brute and stammering. It speaks not
articulately, and must be made to. Meantime the education of the general
mind never stops. The reveries of the true and simple are prophetic.
What the tender poetic youth dreams, and prays, and paints to-day, but
shuns the ridicule of saying aloud, shall presently be the resolutions
of public bodies; then shall be carried as grievance and bill of
rights through conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant law and
establishment for a hundred years, until it gives place in turn to
new prayers and pictures. The history of the State sketches in coarse
outline the progress of thought, and follows at a distance the delicacy
of culture and of aspiration.

The theory of politics which has possessed the mind of men, and which
they have expressed the best they could in their laws and in their
revolutions, considers persons and property as the two objects for whose
protection government exists. Of persons, all have equal rights, in
virtue of being identical in nature. This interest of course with its
whole power demands a democracy. Whilst the rights of all as persons are
equal, in virtue of their access to reason, their rights in property are
very unequal. One man owns his clothes, and another owns a county. This
accident, depending primarily on the skill and virtue of the parties,
of which there is every degree, and secondarily on patrimony, falls
unequally, and its rights of course are unequal. Personal rights,
universally the same, demand a government framed on the ratio of the
census; property demands a government framed on the ratio of owners and
of owning. Laban, who has flocks and herds, wishes them looked after by
an officer on the frontiers, lest the Midianites shall drive them off;
and pays a tax to that end. Jacob has no flocks or herds and no fear of
the Midianites, and pays no tax to the officer. It seemed fit that Laban
and Jacob should have equal rights to elect the officer who is to defend
their persons, but that Laban and not Jacob should elect the officer
who is to guard the sheep and cattle. And if question arise whether
additional officers or watch-towers should be provided, must not Laban
and Isaac, and those who must sell part of their herds to buy protection
for the rest, judge better of this, and with more right, than Jacob,
who, because he is a youth and a traveller, eats their bread and not his
own?

In the earliest society the proprietors made their own wealth, an