ject, and slightly to indicate
a few outlines, or, at least, fragments, of the working material.

In many and the most fundamental respects the two still carry in
undiminished, perhaps in increasing, clearness, the notes of resemblance
that beseem a parent and a child.

Both wish for self-government; and, however grave the drawbacks under
which in one or both it exists, the two have, among the great nations of
the world, made the most effectual advances toward the true aim of
rational politics.

They are similarly associated in their fixed idea that the force, in
which all government takes effect, is to be constantly backed, and, as
it were, illuminated, by thought in speech and writing. The ruler of St.
Paul's time "bare the sword" (Rom. xiii: 4). Bare, it as the Apostle
says, with a mission to do right; but he says nothing of any duty, or
any custom, to show by reason that he was doing right. Our two
governments, whatsoever they do, have to give reasons for it; not
reasons which will convince the unreasonable, but reasons which on the
whole will convince the average mind, and carry it unitedly forward in a
course of action, often, though not always, wise, and carrying within
itself provisions, where it is unwise, for the correction of its own
unwisdom before it grow into an intolerable rankness. They are
governments, not of force only, but of persuasion.

Many more are the concords, and not less vital than these, of the two
nations, as expressed in their institutions. They alike prefer the
practical to the abstract. They tolerate opinion, with only a reserve on
behalf of decency; and they desire to confine coercion to the province
of action, and to leave thought, as such, entirely free. They set a high
value on liberty for its own sake. They desire to give full scope to the
principle of self-reliance in the people, and they deem self-help to be
immeasurably superior to help in any other form; to be the only help, in
short, which ought not to be continually, or periodically, put upon its
trial, and required to make good its title. They mistrust and mislike
the centralization of power; and they cherish municipal, local, even
parochial liberties, as nursery grounds, not only for the production
here and there of able men, but for the general training of public
virtue and independent spirit. They regard publicity as the vital air of
politics; through which alone, in its freest circulation, opinions can
be thrown into c