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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
cigene Mutter bcz\\Tingt und untenvirft." After the philosopher, let us conclude with a divine: "C'est de révolte en révolte, si 1'on veut employer ce mot, que les sociétés se perfectionnent, que la civilisation s'établit, que la justice règne, que la vérité fleurit." The anti-revolutionary temper of the Revolution belongs to 1787, not to 1776. Another element was at work, and it is the other element that is new, effective, char- acteristic, and added permanently to the experience of the world. The story of the revolted colonies impresses us first and most distinctly as the supreme manifestation of the law of resistance, as the abstract revolution in its purest and most perfect shape. No people was so free as the insurgents; no government less oppressive than the government which they overthrew. Those who deem Washington and Hamilton honest can apply the term to few European statesmen. Their example presents a thorn, not a cushion, and threatens all existing political forms, with the doubtful exception of the federal constitu- tion of 1874. It teaches that men ought to be in arms even against a remote and constructive danger to their freedom; that even if the cloud is no bigger than a man's hand, it is their right and duty to stake the national existence, to sacrifice lives and fortunes, to cover the country \vith a lake of blood, to shatter cro\vns and sceptres and fling parliaments into the sea. On this principle of subversion they erected their commonwealth, and by its virtue lifted the world out of its orbit and assigned a new course to history. Here or no\vhere we have the broken chain, the rejected past, precedent and statute superseded by unwritten law, sons \viser than their fathers, ideas rooted in the future, reason cutting as clean as Atropos. The wisest philosopher of the old world instructs us to take things as they are, and to adore God in the event: "II faut toujours être content de l'ordre du passé, parce qu'il est conforme à la volonté de Dieu absolue, qu'on connoît par l'évènement." The contrary is the text of Emerson: "Institutions are not aboriginal, though they existed before we were born. They are not
