new dynasty of the Tudors, that at
once put back Liberty, and put forward Civilization! the Reformation,
cradled in the lap of a hideous despot, and nursed by violence and
rapine; the stakes and fires of Mary, and the craftier cruelties of
Elizabeth,--England, strengthened by the desolation of Ireland, the
Civil Wars, the reign of hypocrisy, followed by the reign of naked
vice; the nation that beheaded the graceful Charles gaping idly on the
scaffold of the lofty Sidney; the vain Revolution of 1688, which, if a
jubilee in England, was a massacre in Ireland; the bootless glories of
Marlborough; the organized corruption of Walpole, the frantic war with
our own American sons, the exhausting struggles with Napoleon!

"Well, we close the page; we say, Lo! a thousand years of incessant
struggles and afflictions! millions have perished, but Art has
survived; our boors wear stockings, our women drink tea, our poets read
Shakspeare, and our astronomers improve on Newton! Are we now contented?
No! more restless than ever. New classes are called into power; new
forms of government insisted on. Still the same catchwords,--Liberty
here, Religion there; Order with one faction, Amelioration with the
other. Where is the goal, and what have we gained? Books are written,
silks are woven, palaces are built,--mighty acquisitions for the
few--but the peasant is a peasant still! The crowd are yet at the bottom
of the wheel; better off, you say. No, for they are not more contented!
The artisan is as anxious for change as ever the serf was; and the
steam-engine has its victims as well as the sword.

"Talk of legislation: all isolated laws pave the way to wholesale
changes in the form of government! Emancipate Catholics, and you open
the door to democratic principle, that Opinion should be free. If free
with the sectarian, it should be free with the elector. The Ballot is a
corollary from the Catholic Relief-bill. Grant the Ballot, and the new
corollary of enlarged suffrage. Suffrage enlarged is divided but by
a yielding surface (a circle widening in the waters) from universal
suffrage. Universal suffrage is Democracy. Is Democracy better than the
aristocratic commonwealth? Look at the Greeks, who knew both forms;
are they agreed which is the best? Plato, Thucydides, Xenophon,
Aristophanes--the Dreamer, the Historian, the Philosophic Man of Action,
the penetrating Wit--have no ideals in Democracy. Algernon Sidney, the
martyr of liberty, allow