the common stock of commerce, and the consequence is the same as if each had attacked his own.

CONSTITUTION is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It is not an ideal, but a real existence; and wherever it can not be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of the people constituting a government

¶ He who takes Nature for his guide is not easily beaten out of his argument

All religions are in their nature mild and benign, and united with principles of morality. They could not have made proselytes at first, by professing anything that was vicious, cruel, persecuting or immoral. Like everything else, they had their beginning; and they proceeded by persuasion, exhortation and example.

T requires but a very small glance of thought to per

I

ceive that, although laws made in one generation often continue in force through succeeding generations, yet they continue to derive their force from the consent of the living. A law not repealed continues in force, not because it can not be repealed, but because it is not repealed, and the non-repealing passes for consent.

¶ Immortal power is not a human right, and therefore can not be a right of Parliament.

¶ The Parliament of Sixteen Hundred Eighty-eight might as well have passed an act to have authorized themselves to live forever as to make their authority live forever. All therefore that can be said of them is, that they are a formality of words, of as much import as if those who used them had addressed a congratulation to themselves, and in the Oriental style of antiquity had said, O Parliament, live forever!

¶ The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of men change also; and as government is for the living and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right to it. That which may be thought right and found convenient in one age may be thought wrong and found inconvenient in another. In such cases, who is to decide—the living, or the dead?

¶ Formal government makes but a small part of civilized life; and when even the best that human wisdom can devise is established, it is a thing more in name and idea than in fact. It is to the great and fundamental principles of society and civilization-to the common usage universally consented to, and mutually and reciprocally maintainedto the unceasing circulation of interest, which, passing through its million channels, invigorates the whole mass of civilized man--it is to these things, infinitely more than to anything to which even the best instituted government can perform, that the safety and prosperity of the individual and of the whole depends.

The more perfect civilization is, the less occasion has it for government, because the more does it regulate its own affairs, and govern itself; but so contrary is the practice of old governments to the reason of the case, that the

expenses of them increase in the proportion they ought to diminish ›☛ It is. but few general laws that civilized life requires, and those of such common usefulness that, whether they are enforced by the forms of government or not, the effect will be nearly the same. If we consider what the principles are that first condense men into society, and what the motives that regulate their mutual intercourse afterwards, we shall find, by the time we arrive at what we call government, that nearly the whole of the business is performed by the natural operation of the parts upon each other.

¶ Man, with respect to all those matters, is more a creature of consistency than he is aware, or that governments would wish him to believe. All the great laws of society are laws of Nature. Those of trade and commerce, whether with respect to the intercourse of individuals, or of nations, are laws of mutual and reciprocal interest. They are followed and obeyed because it is the interest of the parties so to do, and not on account of any formal laws their governments may impose or interpose.

¶ Man acquires a knowledge of his rights by attending justly to his interest, and discovers in the event that the strength and powers of despotism consist wholly in the fear of resisting it, and that in order "to be free," it is sufficient that he will it.

¶ The prosperity of any commercial nation is regulated by the prosperity of the rest. If they are poor, she can not be rich; and her condition, be it what it may, is an index of the height of the commercial tide in other nations

T

66

HE French Constitution says there shall be no titles; and of consequence, all that class of equivocal generation, which in some countries is called aristocracy," and in others "nobility," is done away, and the peer is exalted into man.

¶ Titles are but nicknames, and every nickname is a title. The thing is perfectly harmless in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery in the human character which degrades it. It renders man diminutive in things which are great, and the counterfeit of woman in things which are little. It talks about its fine blue ribband like a girl, and it shows its new garter like a child. A certain writer of some antiquity says, "When I was a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

¶ It is, properly, from the elevated mind of France, that the folly of titles has been abolished. It has outgrown the baby-clothes of count and duke, and breeched itself in manhood. France has not leveled, it has exalted. It has put down the dwarf to set up the man. The insignificance of a senseless word like duke, count or earl has ceased to please. Even those who possessed them have disowned the gibberish, and as they outgrew the rickets have despised the rattle.

¶ The genuine mind of man, thirsting for its native home, society, contemns the gewgaws that separate him from it. Titles are like circles drawn by a magician's wand, to contract the sphere of man's felicity. He lives immured within the Bastile of a word, and surveys at a distance the envied life of man o

Is it then any wonder that titles should fall in France? Is it not a greater wonder that they should be kept up

anywhere? What are they? What is their worth, and what is their amount? When we think or speak of a judge or a general, we associate with it the ideas of office and character; we think of gravity in the one, and bravery in the other; but when we use a word merely as a title, no ideas associate with it.

¶ Through all the vocabulary of Adam, there is no such an animal as a duke or a count; neither can we connect any idea to the words. Whether they mean strength or weakness, wisdom or folly, a child or a man, or a rider or a horse, is all equivocal. What respect then can be paid to that which describes nothing and which means nothing? Imagination has given figure and character to centaurs, satyrs, and down to all the fairy tribe; but titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and are a chimerical nondescript s But this is not all. If a whole country is disposed to hold them in contempt, all their value is gone and none will own them. It is common opinion only that makes them anything or nothing or worse than nothing. There is no occasion to take titles away, for they take themselves away when society concurs to ridicule them. This species of imaginary consequence has visibly declined in every part of Europe, and it hastens to its exit as the world of reason continues to rise.

¶The patriots of France have discovered, in good time, that rank and dignity in society must take a new ground. The old one has fallen through. It must now take the substantial ground of character, instead of the chimerical ground of titles; and they have brought their titles to the altar and made of them a burnt-offering to Reason. That then, which is called aristocracy in some countries,