· our descent, and our freedom-all call upon us, and warn us. If this work then aid, in ever so slight a degree, in the discharge of these high duties; if it help to show that the political and national Know Thyself is as important as the individual; if it impress more forcibly upon your minds the advice of Pliny-Habe ante oculos hanc esse terram quæ nobis miserit jura, and give it a meaning far wider than that which the Roman could give to it; if it prove an additional incentive to hold fast to our liberty, and to cultivate it with fresh purity of purpose; if it increase our love of sterling action, and disdain of self-praise; if it tend to confirm civil fortitude— that virtue which is acquired by the habit of at once obeying and insisting upon the laws of a free country, and shows itself most elevated when it resists alluring excitement; if, in some measure, it serve to restrain us from exaggeration and judging by plausibility-two faults that are rifer in our age than they have been almost at any other period; if it steady the reader against that enthusiasm which Wesley designates as "the looking to the end without the means; "* if it deepen our abhorrence of all absolutism, whether it be individual or collective, and by whatever name it may be * General Minutes appended to his edition of the Book of Common Prayer, for the American Methodists. called; and if it strengthen our conviction of the dignity of man, too feeble to wield unlimited power, and too noble to submit to it-then indeed I shall be richly rewarded, and shall not consider myself too bold if I point to you as Epaminondas, in his dying hour, pointed to Leuctra and Mantinea.* L. COLUMBIA, S. C., July 1853. * Diodor. Sic. 1. xv. c. 87, 6. XV. RESPONSIBLE MINISTERS.-COURTS DECLARING LAWS UN- CONSTITUTIONAL.-Representative GoverNMENT. 128 XVI. REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT, CONTINUED.-BASIS OF PROPERTY.-DIRECT AND INDIRECT ELECTIONS . XVII. PARLIAMENTARY LAW AND USAGE.-THE SPEAKER.-TWO XVIII. INDEPENDENCE OF THE JUDICIARY, THE LAW, JUS, COM- XIX. INDEPENDENCE OF JUS, SELF-DEVELOPMENT OF LAW, CON- 148 166 XXVII. EFFECTS AND USES OF INSTITUTIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT. XXX. INSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, THE ONLY GOVERNMENT WHICH PREVENTS THE GROWTH OF TOO MUCH POWER. -LIBERTY, WEALTH, AND LONGEVITY OF STATES . . XXXIII. IMPERATORIAL SOVEREIGNTY, CONTINUED.— ITS ORIGIN I. A PAPER ON ELECTIONS, ELECTION STATISTICS, AND GENE- II. A PAPER ON THE ABUSE OF THE PARDONING POWER IX. ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION AND PERPETUAL UNION X. CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA |