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and nobility in others, arose out of the governments founded upon conquest. It was originally a military order, for the purpose of supporting military government (for such were all governments founded in conquest); and to keep up a succession of this order for the purpose for which it was established, all the younger branches of those families were disinherited, and the law of primogenitureship set up

The nature and character of aristocracy shows itself to us in this law. It is a law against every law of Nature and Nature herself calls for its destruction. Establish family justice and aristocracy falls. By the aristocratical law of primogenitureship, in a family of six children, five are exposed. Aristocracy has never more than one child. The rest are begotten to be devoured. They are thrown to the cannibal for prey, and the natural parent himself prepares the unnatural repast.

¶ As everything which is out of Nature in man affects, more or less, the interest of society, so does this. All the children which the aristocracy disowns (which are all, except the eldest) are, in general, cast like orphans on a parish to be provided for by the public, but at a greater charge. Unnecessary offices and places in governments and courts are created at the expense of the public, to maintain them Ꮽe ᏭᏛ

¶ With what kind of parental reflections can the father or mother contemplate their younger offspring? By nature they are children, and by marriage they are heirs; but by aristocracy they are bastards and orphans. They are the flesh and blood of their parents in one line, and nothing akin to them in the other. To restore, therefore, parents

to their children, and children to their parents-relations to each other and man to society-and to exterminate the monster, aristocracy, root and branch-the French Constitution has destroyed the law of Primogenitureship Here then lies the monster; and Mr. Burke, if he pleases, may write its epitaph

¶ Whatever the form or constitution of government may be, it ought to have no other object than the general happiness Jo

¶ When the ability in any nation to buy is destroyed, it equally involves the seller. Could the government of England destroy the commerce of all other nations, she would most effectually ruin her own.

¶A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.

¶ A firm bargain and a right reckoning make long friends.

¶ It is impossible to make wisdom hereditary.

The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related that it is difficult to class them separately. One step below the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again.

¶ Nature seems sometimes to laugh at mankind, by giving them so many fools for kings; at other times, she punishes their folly by giving them tyrants.

¶ A republican government hath more true grandeur in it than a kingly one. On the part of the public it is more consistent with freemen to appoint their rulers than to have them born; and on the part of those who preside, it is far nobler to be a ruler by the choice of the people than a king by the chance of birth. Every honest delegate is more than a monarch. Disorders will unavoidably happen in all States, but monarchical governments are the most subject thereto, because the balance hangs uneven.

¶ Poverty is a thing created by that which is called civilized life

¶The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside ☛☛

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LINCOLN

OURSCORE and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. ¶ But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate we can not hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great

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task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.-Address at the Dedication of the Gettysburg National Cemetery, November 19, 1863.

¶I never encourage deceit; and falsehood-especially if you have got a bad memory—is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is, truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are.

POLITICIANS who have interests aside from the inter

est of the people, are—that is, the most of them are, taken as a mass—at least one long step removed from honest men. I say this with the greater freedom because, being a politician myself, none can regard it as personal.

HAT an ignorance of human nature does it exhibit

WH

to ask or expect a whole community to rise up and labor for the temporal happiness of others, after themselves shall be consigned to the dust, a majority of which community takes no pains whatever to secure their own eternal welfare at no more distant day? Great distance in either time or space has wonderful power to lull and render quiescent the human mind. Pleasures to be enjoyed, or pains to be endured, after we shall be dead and gone, are but little regarded even in our own cases,

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