before, are bound to become the accomplices of tyranny on the one hand, or of insurrection on the other.  My own leanings are towards a government by one man; but though it is good, it cannot be absolutely good, for the results of every policy will always depend upon the condition and the belief of the nation.  If a nation is in its dotage, if it has been corrupted to the core by philosophism and the spirit of discussion, it is on the high-road to despotism, from which no form of free government will save it.  And, at the same time, a righteous people will nearly always find liberty even under a despotic rule.  All this goes to show the necessity for restricting the right of election within very narrow limits, the necessity for a strong government, the necessity for a powerful religion which makes the rich man the friend of the poor, and enjoins upon the poor an absolute submission to their lot.  It is, in fact, really imperative that the Assemblies should be deprived of all direct legislative power, and should confine themselves to the registration of laws and to questions of taxation.

“I know that different ideas from these exist in many minds.  To-day, as in past ages, there ware enthusiasts who seek for perfection, and who would like to have society better ordered than it is at present.  But innovations which tend to bring about a kind of social topsy-turvydom, ought only to be undertaken by general consent.  Let the innovators have patience.  When I remember how long it has taken Christianity to establish itself; how many centuries it has taken to bring about a purely moral revolution which surely ought to have been accomplished peacefully, the thought of the horrors of a revolution, in which material interests are concerned, makes me shudder, and I am for maintaining existing institutions.  ’Each shall have his own thought,’ is the dictum of Christianity; ’Each man shall have his own field,’ says modern law; and in this, modern law is in harmony with Christianity.  Each shall have his own thought; that is a consecration of the rights of intelligence; and each shall have his own field, is a consecration of the right to property that has been acquired by toil.  Hence our society.  Nature has based human life upon the instinct of self-preservation, and social life is founded upon personal interest.  Such ideas as these are, to my thinking, the very rudiments of politics.  Religion keeps these two selfish sentiments in subordination by the thought of a future life; and in this way the harshness of the conflict of interests has been somewhat softened.  God has mitigated the sufferings that arise from social friction by a religious sentiment which raises self-forgetfulness into a virtue; just as He has moderated the friction of the mechanism of the universe by laws which we do not know.  Christianity bids the poor bear patiently with the rich, and commands the rich to lighten the burdens of the poor; these few words, to my mind, contain the essence of all laws, human and divine!”