it piecemeal from their masters. Magna
Charta was forced from a weak monarch by a conspiracy of nobles, acting
from purely selfish motives, in behalf of their own order. The Habeas
Corpus Act was unpalatable to the Lords, and was passed only by a trick
or a blunder. What is there in common between the states which recognize
the rule of any persons who happen to be descended from the bold or
artful men who obtained their power by violence or fraud, and a state
which starts with the assumption that the government belongs to the
governed, subject, we must remember, to the laws which make a people a
nation,--laws recognized just as unhesitatingly by the Rebel States as
applying to Western Virginia or East Tennessee, as the Union recognizes
their application to these same Rebel States?

Of course, it is conceivable that we are all wrong in our theory of
human rights and our plan of government. It is possible that the true
principle of selecting the rulers of a nation is to take the descendants
of the cut-throat, the assassin, the poisoner, the traitor, who got his
foot upon a people's neck some centuries ago. It may be that there is an
American people which will hold itself fortunate, if it can be ruled
over by a descendant of Charles V.,--though Philip II. was the son of
that personage, and an American historian has made us familiar with his
doings, and those of his vicegerent, the Duke of Alva. If this is the
way that people should be governed, then we _are_ wrong, and have no
right to look for sympathy from Old-World dynasties. The only question
is, How soon it will be safe to send a Grand Duke over to govern us.

But if our theory of human rights and our plan of government are the
true ones, then our success is the inevitable downfall of every dynasty
on the face of the earth. It is not our fault that this must be so; the
blameless fact of our existence, prosperity, power, civilization,
culture, as they will show themselves on the supposition that we are
working in the divine parallels, will necessarily revolutionize all the
empirical and accidental systems which have come down to us from the
splendid semi-barbarism of the Middle Ages. What all good men desire,
here and everywhere, is that this necessary change may be effected
gradually and peaceably. We do not find fault with men for being born in
positions that confer powers upon them incommensurate with their rights.
We do not wish to cut a man's head off because he c