f every sage, the model of all great
souls,--the government of the entire People by the reason and
conscience of each citizen,--otherwise called the REPUBLIC.

VII.

Must I demonstrate to you so simple a truth? Can you not comprehend,
without explanation of mine, that a nation, where each citizen thinks
only of his own private well-being here below, and sacrifices
constantly the general good to his personal and narrow interest;--where
the powerful man wishes to preserve all the power for himself alone,
without making an equitable and proportional division to the
weak;--where the weak wishes to conquer at any price, that he may
tyrannize in his turn;--where the rich wishes to acquire and
concentrate the greatest possible amount of wealth, to enjoy it alone,
and even without circulating it in work, in wages, in assistance, in
benevolence, in good deeds to his brothers;--where the poor wishes to
dispossess violently and unjustly those who possess more than himself,
instead of recognizing that diversity of chances, of conditions, of
professions, of fortunes, of which human life is composed,--instead of
acquiring prosperity for his family, in his turn and degree, by effort,
by order, by labor, by economy, by the assistance of borrowed capital,
by the law of inheritance, by the free transfer of real estate, by free
entrance into different callings and trades, by free competition in the
money market;--where each class of citizens declares itself an enemy to
every other, and heaps upon each other all manner of evil, instead of
doing all the good in its power, and uniting in the holy harmony of
social unity;--where each individual draws around him, for himself
alone, the common mantle, willing to tear it in pieces for himself,
and thus leave the whole world naked,--do you not understand, I say,
that such a People, having no God but its selfishness, no judge but
interest, no conscience but cupidity, will fall, in a short time, into
complete destruction, and, being incapable of a Republican government,
because it casts aside the government of God himself, will rush
headlong into the government of the brute: the government of the
strongest, the despotism of the sword, the divinity of the
cannon,--that last resort of anarchy, which is at once the remedy and
the death of nations without God!

Now has not this weakening of the sentiment of God in the soul of the
People been, from year to year, from century to century, indee