play a living instead of a merely fictitious sympathy. The love of strong sensation is an universal trait in the human character; and it finds vent in this way. Hence political assemblages may be said to constitute the amusements of the American people. The crowds who attend them desire to hear public affairs talked over and reasoned about. And the leaders of parties are compelled to follow this bent of their disposition. However incompetent a great number of the speakers may be, their ambition is at any rate directed into a new channel. They strive to make display of their information, to show their acquaintance with the political history of the country, to grapple with the most difficult problems of legislation. Every step they take only raises up fresh obstacles in the way of civil war. An intellectual cast, in spite of themselves, is given to the whole machinery of parties; and instead of those dark conspiracies and acts of desperate violence which have been so common in other countries, the efforts of these politicians simply terminate in curbing their own ambition, and in making the people more deeply sensible than ever of the deplorable consequences of civil insubordination. The European kings raised the privileges of the towns, in order to use them in bridling the power of the nobility. The result was, that the towns succeeded in checking the power of both kings and nobility.

It is one great advantage of these meetings, that they bring the country and the town population into contact and association with each other. Political conventions, which were once held only in large cities, are now equally common in the agricultural districts. The meeting may take place in the county town: but vast numbers from the country flock to it. I have known twenty, thirty, fifty thousand people assembled on these occasions. Now the rural population are the natural balance of the city population. In other countries, in consequence of the want of combination among the former, and their destitution of the means of instruction, the inhabitants of the towns have had things all their own way. But in the United States, the means of instruction are imparted to all parts of the population; and political conventions afford the most favorable opportunity for concert and united efforts.

The military institutions of the United States stand upon a different footing from what they do in Europe. In the European states an army is kept up, ostensibly to provide against the contingency of foreign war, but with the further design of maintaining the authority of government at home. That which is the principal end among the nations of the old world, is not even a subordinate end in America. The government of the United States relies upon the people themselves for the preservation of order. And that this reliance has not been misplaced, an experience of nearly seventy years amply testifies.

This very remarkable difference between the military institutions of these nations is the natural and necessary consequence of the difference in their civil institutions. As in the United States the government is the workmanship of the people, by the people is it most naturally preserved : but as in the old world it is a sort of self-existing institution, it is driven to rely upon its own resources for the maintenance of its authority. The European princes complain that obedience to the laws cannot be insured, unless they are placed in possession of an imposing military force. And how can it be otherwise, when the laws are neither made by the people, nor for the people. In Italy and Spain, when a murder has been committed, persons who are spectators of the deed flee instantly, in order that their testimony, if possible, may not be used against the criminal. So detestable in their eyes is the whole apparatus of government, that they involuntarily shrink from lending assistance in the detection or condemnation of the criminal. And the same feeling seizes every one, on occasion of those civil disorders which are infractions of the law upon a much larger scale. The army is the king's, not the people's; and let the king take care of himself, seems to be the language of the spectators.

In the United States an insurrection against the laws, in which a majority of the people should be embarked, is an event which cannot take place. In the European states, it has frequently occurred : and would happen still oftener, if the few did not grasp a weapon of powerful efficacy in repressing popular grievances. In the United States the militia, which is only a collection of the citizens, constitutes the reliance of government in suppressing disturbances, whenever the ordinary police is not sufficient for the purpose.

The difficulty of creating a militia in the European states, arises from the extreme repugnance of those governments to permit the people to have arms. The permission, wherever it exists, is regarded in the light of a privilege, and is accompanied with the most odious restrictions. The celebrated statute of William and Mary, generally known as the bill of rights, allows persons "to have arms for their defense, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law." The words which qualify the privilege are provokingly ambiguous; and were doubtless intended to be so, in order to wait a more favorable opportunity for asserting the full authority of government. Accordingly, the statute of George III, c. 1. and 2, authorizes justices of the peace to seize arms, whenever they believe them to be in possession of persons for dangerous purposes.

Now one can conceive of a militia to whom arms were never intrusted, except when they were actually called into service, but it would be a militia without a soul. The single circumstance that the American government feels no jealousy whatever, as to the carying of arms by private individuals, sheds a flood of light upon both the civil and military institutions of the country. In truth, there is no such institution as a militia, in the proper signification of the term, in any European state. It is the offspring of free government, and can only exist in conjunction with it. In Great Britain, by an act passed in the reign of George II, a certain number of the inhabitants, selected by ballot, were to be organized as a militia for successive terms of three years. They were to be annually called out, trained, and disciplined for a certain number of days, and the officers to be appointed among the lords, lieutenants of counties, and the principal landholders. But this force was only intended as auxiliary to the regular army, and the whole scheme has been long since abandoned. The plan of training and disciplining the whole adult population, in peace, as well as in war, has never been entertained except in the United States. The national guard of France approaches the nearest to it. In theory, it is composed of the entire adult male population; but in practice it is otherwise. The disinclination of the great majority of the lower classes to leave the employments on which they depend for subsistence, has established a sort of dispensation for them from this service: so that the national guard rather resembles the uniform companies, than the ordinary militia of the United States. It is very much the same in Great Britain. The militia there simply means the yeomanry, a body of men organized in each county, but selected from among those who are known to be well affected to the government. The election of

their own officers by the national guard has not grown out of the revolution. The practice was introduced by Louis XI.

As is often the case, where what was once a privilege has become the common property of all, the people in some of the American states appear to set very little value upon their character as soldiers. Public opinion appears to have undergone a very great change with regard to militia duty. In Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont, compulsory drills became so unpopular, that they were at length abolished. In Massachusetts, the sum of fifty thousand dollars is annually appropriated to any number of the militia, not exceeding ten thousand, for voluntary duty a certain number of days in every year. In Maine, the militia system is retained by continued enrollment of all who would be bound at her call to come forth for the support of the laws, or the defense of the soil. In Vermont, the laws requiring militia drills have been repealed, and in their place has been substituted an enrollment similar to that for jury purposes, of all who under the old system would have been liable to militia service. The militia system is retained in these states as the only effective military force, but the frequent mustering deducted so much time from the civil pursuits of the people, that it has been dispensed with. They only who compose the substantial power of the commonwealth, can afford to abstain from making continual display of it.

CHAPTER IV.

INSTITUTION OF THE PRESS.

THE press is a component part of the machinery of free government. There would be an inconsistency, then, in arguing whether it should be free. It is the organ of public opinion, and the great office which it performs is to effect a distribution of power throughout the community. It accomplishes this purpose by distributing knowledge, and diffusing a common sympathy among the great mass of the population. Knowledge of some sort or other all men must act upon in the ordinary affairs of life, in order to render their exertions fruitful of any result. Political society, which connects men together while living in the most distant parts of an extensive country, is in need of a still wider range of information. It would be correct, therefore, to say that the freedom of the press was to knowledge, what the abolition of primogeniture was to property: the one diffuses knowledge, as the other diffuses property.

If we inquire, why in most countries so much power is concentered in the hands of government? the answer is, plainly, that knowledge is condensed in the same proportion. If we could suppose it to be uniformly diffused, government would cease to be a power: it would become a mere agency. For although it would be necessary to confide exclusive trusts to the public magistrates, in order to conduct the joint interests of society, yet the extent and activity of public opinion would give control to the power out of the government. This is an extreme case; and an extreme case is the most proper to illustrate the intermediate degrees, where the shades of difference are so minute as to run into one another.

If, in a state where representative government was established, we