And this does not ill describe our own case.  No civilized nation is so little imprisoned in precedents and traditions.  Our national maxim is, “The world is too much governed.”  In the degree of this release we are, of course, thrown back upon underlying principles and universal persuasions,—­since these of necessity become, in the absence of more artificial ties, the chief bond of such peace and cooeperation as obtain.  Leave two men to deal with each other, not merely as subjects or citizens, but as men, and they must recur to that which is at once native and common to both, to the universal elements in their consciousness, that is, to principles; and thus the most ordinary mutual dealing becomes, in some degree, a spiritual discipline.  Harness these men in precedents, and whip them through the same action with penalties, and they will gain only such discipline as the ox obtains in the furrow and the horse between the thills.  Statutes serve men, but lame them.  They render morality mechanical.  Men learn to say not, “It is right,” but, “It is enacted.”  And the difference is immense.  “Right” sends one to his own soul, and requires him to produce the living law out of that; “Enacted” sends him to the Revised Statutes, or the Reports, and there it ends.  The latter gives a bit of information; the former a step in development.  Laws are necessary; but laws which are not necessary are more and worse than unnecessary;—­they pilfer power from the soul; they intercept the absolute uses of life; they incarcerate men, and make Caspar Hausers of them.  Now in America not only is there already much emancipation from those outside regulations which supersede moral and private judgment, but the tendency toward a fresh life daily gains impetus.  That repeal of the Missouri Compromise, however blamable, has several happy features, and prominent among these must be reckoned the illustration it affords of a growing disposition to say, “No putting To-day into Yesterday’s coffin; let the Present live and be its own lord.”

We need be at no loss to discover the effects of the combined influences here stated.  The ordinary phrases of our country-people denote an alert judgment,—­as, “I reckon,” “I calculate,” “I guess.”  The inventiveness which characterizes Americans, the multiplicity of patents, comes from the tendency to go behind the actual, to test possibilities, to bring everything to the standard of thought.  Emerson dissolves England in the alembic of his brain, and makes a thought of that.  Our politics are yearly becoming more and more questions of principle, questions of right and wrong.  There is almost infinite promise and significance in this gradual victory of the moral over the political, of life over mechanism.  Mr. Benton complains of the “speculative philanthropy” of New England, because it suggests questions upon which he could not meet his constituents, and interferes with his domestic arrangements.  It is much as if one should pray God to abolish the sun because his own eyes are sore!