o think and to reason, on
affairs of state. Regarding government as an institution for the public
good, they demand a knowledge of its operations, and a participation in
its exercise. A call for the representative system, wherever it is not
enjoyed, and where there is already intelligence enough to estimate its
value, is perseveringly made. Where men may speak out, they demand it;
where the bayonet is at their throats, they pray for it.

When Louis the Fourteenth said, "I am the state," he expressed the
essence of the doctrine of unlimited power. By the rules of that system,
the people are disconnected from the state; they are its subjects; it is
their lord. These ideas, founded in the love of power, and long
supported by the excess and the abuse of it, are yielding, in our age,
to other opinions; and the civilized world seems at last to be
proceeding to the conviction of that fundamental and manifest truth,
that the powers of government are but a trust, and that they cannot be
lawfully exercised but for the good of the community. As knowledge is
more and more extended, this conviction becomes more and more general.
Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power
are scattered with all its beams. The prayer of the Grecian champion,
when enveloped in unnatural clouds and darkness, is the appropriate
political supplication for the people of every country not yet blessed
with free institutions:--

"Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven restore,
Give me TO SEE,--and Ajax asks no more."

We may hope that the growing influence of enlightened sentiment will
promote the permanent peace of the world. Wars to mantain family
alliances, to uphold or to cast down dynasties, and to regulate
successions to thrones, which have occupied so much room in the history
of modern times, if not less likely to happen at all, will be less
likely to become general and involve many nations, as the great
principle shall be more and more established, that the interest of the
world is peace, and its first great statute, that every nation possesses
the power of establishing a government for itself. But public opinion
has attained also an influence over governments which do not admit the
popular principle into their organization. A necessary respect for the
judgment of the world operates, in some measure, as a control over the
most unlimited forms of authority. It is owing, perhaps, to this truth,
that the interesting