No higher ambition can find vent in a paper such as this, than to
suggest the position and claims of the subject, and slightly to indicate
a few outlines, or, at least, fragments, of the working material.
In many and the most fundamental respects the two still carry in
undiminished, perhaps in increasing, clearness, the notes of resemblance
that beseem a parent and a child.
Both wish for self-government; and, however grave the drawbacks under
which in one or both it exists, the two have, among the great nations of
the world, made the most effectual advances toward the true aim of
rational politics.
They are similarly associated in their fixed idea that the force, in
which all government takes effect, is to be constantly backed, and, as
it were, illuminated, by thought in speech and writing. The ruler of St.
Paul's time "bare the sword" (Rom. xiii: 4). Bare, it as the Apostle
says, with a mission to do right; but he says nothing of any duty, or
any custom, to show by reason that he was doing right. Our two
governments, whatsoever they do, have to give reasons for it; not
reasons which will convince the unreasonable, but reasons which on the
whole will convince the average mind, and carry it unitedly forward in a
course of action, often, though not always, wise, and carrying within
itself provisions, where it is unwise, for the correction of its own
unwisdom before it grow into an intolerable rankness.
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