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Show 16 DESPOTJSI\t every law; these were the very fundamental principles of this political system. Y ct Jefferson remained all his life the tyrant of a plantation, in the enforcement of an usurped authority, either personally, or by his delegate, which he himself describes, as "a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions,-thc most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other." Ah 'rruth! ''"ris thee alone that men should reverence! Do they reverence men, it is an idolatry as base as if they bowed to stocks aud stones. Men are blind and weak, the wisest and the best! But Truth,-it is unblemished, in itself complete, divine, pure, perfect! Had Jefferson attempted to preach the full extent of his doctrines in his native state, he would doubtless have drawn down upon his head a storm of hatred and reproach, not rashly to have been encountered, nor easily to have been withstood. But that was an adventure of difficulty and peril, which he felt no call to undertake. Like Henry and Washington, and those other great men whose devoted patriotism and many virtues would make us willingly forget that on their own estates they were tyrants,- though he acknowledged the trampled rights and crying wrongs of the disenfranchised half of his fellow countrymen, he yet despaired to make any impression upon the ignorance, the prejudices, the blind and narrow self-interest of the privileged class, and he contented himself with now and then a protest against a system of tyrannical usurpation, which carried a way by custom and convenience, he still continued to uphold through the support of his own example. 'l'he democracy which he preached at home, was democracy among the a ristocrats ;-and the perfect equality of all the members of the privileged order, has ever been a popular doctrine in all aristocracies. rrhe "love of liberty" is a phrase under which are included two feelings of a very distinct, and sometimes of an opposite kind. Each individual is always the ardent and zealous champion of his own liberty, be- IN Al\IERlCA. 17 cause the hatred of all extraneous control, the desire to be solely governed by the free impulses of his own mind, is a part of the constitution of hu_m~n nature too essential ever to be wanting. Hence 1t Js that we find kings and emperors among the champions of liberty and equal rights, by which they understand, the liberty of governing their own realms without foretgn control and the absolute equality of all crowned heads.' Have we not seen the Austrian and Russian despots, leaguing with the king of .Prussia and. the haughty aristocracy of England to vmdtcate the ltberties of Europe against the usurpation and tyranmes of a Bonaparte? \'\'hen the chains threatened to bind tlwm, when they were like to be compelled to bow their necks beneath the yoke of a master, who more sensitive than they to the degradations of servitude 1 'Vho more zealous, more earnest, more sincere in liberty's cause? Alexander of Russia turned a demagogue, and the princes of Germany harangued their subjects, not in the dry and austere style of absolute authority, but with the supplicating tone, the humble and insinuating eloquence, the flattery and faa promises, with which ambitions men, in popular states, seck to inveigle the popular favor. . This passion for personal liberty burns fiercely 111 the soul of every human being, and no where fiercer than in the hearts of an aristocracy bred to its possession, and who have learned to estimate its value by having constantly before their eyes the terrible contrast of servitude. But the "love of Jibcrty" has also another meaning. It describes a passion not for indiv_idual freed~m, but for the freedom of all men; a w1dc, expansJvc feeling, the offspring of benevolence, the height of philanthropy, the extension to others of that wJtich we find best and most desirable for ourselves; its extension not only to those to whom we arc bound by familiar tics of intqest and sympathy, our friends and kindred, or those whor;n however otherwise unconnected with us, we still assimilate to onrsclw~s hy 2* |