It need not surprise us, that, under circumstances less auspicious, political revolutions elsewhere, even when well intended, have terminated differently.  It is, indeed, a great achievement, it is the master-work of the world, to establish governments entirely popular on lasting foundations; nor is it easy, indeed, to introduce the popular principle at all into governments to which it has been altogether a stranger.  It cannot be doubted, however, that Europe has come out of the contest, in which she has been so long engaged, with greatly superior knowledge, and, in many respects, in a highly improved condition.  Whatever benefit has been acquired is likely to be retained, for it consists mainly in the acquisition of more enlightened ideas.  And although kingdoms and provinces may be wrested from the hands that hold them, in the same manner they were obtained; although ordinary and vulgar power may, in human affairs, be lost as it has been won; yet it is the glorious prerogative of the empire of knowledge, that what it gains it never loses.  On the contrary, it increases by the multiple of its own power; all its ends become means; all its attainments, helps to new conquests.  Its whole abundant harvest is but so much seed wheat, and nothing has limited, and nothing can limit, the amount of ultimate product.

Under the influence of this rapidly increasing knowledge, the people have begun, in all forms of government, to think and to reason, on affairs of state.  Regarding government as an institution for the public good, they demand a knowledge of its operations, and a participation in its exercise.  A call for the representative system, wherever it is not enjoyed, and where there is already intelligence enough to estimate its value, is perseveringly made.  Where men may speak out, they demand it; where the bayonet is at their throats, they pray for it.

When Louis the Fourteenth said, “I am the state,” he expressed the essence of the doctrine of unlimited power.  By the rules of that system, the people are disconnected from the state; they are its subjects; it is their lord.  These ideas, founded in the love of power, and long supported by the excess and the abuse of it, are yielding, in our age, to other opinions; and the civilized world seems at last to be proceeding to the conviction of that fundamental and manifest truth, that the powers of government are but a trust, and that they cannot be lawfully exercised but for the good of the community.  As knowledge is more and more extended, this conviction becomes more and more general.  Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament.  Life and power are scattered with all its beams.  The prayer of the Grecian champion, when enveloped in unnatural clouds and darkness, is the appropriate political supplication for the people of every country not yet blessed with free institutions:—­

    “Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven restore,
    Give me TO SEE,—­and Ajax asks no more.”