If neither the press nor conversation is wholly free, and if the jealousy of mobs puts the free expression of opinion in danger, in public life-if the stigma of selfishness or cowardice awaits the free speaker in one division of society, and the pistol and the bowie knife is reserved for him in another; if in this very citadel of freedom, the life of a man and of his friends requires to be guarded by files of musketeers, and cannon planted in the streets, because it is the will of the multitude that he shall not speak, with what truth can we, above other nations, claim for ourselves the possession of liberty of opinion?

Indeed, in the entire doctrine of liberty of opinion, we are perpetually confounding liberty with license, and are made sensible of the confusion of our own ideas, only by some remarkable example which springs up to convince us that our freedom is much less a reality than we had thought, and that there is need for the greatest caution, lest we confound liberty with mere license and lawlessness.

In strictness there is no liberty apart from law and necessity, no freedom in nature, not sanctioned by justice and truth. An opinion held neither by authority received, nor by experience gained, be it a social, a religious, or a political opinion, has no right, in nature, to any practical force. It is a birth of conceit, merely, and has no more value than the passionate insisting of a child or of an idiot. To respect the public opinion, therefore, one must know the grounds and reasons of it; whether it be a dictate of passion or of private interest, whether it springs from the hatred of one class of society against another, or whether it is indeed the deliberate offspring of reason and necessity of rightful desires and of free intelligence.

Meanwhile, it cannot be denied, that under the protection of our laws, opinion, in individuals, at least, if not in disorderly and murderous mobs and associations, may

freedom, boldness, and efficiency; and it is equally certain, too, that there is a party, whose liberal opinions make them the guiding, governing, and progressive party; the conservators of those laws which have been established to defend opinion against mobs, and against the machinations of factions and their leaders.

Notwithstanding all the efforts of factious persons in the North and South to disorganize that party, it maintains itself on the broad ground of republican liberality, and continues firm and united as ever. Freedom of opinion is its fundamental doctrine; and this enables it to embrace within its circle men of all sects, and living under various private institutions, but agreeing in the one idea of republican nationality and union. While a southern portion, on the other hand, threaten rebellion, because opinion is not agreeable to their institutions -- while propagandists, forgetful of the sole conditions of liberty, threaten the party with dissolution-while "liberty men" propagate doctrines adverse to liberty, and labor to convert the central power into an engine for crushing the independence of the States-while the partisans of particular leaders excite jealousies and fears in the minds of the people-this grand national party remains undivided, and of one mind, holding to its original purposes of peace, order, union, and a free and gradual amelioration. To establish and perfect the natural liberty of the citizen, and at the same time to confirm, strengthen and enforce the legally ascertained opinion of the majority, expressed in the law, and acting in its proper sphere, under the various constitutions of the States, and of the nation-this aim the party of free opinion proposes to itself, in opposition to all the efforts of unlawful ambition.

At the present epoch, while the entire civilization of Europe is engaged in a struggle for liberty, a period of the most extended and hopeless agitations known in modern history, it is a remarkable feature of the times, that speculation, the activity of discursive reason, employs itself almost entirely in opposition to the popular cause. There is not at present a single eminent thinker engaged in defending and propagating the abstract doctrine of the Rights

HE whose thoughts may be led, by his tastes or his occasions, to dwell upon the stately science of political economy, cannot fail of being struck by the vague and misty character of the light by which the principles of that science have been, and still are, viewed by those professing to expound them. Upon some points of the science, the full proportions of our present knowledge are a record of the extent of our obligations to those whose labors have brought them to their existing shape; but in pursuing the track of thought marked by these writers, we find an incompleteness in many of their elucidations.

The true professors of political economy are the statesmen of all ages. Their task, so far as the settlement of principles is concerned, has not been a heavy one. The structure of governments, resulting from the ignorance of the people at large, has simplified the labor of those of them whose acts are chronicled by history, to the securing the benefits of unquestioned power to the use of those who held it. They governed their States; but, as a general rule, they have left no recorded systems.

It has therefore been incumbent on the thinkers of modern times to supply this deficit, and to a limited extent they have done so. We cannot claim to have made great additions, here in this country, but we have popularized the subject.

The practical inferences from political economy deal with the interests of men; while the abstract nature of the science itself leaves the life of an obvious conclusion therein, dependent on the mental character of him whose reflection is expended on it.

A consideration of principle is a stronger basis of argument than a consideration of

expediency; and hence we find that the vexata questiones in political economy are said to be matters relating to the existence of principles, when in fact they are generally mere questions of the application of principles, whose existence has been fully demonstrated.

Another great cause of divergence of views in this matter, results from the complex character of the cause of any political effect; and from the difficulty, referred to by Sismondi,† of tracing a dominant idea through a complexity of events. "Plus on réfléchira sur les détails, plus on sentira la certitude des principes," says Montesquieu; and the want of comprehensive reflection, and the inert or biassed willingness to infer "cum hoc, propter hoc,' unites with these reasons to induce the obscurity and doubt perceptible in most of the existing expositions of the science referred to.

The various circumstances of our national condition, here in the United States, (which concur with the actual adaptation of our constitution and laws to the requirements of an educated people,) place us beyond the necessity of argumentation upon the questions of inherent rights, a discussion of which employs at present the mind of France. Near as is the relationship between the Declaration of 1776 and the French Revolution of 1848, none can justly hold our writers responsible for the political Frankenstein monster whose laidly physiognomy was visible in the "ateliers nationaux," and whose violent death darkened for a while the sunny face of France with blood and tears.

Living exponents as we are of the boundless kindness of the Deity-our measure of good fortune heaped up and running over-national errors, whose con

History of Italian Republics.

VOL. III. NO. VI. NEW SERIES.

Esprit des Loix, Preface.

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