where and always, has been maintained by the best class of its subjects. I use the term in no conventional sense. I understand the best class to be that which is composed of the best people. They may be found in the peerage; they may rise from humble life; their distinction is in quality, not in rank. It was the best class of Americans who took up the great quarrel on the far side of the Atlantic, carried through the American Revolution, ordained and set fast the Constitution of the United States, and have upheld it ever since. It is in that class everywhere, in all countries, under all free systems of government, that the law of the land, which is liberty, must find its defenders. Not only against its enemies, but against being wounded in the house of its friends. Friends too ignorant sometimes to perceive that a blow aimed at the head is equally a blow at the heart; that liberty is equality of rights, which no man is too high and no man too low to share in; and that when that equality is invaded, from whatever specious motive, or upon whatever promise of temporary advantage, liberty comes to an end; and the old story of the strong against the weak, of which the world was so long weary, begins to be rehearsed again.

For the maintenance of ancient and honest constitutional principles there is necessary the attainment by intelligent and thoughtful men of a clear comprehension of the real nature, extent, and value of those principles. A comprehension capable of penetrating all the forms of sophistry and of subterfuge under which they are assailed, and all the plausible excuses by which the movement is concealed. Where there is one man who is willing to lead such an attack

there are ten who are unable to perceive that it is taking place.

A true understanding of the scope of constitutional law excludes it altogether from the field of political contention. There always will be, and there always should be, political parties in a free country. There will never fail to be found room enough for a wide and sincere difference of opinion on the questions arising between them. But the law of the land is not the property of a party, nor the just subject of party dispute. All parties meet on it and start from it as a common ground, and all are equally interested in its preservation. What free government should do in the various exigencies and emergencies of the national life is often a grave question. Whether free government shall continue to exist, can never be a question in the British or American mind.

Nothing likely to occur at this day in any such government is so much to be dreaded, and so necessary to be resisted, as movements like those I have referred to, towards the organization of parties upon the lines of personal condition and the marshalling of one class to make war upon another. Political parties have been hitherto composed of all classes. Divisions have been upon the lines of opinion, and not upon those of social distinction. It is only recently that these movements have been seriously set on foot in various directions, and especially in America. If started in one free country, they endanger all. I have tried to point out how dangerous to free government such a warfare must be, if allowed to go on to its legitimate conclusion. It is not merely the fortune of the conflict that is to be feared, it is the conflict itself. It is

the shortest and most direct road to the resumption of the reign of arbitrary power. The man who inaugurates or encourages such a warfare is a greater, because a more efficient, enemy to liberty than if he attempted to set up the worst form of despotism with which humanity was ever afflicted.

It needs to be brought home clearly to those to whom ignorance and distress make such proposals attractive how cruel is the wrong to themselves that the success of them would bring to pass. How inevitably they must be the sufferers, when the hands of one class are thus turned against another, and what should be a community of interest is divided against itself. How certainly such schemes paralyze the industries and business upon which all self-supporting men depend. They are capable of understanding this, if it is set before them in the right way.

But the adjuration against a conflict of classes does not address itself, as too many seem to suppose, to the less fortunate class alone. It appeals to them undoubtedly; but it appeals with greater force to the higher and better educated order in society. To avert an impending war, concessions from both sides are generally necessary. But they come, in the first instance, with a better grace and a stronger force from the side that can best afford them. It is easier sometimes to disarm the demagogue by mitigating the grievances that make up his material than it is to refute him before the audiences where he has sway. The common law has its letter as well as its spirit. The one gives, as we have seen, an absolute protection to absolute rights. The other teaches that such protection is a weapon of defence, not of aggression, most

effective when used with forbearance and moderation. It is not always necessary or wise to push even just claims to their extremity.

The gradual but steady improvement of the general mass of mankind in intelligence, in self-respect, in social refinements, and in the capacity to enjoy them, is the natural outgrowth of civil liberty and of that law of the land which starts from the recognition of equal rights. It follows in the footsteps of free government wherever they go. Its tendency must be accepted as one of the great forces of the age, and at the same time one of the most signal blessings to mankind that freedom has conferred. It is not for us to say how much may come of it hereafter. It is but natural that with this elevation of the humbler order should come a desire, not always well directed, but with which a right mind can never fail to sympathize, for better privileges and surroundings, more advantageous conditions, and a better chance in the race of life. It is but just, as well as politic, that this desire should be met and assisted in all reasonable ways; and it is for the best interests of humanity that it should be.

Doubtless something may be done towards such a progress by enactments, considerate and thoughtful -not shooting arrows into the sky, to fall we know not where. But far more can be effected, as it appears to me, by the cultivation of that general spirit of conciliation, of kindness, and of fraternity which unites all honest men, of whatever class, in the bonds of a common sympathy and a common hope. The right hand of fellowship is the best offering, after all, that man can make to his neighbor.

This is not a topic I desire to enlarge upon; few words

are sometimes better than many. Perhaps the very storms which are now spending their useless force in the wrong direction in so many quarters of the sky may yet be clearing the air for brighter weather. The counteracting elements that are at work may bring out of the conflict at last a renewed order, a happier peace, a juster conception of rights, a more considerate redress of wrongs. It is idle to expect Utopian results. The varying lot of humanity can never be equalized. The poor will be always with us. But perhaps, in the ripening fruits of that larger philanthropy, that broader and more generous brotherhood which, taking account of human frailty and human sorrow, shall try to lessen the inequalities of life by raising from below, not by pulling down from above, to obliterate in some measure those distinctions that do not mark a difference, and to strengthen the security of rights by diminishing the temptation to attack them, there may yet be seen -I cannot believe it visionary to think so-not the least beneficent of the gracious harvests that have been generated upon the land, by the law of the land.

K