This is a great conquest; the whole future of the modern world is contained in it.  Destined as we are to submit, in a measure at least, to the action of democracy, the question whether we shall he slaves or free men is resolved in this:  shall we, after the example of America, have our reserved tribunal, our closed domain in which the public power shall be permitted to see nothing?  Shall there be things among us (the most important of all) which shall not be put to the vote?  Shall our democracy have its boundaries, and beyond these boundaries shall a vast country be seen to extend—­that of free belief, of free worship, of free thought, of the free home?

It is because American democracy has boundaries that its worst excesses have finally found chastisement.  It is not installed alone in the United States; opposite it, another power which knows no fear, is occupied with resisting it.  The entire history of America is explained by this double fact:  the falling and the rising again, the servitudes and the liberties, the too long triumph of the slavery party, and the recent victory of Mr. Lincoln, the deadly peril so lately incurred, and the noble future that opens to-day.

Individualism is not isolation, individual convictions are not sectarian convictions; they found on the contrary the most powerful of the unities, moral unity.  The thing which most actively dissolves societies while seeming to unite them, is the uniformity of national dogmas which, accepted as an inheritance, remain without action over the heart.  What are, in fact, the great bonds on earth, if not duty and affection?  Now, nothing but personal convictions, earnestly acquired by the sweat of our brow, can destroy selfishness in us.  Without this strong cement of convictions at once individual and common, you will build nothing that will endure.  The United States have in their heart strong convictions, which are also common convictions; through external diversities, we have seen that fundamental conformity is real, and all earnest appeal to Christian truths agitates this country, so divided in appearance, from one end to the other.  National life is here a reality.  I do not think that Socialism, which excuses us from believing ourselves, which places our soul under responsible administration, and preserves us, it is said, from the baleful disruptions engendered by individualism, succeeds as well in destroying selfishness and in diffusing ideas of devotion and duty.  When democracy becomes socialistic, (and it never has been able to become so in the United States,) it grinds down and reduces souls to such a degree that nothing is left but a fine dust, a sort of intellectual and moral powder which, it is true, is an obstacle to nothing, but which creates nothing either.  To build an edifice, stones are needed, sand will not suffice.