establishment. Less than forty years ago, Englishmen might still by
law hold human beings in bondage as saleable property: within the
present century they might kidnap them and carry them off, and work
them literally to death. This absolutely extreme case of the law of
force, condemned by those who can tolerate almost every other form of
arbitrary power, and which, of all others, presents features the most
revolting to the feelings of all who look at it from an impartial
position, was the law of civilized and Christian England within the
memory of persons now living: and in one half of Anglo-Saxon America
three or four years ago, not only did slavery exist, but the slave
trade, and the breeding of slaves expressly for it, was a general
practice between slave states. Yet not only was there a greater
strength of sentiment against it, but, in England at least, a less
amount either of feeling or of interest in favour of it, than of any
other of the customary abuses of force: for its motive was the love
of gain, unmixed and undisguised; and those who profited by it were a
very small numerical fraction of the country, while the natural
feeling of all who were not personally interested in it, was
unmitigated abhorrence. So extreme an instance makes it almost
superfluous to refer to any other: but consider the long duration of
absolute monarchy. In England at present it is the almost universal
conviction that military despotism is a case of the law of force,
having no other origin or justification. Yet in all the great nations
of Europe except England it either still exists, or has only just
ceased to exist, and has even now a strong party favourable to it in
all ranks of the people, especially among persons of station and
consequence. Such is the power of an established system, even when
far from universal; when not only in almost every period of history
there have been great and well-known examples of the contrary system,
but these have almost invariably been afforded by the most
illustrious and most prosperous communities. In this case, too, the
possessor of the undue power, the person directly interested in it,
is only one person, while those who are subject to it and suffer from
it are literally all the rest. The yoke is naturally and necessarily
humiliating to all persons, except the one who is on the throne,
together with, at most, the one who expects to succeed to it. How
different are these cases from that of the power