s and type of the syllogism. The human race can be contented with
neither, for neither allows it free scope for its inherent life and
activity. The English system tends to pure individualism; the French
to pure socialism or despotism, each endeavoring to suppress an element
of the one living and indissoluble TRUTH.

This is not fancy, is not fine-spun speculation, or cold and lifeless
abstraction, but the highest theological and philosophical truth,
without which there were no reason, no man, no society; for God is the
first principle of all being, all existence, all science, all life, and
it is in Him that we live and move and have our being. God is at the
beginning, in the middle, and at the end of all things--the universal
principle, medium, and end; and no truth can be denied without His
existence being directly or indirectly impugned. In a deeper sense
than is commonly understood is it true that nisi Dominus aedificaverit
domum, in vanum laboraverunt qui aedificant eam. The English
constitution is composed of contradictory elements, incapable of
reconciliation, and each element is perpetually struggling with the
others for the mastery. For a long time the king labored, intrigued,
and fought to free himself from the thraldom in which he was held by
the feudal barons; in 1688 the aristocracy and people united and
humbled the crown; and now the people are at work seeking to sap both
the crown and the nobles. The state is constituted to nobody's
satisfaction; and though all may unite in boasting its excellences, all
are at work trying to alter or amend it. The work of constituting the
state with the English is ever beginning, never ending. Hence the
eternal clamor for parliamentary reform.

Great Britain and other European states may sweep away all that remains
of feudalism, include the whole territorial people with the equal
rights of all in the state or political people, concede to birth and
wealth no political rights, but they will by so doing only establish
either imperial centralism, as has been done in France, or democratic
centralism, clamored for, conspired for, and fought for by the
revolutionists of Europe. The special merit of the American system is
not in its democracy alone, as too many at home and abroad imagine; but
along with its democracy in the division of the powers of government,
between a General government and particular State governments, which
are not antagonistic governments, for the