clouds, as
it does in Hesoid. Birth-right of every description, all heritable
privileges, every form of national religion, and so on, may be
regarded as the necessary chemical base or alloy; inasmuch as it is
only when right has some such firm and actual foundation that it can
be enforced and consistently vindicated. They form for right a sort of
[Greek: os moi pou sto]--a fulcrum for supporting its lever.

Linnaeus adopted a vegetable system of an artificial and arbitrary
character. It cannot be replaced by a natural one, no matter how
reasonable the change might be, or how often it has been attempted to
make it, because no other system could ever yield the same certainty
and stability of definition. Just in the same way the artificial and
arbitrary basis on which, as has been shown, the constitution of
a State rests, can never be replaced by a purely natural basis. A
natural basis would aim at doing away with the conditions that have
been mentioned: in the place of the privileges of birth it would put
those of personal merit; in the place of the national religion, the
results of rationalistic inquiry, and so on. However agreeable to
reason this might all prove, the change could not be made; because a
natural basis would lack that certainty and fixity of definition which
alone secures the stability of the commonwealth. A constitution which
embodied abstract right alone would be an excellent thing for natures
other than human, but since the great majority of men are extremely
egoistic, unjust, inconsiderate, deceitful, and sometimes even
malicious; since in addition they are endowed with very scanty
intelligence there arises the necessity for a power that shall be
concentrated in one man, a power that shall be above all law and
right, and be completely irresponsible, nay, to which everything shall
yield as to something that is regarded as a creature of a higher
kind, a ruler by the grace of God. It is only thus that men can be
permanently held in check and governed.

The United States of North America exhibit the attempt to proceed
without any such arbitrary basis; that is to say, to allow abstract
right to prevail pure and unalloyed. But the result is not attractive.
For with all the material prosperity of the country what do we find?
The prevailing sentiment is a base Utilitarianism with its inevitable
companion, ignorance; and it is this that has paved the way for a
union of stupid Anglican bigotry, foolish prejud