ale, without weakening the sense
of personal and local independence. For in the body politic this spirit
of freedom is as the red corpuscles in the blood; it carries the life
with it. It makes the difference between a society of self-respecting
men and women and a society of puppets.

Your nation may have art, poetry, and science, all the refinements of
civilized life, all the comforts and safeguards that human ingenuity can
devise; but if it lose this spirit of personal and local independence,
it is doomed and deserves its doom. As President Cleveland has well
said, it is not the business of a government to support its people, but
of the people to support their government; and once to lose sight
of this vital truth is as dangerous as to trifle with some stealthy
narcotic poison. Of the two opposite perils which have perpetually
threatened the welfare of political society--anarchy on the one hand,
loss of self-government on the other--Jefferson was right in maintaining
that the latter is really the more to be dreaded because its beginnings
are so terribly insidious. Many will understand what is meant by a
threat of secession, where few take heed of the baneful principle
involved in a Texas Seed-bill.

That the American people are still fairly alive to the importance of
these considerations, is due to the weary ages of struggle in which our
forefathers have manfully contended for the right of self-government.
From the days of Arminius and Civilis in the wilds of lower Germany to
the days of Franklin and Jefferson in Independence Hall, we have been
engaged in this struggle, not without some toughening of our political
fibre, not without some refining of our moral sense. Not among our
English forefathers only, but among all the peoples of mediaeval and
modern Europe has the struggle gone on, with various and instructive
results. In all parts of romanized Europe invaded and colonized by
Teutonic tribes, self-government attempted to spring up. What may have
been the origin of the idea of representation we do not know; like most
origins, it seems lost in the prehistoric darkness. Wherever we find
Teutonic tribes settling down over a wide area, we find them holding
their primary assemblies, usually their annual March-meetings, like
those in which Mr. Hosea Biglow and others like him have figured.
Everywhere, too, we find some attempt at representative assemblies,
based on the principle of the three estates, clergy, nobles, an