of the press; but freedom of thought can surely not exist where the whole energies of the mind are exerted in defence of a falsehood. Suppose the energies of the Greek mind to have been turned by circumstances to the defence of their system of servitude, what would the world have known of their after-history?
The philosophy of this state of things is this:—As long as an institution is not criticised, we view it as a fixed fact. It has therefore no prominent place in our thoughts among other questions. When criticism of it begins, every man is called on to make up his mind in relation to it. Supposing, then, the institution to be either false in itself, or worn out and become false, we are reduced to the necessity of either renouncing it, or of living a lie for the sake of our prejudices or our interests; a state, of which a man is always more or less clearly conscious, and which soon proves demoralizing and fatal.
In England the critical principle has lived and flourished among institutions otherwise aristocratic and stringent; or rather we may say, that the English race split, and that the younger half came to work out on a more spacious field that establishment of a free and universal political criticism which, from many causes of outward position, as well as feudal strength, was felt to be alike ineligible and infeasible at home. If England had become a republic after the time of Cromwell, it is doubtful if the strength would not have been dissipated in internal faction, which, concentrated under monarchical rule, has been able to balance the despotic powers of Europe. It is even probable that our own political existence depended on the same cause. If there had been toleration in the mother-country, it would not have been so fiercely fought for here.
In this country, we for the first time see, theoretically at least, a pure critical basis; a constitution, not the growth of time, or the slow and encumbered fruit of the genius of a nation in combination with circumstance and difficulty, but a free critique from the highest point of view of the past history of the world. The theory of all our action, from the school district to the presidency, is, that the act of to-day
