able, and equally
inevitable its appearance in the field of national politics. For what
is meant by self-government is, that a man shall make his convictions
of what is right and expedient regulate the community so far as his
fractional share of the government extends. If one has come to the
conclusion, be it right or wrong, that any particular institution or
statute is a violation of the sovereign law of God, it is to be expected
that he will choose to be represented by those who share his belief, and
who will in their wider sphere do all they legitimately can to get
rid of the wrong in which they find themselves and their constituents
involved. To prevent opinion from organizing itself under political
forms may be very desirable, but it is not according to the theory or
practice of self-government. And if at last organized opinions become
arrayed in hostile shape against each other, we shall find that a just
war is only the last inevitable link in a chain of closely connected
impulses of which the original source is in Him who gave to tender and
humble and uncorrupted souls the sense of right and wrong, which, after
passing through various forms, has found its final expression in the use
of material force. Behind the bayonet is the law-giver's statute, behind
the statute the thinker's argument, behind the argument is the tender
conscientiousness of woman, woman, the wife, the mother,--who looks upon
the face of God himself reflected in the unsullied soul of infancy.
"Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength,
because of thine enemies."

The simplest course for the malcontent is to find fault with the order
of Nature and the Being who established it. Unless the law of moral
progress were changed, or the Governor of the Universe were dethroned,
it would be impossible to prevent a great uprising of the human
conscience against a system, the legislation relating to which, in the
words of so calm an observer as De Tocqueville, the Montesquieu of our
laws, presents "such unparalleled atrocities as to show that the laws of
humanity have been totally perverted." Until the infinite selfishness
of the powers that hate and fear the principles of free government
swallowed up their convenient virtues, that system was hissed at by all
the old-world civilization. While in one section of our land the attempt
has been going on to lift it out of the category of tolerated wrongs
into the sphere of the world's