XLVII. by George Clymer and McKean, went two by two to CHAP. the state-house, and delivered their remonstrance; but the spirit of the assembly, under the guidance 1775. of Dickinson, followed the bent of the quakers. Congress, for the time, was like a ship at sea without a rudder, still buoyant, but rolling on the water with every wave. One day would bring measures for the defence of New York and Hudson river, or for the invasion of Canada; the next, nothing was to be done that could further irritate Great Britain. The continuance of the army around Boston depended on the efficiency of all the New England provinces; of these, New Hampshire was without a government. On the eighteenth of October, her delegates asked in her behalf, that the general congress would sanction her instituting a government, as the only means of preventing the greatest confusion; yet the majority of that body let the month run out before giving an answer, for they still dreamed of conciliation, and of the good effects of their last petition to the king. Oct. CHAPTER XLVIII. CHAP. XLVIII Aug. THE QUESTION BETWEEN BRITAIN AND AMERICA. AUGUST, 1775. THE chronicler of manners and events can alone measure his own fairness, for no one else knows so 1775. well what he throws aside. The greatest poet of action has brought upon the stage the panorama of mortal being, without once finding occasion to delineate a faultless hero. No man that lives has not sinned. The gentlest of historians, recounting in the spirit of love the mighty deeds which divide the new civilization from the old, tells how one of his fellow messengers, thrice in the same night, denied the master by whom he had been called. Indiscriminate praise neither paints to the life, nor teaches by example, nor advances social science; history is no mosaic of funeral eulogies and family epitaphs, nor can the hand of truth sketch character without shadows as well as light. The crimes and the follies which stand in the line of causes of revolution, or modify the development of a state, or color the morals of an age, XLVIII 1775. Aug. must be brought up for judgment; and yet the hu- CHAP. mane student of his race, in his searches into the past, contemplates more willingly those inspirations of the beautiful and the good, which lift the soul above the interests of the moment, demonstrate our affinity with something higher than ourselves, point the way to principles that are eternal, and constitute the vital element of progress. From immeasurable distances in the material universe the observer of the stars brings back word, that the physical forces which rule our neighborhood maintain an all-pervading energy; and the records imbedded in the rocks, teaching how countless myriads of seasons have watched the sun go forth daily from his chamber, and the earth turn on its axis, and the sea ebb and flow, demonstrate that the same physical forces have exerted their power without change for unnumbered periods of bygone years. The twin sciences of the stars and of the earth establish the cosmical unity of the material universe in all that we can know of time and space. But the conception of the perfect order and unity of creation does not unfold itself in its beauty and grandeur, so long as the guiding presence of intelligence is not apprehended. From the depths of man's consciousness, which envelopes sublimer truths than the firmament over his head can reveal to his senses, rises the idea of right; and history, testing that idea by observation, traces the vestiges of moral law through the practice of the nations in every age, proves experimentally the reality of justice, and confirms by induction the intuitions of reason. CHAP. The historian, not less than philosophers and naturalists, must bring to his pursuit the freedom of an 1775. unbiassed mind; in his case the submission of reason Aug. to prejudice would have a deeper criminality; for he cannot neglect to be impartial without at once falsifying nature and denying providence. The exercise of candor is possible; for the world of action has its organization and is obedient to law. The forces that constitute its antagonisms are very few, and are always and everywhere present, and are always and everywhere the same, though they make their appearance under many shapes. Human nature is forever identical with itself; and the state ever contains in its own composition all the opposite tendencies which constitute parties. The problems of politics cannot be solved without passing behind transient forms to efficient causes; the old theories, founded on the distinction of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, must give place to an analysis of the faculties in man, and the unvarying conditions, principles, and inherent wants out of which they have been evolved; and it will be found, that as every class of vertebrate animals has the forms of the same organs, so an exact generalization establishes the existence of every element of civil polity and of the rudiments of all its possible varieties and divisions in every stage of human being Society is many and is one; and the organic unity of the state is to be reconciled with the separate existence of each of its members. Law which restrains all, and freedom which adheres to each individual, and the mediation which adjusts and connects these two conflicting powers, are ever present as constituent ingredients; each of which, in its due propor XLVIII tion is essential to the well being of a state, and is CHAP ruinous when it passes its bounds. It has been said 1775. that the world is governed too much; no statesman Aug. has ever said that there should be no government at all. Anarchy is at one extreme, and the pantheistic despotism, which is the absorption of the people into one man as the sovereign, at the other. All governments contain the two opposite tendencies; and were either attraction or repulsion, central power or individuality, to disappear, civil order would be crushed or dissolved. The state has always for its life-giving principle the idea of right; the condition of facts can never perfectly represent that idea; and unless this antagonism also is reconciled, no durable constitution can be formed, and government totters of itself to its fall, or is easily overthrown. Here, then, is another cause of division; one party clings to the bequests of the past, and another demands reform; the fanatics for conservatism are met by enthusiasts for ideal freedom, while there is always an effort to bring the established order into a nearer harmony with the eternal law of justice. These principles have manifested their power in every country in every stage of its existence, and must be respected, or society will perish in chaotic confusion or a stagnant calm. The duty of impartiality in accounting for political conflicts, is then made easy, if behind every party there lies what an English poet has called "an eternal thought," and if the generating cause of every party, past, or present, or hereafter possible, is a force which is never absent, which in its proper proportion is essential to the wellbeing of society, and which turns |