es. They are no meddlers. They do not trouble themselves
about what does not concern them.

But though we will not meddle with public affairs, who shall answer for
it that public affairs will not meddle with us? With such facts as I
began with mentioning, glaring in our faces, sickening our very hearts
with horror and indignation, who will say that public affairs may not
interfere with us, with our very lives, yes, and with what ought to be
dearer to us than our lives? Let them take their own course, as you say.
And then, as surely as we breathe, bad men will gain the
ascendency,--ignorant, unprincipled, ambitious men, despisers of human
life and human rights, ready to shed blood to any extent to gratify the
devilish lust of power. Into such hands will public affairs fall. And
then there is no man--there is no woman, so retired but she shall find
to her cost, that she has an interest, the very deepest,--that her all
is involved in these things,--that they may tear from her her father,
her husband, her brother or her son, aye, and her own life also, which
she is pampering so delicately.

There is some excuse for the people of France, ground down as they have
been by ages of oppression, denied the right to think, to judge, to act
for themselves, made to believe that their rulers held their power by
the grace of God--there is some excuse for them. But, whatever may be
their excuse, there can be no doubt that it is the ignorance, the
indifference, the cowardice, the selfishness of the people at large that
have caused their public affairs to wade so often towards a settlement,
through such frightful streams of innocent and unoffending blood. Here,
in our land, the peace and security of private life are as fully and
extensively insured as they are, precisely for this reason, because of
the lively and general interest which the people in their private
capacity take in things of public concern. In this country more than in
any other, the people keep a watchful and commanding eye upon public
matters. And, with all the excitement and agitation which it involves,
it is the great pledge of our private and personal security.

But if the indifference to public affairs, which is now confined only to
a class--only to a portion of the people--to too large a portion,
indeed, but still only to a portion,--if it were to become general, if
things were allowed to go on their way, without any interest taken in
them by private persons, by th