tion, which doubtless he as clearly
as any of us foresees--namely, the question of citizenship, and
of the rights and functions of citizenship. In Italy, the
question of who may partake of government has arisen, and there
has been an immense widening of popular liberty there. Germany,
that freezes at night and thaws out by day only enough to freeze
up again at night, has also experienced as much agitation on this
subject as the nature of the case will allow. And when all
France, all Italy, all Russia, and all Great Britain shall have
rounded out into perfect democratic liberty, it is to be hoped
that, on the North side of the fence where it freezes first and
the ice thaws out last, Germany will herself be thawed out in her
turn, and come into the great circle of democratic nations.
Strange, that the mother of modern democracy should herself be
stricken with such a palsy and with such lethargy! Strange, that
in a nation in which was born and in which has inhered all the
indomitableness of individualism should be so long unable to
understand the secret of personal liberty! But all Europe to-day
is being filled and agitated with this great question of the
right of every man to citizenship; of the right of every man to
make the laws that are to control him; and of the right of every
man to administer the laws that are applicable to him. This is
the question to-day in Great Britain. The question that is being
agitated from the throne down to the Birmingham shop, from the
Atlantic to the North Sea, to-day, is this: Shall more than one
man in six in Great Britain be allowed to vote? There is only one
in six of the full-grown men in that nation that can vote to-day.
And everywhere we are moving toward that sound, solid, final
ground--namely, that it inheres in the radical notion of manhood
that every man has a right which is not given to him by potentate
nor by legislator, nor by the consent of the community, but which
belongs to his structural idea, and is a divine right, to make
the laws that control him, and to elect the magistrates that are
to administer those laws. It is universal.

And now, this being the world-tide and tendency, what is there in
history, what is there in physiology, what is there in
experience, that shall say to this tendency,