perium in imperio, and both would have been speedily put down.

We may also mention our extensive churches, or the Law Amendment Association in England—a society, which, so far as we can judge at this distance, has already produced most beneficial effects upon English legislation, and which in every other country, occupied by our race, except in the United States, would be stigmatized as an imperium in imperio full of assumption. There is nothing that more forcibly strikes a person arriving for the first time from the European continent, either in the United States or in England, than the thousandfold evidences of an all-pervading associative spirit in all moral and practical spheres, from the almost universal commercial copartnerships and associations, the "exchanges" of artisans, and banks, to those unofficial yet national associations which rise to real grandeur. Strike out from England or America this feature and principle, and they are no longer the same self-relying, energetic, indomitably active people. The spirit of self-government would be gone. In France, an opposite spirit prevails. Not only does the government believe that it must control everything, but the people themselves seem hardly ever to believe in success until the government has made the undertaking its own.1

1 I cannot forbear mentioning here one of those occurrences, which, although apparently trivial, nevertheless show the constant action of a great principle, as the leaf of a tree reveals to the philosopher, the operation of the vastest elements in nature. At a meeting of the Royal Academy at London in 1852, at which the ministers were present, the premier, Lord Aberdeen, said that " as a fact full of hope, he remarked that for several years the public, in the appreciation of art, had outstripped the government and the parliament itself."

The chief executive officer considers it a fact full of hope that the people have outstripped, in interest and action, the government and parliament. How different would a similar case have presented itself in any of the continental countries!

9

CHAPTER XIII.

PUBLICITY.

18. WE now approach those guarantees of liberty which relate more especially to the government of a free country, and the character of its polity. The first of all we have to mention under this head is publicity of public business. This implies the publicity of legislatures and judicial courts, as well as of all minor transactions that can in their nature be transacted publicly, and also the publication of all important documents and reports, treaties, and whatever else can interest the people at large. It further implies the perfect freedom with which reporters may publish the transactions of public bodies.' Without the latter, the admission of the public would hardly amount in our days to any publicity at all. We do not assem

1 In the year 1857 the following case was decided in the court of common pleas at Columbia, S. C., in favor of the plaintiff. The city council held, in 1855, a public meeting. The editor of one of the city papers being present, was asked by the mayor whether he had come to take notes. The mayor being answered in the affirmative, ordered the chief police officer to turn the editor out of the room, declaring at the time that he acted on the strength of a resolution of the city council. At a later period this procedure was defended on the ground that the city appoints a paper to give, officially, all the transactions of the board. Robert W. Gibbes vs. Edward J. Arthur and John Burdell. This novel case was reported with great care, and published with all the arguments, at Columbia, S. C., in 1857, under the title, Rights of Corporations and Reporters. The public owes thanks to the plaintiff for having perseveringly pursued this surprising case, the first of the kind, it would appear. The pamphlet contains letters of nearly thirty American mayors, testifying that reporters cannot be denied admission to the deliberations of the councils of their cities, although there be an appointed printer to the board.

ble in the markets as the people of antiquity did. The millions depending upon public information, in our national states, could not meet in the market, as was possible in the ancient city-states, even if we had not a representative government. The public journals are in some respects to modern freemen what the agora was to the Athenian, the forum to the Roman. A modern free city-state can be imagined without a public press; a modern free country cannot; although we must never forget the gigantic, and therefore dangerous power which, under certain circumstances, a single public journal may obtain, and, consequently, ought to be counteracted by the means which. lie in the publicity and freedom of the press itself.

Publicity, in connection with civil liberty, means publicity in the transaction of the business of the public, in all branchespublicity in the great process by which public opinion passes over into public will, which is legislation; and publicity in the elaboration of the opinion of the public, as well as in the process of ascertaining or enouncing it by elections. Hence the radical error of secret political societies in free countries. They are intrinsically hostile to liberty.

Important as the printing of transactions, reports, and documents is, it is nevertheless true that oral discussions are a most important feature of Anglican publicity of legislative, judicial, and of many of the common administrative transactions. Modern centralized absolutism has developed a system of writing and secrecy, and consequent formalism, abhorrent to free citizens who exist and feed upon the living word of liberty. Bureaucracy is founded upon writing, liberty on the

1 The following passage is given here for a twofold purpose. Everything in it applies to the government of the pen on the continent of Europe, and it shows how similar causes have produced similar results in India and under Englishmen, who at home are so adverse to government writing and to bureaucracy. In the Notes on the Northwestern Provinces of India, by Charles Raikes, Magistrate and Collector of Mynpoorie, London, 1853, we find this passage:

"Action, however, and energy, are what we now lay most stress upon, because in days of peace and outward tranquillity these qualities are not always valued at their true price, and their absence is not so palpably

breathing word. Extensive writing, pervading the minutest branches of the administration, is the most active assistant of modern centralization. It systematizes a police government in a degree, which no one can conceive of, that does not know it from personal observation and experience, and forms one of the greatest obstacles, perhaps the most serious difficulty, when nations, long accustomed to this all-penetrative agent of centralism, desire to establish liberty. I do not hesitate to point out orality, especially in the administration of justice, in legislation and local self-government, as an important element of our civil liberty. I do not believe that a high degree of liberty can be imagined without widely pervading orality; but oral transaction alone is no indication of liberty. The patriarchal and tribal governments of Asia, the chieftain government of our Indians, indeed all primitive governments are carried on by oral transaction without any civil liberty.

mischievous as in more stirring times. There is more danger now of men becoming plodding, methodical, mere office functionaries, than of their stepping with too hasty a zeal beyond the limits of the law. There is truth, too, in Jacquemont's sneer-India is governed by stationery, to a more than sufficient extent; and one of the commonest errors of our magistrates, which they imbibe from constant and early Indian associations, is to mistake writing for action, to fancy that dictation will supply the place of exertion. In no other country are so many written orders issued with so much confidence, received with such respect, and broken with such complacency. In fact, as for writing, we believe the infection of the 'cacoethes scribendi' must first have grown up in the East. It pervades everything, but is more rampant and more out of place in a police office than anywhere else. It was not the magistrate who originated this passion for scribbling; but they have never succeeded in repressing it, nor while the law requires that every discontented old woman's story shall be taken down in writing, is it to be expected they ever will. The Khayeths worship their pen and ink on certain festivals, and there is a sort of 'religio' attaching to written forms and statements, which is not confined to official life, but pervades the whole social polity of the writing tribes. An Indian scribe, whose domestic expenditure may average a sixpence a day, will keep an account-book with as many columns, headings, and totals, as would serve for the budget of a chancellor of the exchequer. To Tudor Mul and such worthies we owe, no doubt, a great deal for the method and order which they infused into

Publicus, originally Populicus, meant that which relates to the Populus, to the state, and it is significant that the term gradually acquired the meaning of public, as we take it-as significant, as it is that a great French philosopher, honored throughout our whole country, lately wrote to a friend: "Political matters here are no longer public matters."

In free countries political matters relate to the people, and therefore ought to be public. Publicity informs of public matters; it teaches, and educates, and it binds together. There is no patriotism without publicity, and though publicity can not always prevent mischief, it is at all events an alarm bell, which calls the public attention to the spot of danger. In former times secrecy was considered indispensable in public matters;· it is still so where cabinet policy is pursued, or monarchical absolutism sways; but these governments, also, have been obliged somewhat to yield to a better spirit, and the Russian government now publishes occasionally government reports.

That there are certain transactions which the public service requires to be withdrawn for a time from publicity, is evident. We need point only to diplomatic transactions when not yet brought to a close. But even with reference to these, it will be observed that a great change has been wrought in modern times, and comparatively a great degree of publicity now prevails in the foreign intercourse of nations—a change of which the United States have set the example. A state secret was formerly a potent word; while one of our first statesmen wrote to the author, many years ago, "I would not give a

public records; but we have also to thank these knights of the pen for the plaguiest long-figured statements, and the greatest number of such statements, which the world ever saw." Well may the continental European, reading this, exclaim, C'est tout comme chez nous! In 1858, one of the most distinguished statesmen of France, universally known as a publicist, a former member, cabinet minister, and orator in the house of representatives, wrote from Germany, "I observe that the writing which I have always considered so injurious to our affairs in France, is carried, if possible, to a still greater degree in this country."

1 This observation followed a request to write henceforth with caution, because, said he, choses politiques ne sont plus ici choses publiques.