Let us eat and
drink, for to-morrow we die."

A nation in such a temper will surely be taken at its word. Where the
carcase is, there the eagles will be gathered together; and there will
not be wanting to such nations--as there were not wanting in old Greece
and Rome--despots who will give them all they want, and more, and say to
them: "Yes, you shall eat and drink; and yet you shall not die. For I,
while I take care of your mortal bodies, will see that care is taken of
your immortal souls."

For there are those who have discovered, with the kings of the Holy
Alliance, that infidelity and scepticism are political mistakes, not so
much because they promote vice, as because they promote (or are supposed
to promote) free thought; who see that religion (no matter of what
quality) is a most valuable assistant to the duties of a minister of
police. They will quote in their own behalf Montesquieu's opinion that
religion is a column necessary to sustain the social edifice; they will
quote, too, that sound and true saying of De Tocqueville's: {1} "If the
first American who might be met, either in his own country, or abroad,
were to be stopped and asked whether he considered religion useful to the
stability of the laws and the good order of society, he would answer,
without hesitation, that no civilised society, but more especially none
in a state of freedom, can exist without religion. Respect