arrier of caste, necessarily
retards the result to which the philosopher looks forward with perfect
faith.

For us, whose business it is to deal with, and, so far as human
fallibility will permit, to improve our inevitable form of
government-which may degenerate into the most intolerable of polities
unless we are ever mindful that it is yet in its rudimental condition;
that, although an immense step has been taken in the right direction by
the abolition of caste, the divorce of Church and State, and the
limitation of intrusion by either on the domain of the individual, it is
yet only a step from which, without eternal vigilance, a falling back is
very easy; and that here, more than in other lands, ignorance of the
scientific and moral truths on--which national happiness and prosperity
depend, deserves bitter denunciation--for us it is wholesome to confirm
our faith in democracy, and to justify our hope that the People will
prove itself equal to the awful responsibility of self-government by an
occasional study of the miseries which the opposite system is capable of
producing. It is for this reason that the reign of the sovereign whose
closing moments have just been recorded is especially worthy of a minute
examination, and I still invite a parting glance at the spectacle thus
presented, before the curtain falls.

The Spanish monarchy in the reign of Philip II. was not only the most
considerable empire then existing, but probably the most powerful and
extensive empire that had ever been known. Certainly never before had so
great an agglomeration of distinct and separate sovereignties been the
result of accident. For it was owing to a series of accidents--in the
common acceptation of that term--that Philip governed so mighty a realm.
According to the principle that vast tracts: of the earth's surface, with
the human beings feeding upon: them, were transferable in fee-simple from
one man or woman to another by marriage, inheritance, or gift, a
heterogeneous collection of kingdoms, principalities, provinces, and:
wildernesses had been consolidated, without geographical continuity, into
an artificial union--the populations differing from each other as much as
human beings can differ, in race, language, institutions, and historical
traditions, and resembling each other in little, save in being the
property alike of the same fortunate individual.

Thus the dozen kingdoms of Spain, the seventeen provinces of the
Netherlands,