faith and worship, that have nearly broken up this system. But its injustice was long unfelt; and sundry plausible arguments for it, especially of a political kind, triumphed; until the divisions between Protestants and Catholics ceased to influence international relations, and within Protestant states kindliness of feeling or indifference to religion broke up the feeling that dissent ought to be put down by law. At present, when it is agreed on all hands that the state ought never but in extreme cases to require of the individual that which his faith and conscience condemn, this war between law and conscience is in great measure done away. This change will not necessarily involve the disestablishment of a national church, provided full religious liberty is conceded; and it may even be found that churches which are established will become the gainers, by reducing their privileges within a very narrow compass, and by the entire abolition of laws prohibiting in any degree religious freedom; for a sense of wrong without doubt has intensified dissent.

Municipal liberties.

The securities for this liberty of worship and of conscience are worthy of being engrafted into constitutions, but at all events must be embodied in the laws of a free nation. It is not enough that the inhabitants of a state are secured in their rights by law as single persons or even as associations; the keystone to this system is found in municipal franchises, which are at once political and private. That is to say, if secured by charter or constitution they unite a body of the people under a self-governing power to the state, and yet protect the same body against the state. Power is given to the people in a righteous system to resist unjust taxation and even to decide what the taxation shall be, while at the same time they are obliged to bear their burdens. Somewhat so the municipality unites them to the state and defends them against the state; it gives them protection at home and the power of managing their affairs, enables them to act officially in concert, educates them to serve the state and to understand public affairs in the wider sphere, stimulates public spirit, secures distribution of power without destroy

ing unity. Nor ought self-governing powers to be granted to places only where large masses of men are gathered together, but the scattered communities and villages ought to have them in a form suited to their peculiar wants. And there is especial need that they should have them secured by law, because with them combination is difficult, so that a grasping government could more easily strip them of their franchises than they could larger towns.

Desire of the organization of the state almost instinctive.

CHAPTER VI.

THE ORGANIZATION OF STATES.

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It is conceivable that a society of human beings should remain for some time in an unorganized condition. If the members of it had all reached the measure of Christian manhood, intercourse would be without suspicion, life and property would be safe, the social virtues would all flourish: and, as far as the wants of the society itself were concerned, there would be little need of political institutions. Something better than the absence of crime and of fear, the positive control of kindness, justice, unselfishness, would be brought about by a higher law. But even then, we may suppose, there would be a craving, a sort of instinctive longing for political order and unity. It cannot be mere fear which makes constitutions and states to be accepted; mankind crystallize into forms of life, as substances mingled together obey a law and take a certain arrangement among their particles. Nor can it be the social instinct only; which is a blind tendency, a sense of loneliness and unprotectedness outside of a life in society. With the tendency, the means to secure the end, derived from the simple forms of existing life and improved by experience, suggest themselves. In the infancy of society, the family and its offshoots determine what this arrangement shall be. When men are used to political forms at a more advanced period, they build states as readily as the beaver builds his dam. The settlers in one of our new territories, although neither homogeneous nor well instructed in politics, will have a government, if it is not furnished to them, and will, for the most part, copy forms with which they have been familiar.

The organization of a state consists of those means or agents by which the work or office of a state goes on in its course, in conformity with a certain constitutional idea. In a living organic body, the system of organs is for a certain end or ends; the parts are for the whole, and are also means and ends for each other; and certain leading parts control or regulate the other parts. The moral organism of a state differs from natural organisms chiefly in this-that the parts have a free agency, as well as certain definite ends and relations to one another by their nature, which ends however they may neglect or wilfully refuse to fulfil. No such organisms, moreover, can subserve its true end, unless it also subserves the end aimed at in the creation of the individual man. States have not, like natural organisms, reproductive powers, but they aim in their natures at permanent existence-they do not provide for successors. But as individuals, communities, relations of property, religious beliefs, and other causes affecting the individual or social interests of man change, the organization of a state cannot remain unaffected, but must either submit to partial modifications or to a complete overthrow. In either case, as law and institutions generally continue and bind the people together, it cannot be said that even in times of anarchy the state suffers a complete dissolution.

state.

There must in every state be some leading principles acConstitution of the cording to which the relations of the organs and functions of the state are adjusted; work is distributed, powers are assigned in such sort that there shall be as little interference as possible, and all the active powers of the state shall know their places. There must also be some understanding as to what are the relations of the governing parts to the governed, and what may be done in the exercise of lawful authority. There will of necessity, therefore, be some limitations on the action of the several organs, and some rights guaranteed to the people. If the judges could make as well as interpret laws, or the chief magistrates levy taxes at discretion, or decide cases in which private persons had com

plaints against the government, there would be complete confusion of functions; and absolute power within certain limits would belong to one department, or at least it would be easily usurped.

The collection of principles according to which these powers of government, rights of the governed and relations between the two are adjusted, is called the constitution. This may be

a written instrument, or may exist in the shape of a number of laws of the first importance, or it may have no outward form or expression further than is given by precedents and habits of political acting, which have a sacred character in the minds of the nation. The first of these forms is, in matter of fact, the most modern way of adjusting relations and securing liberties. The second is of greater antiquity. Such a constitution may be called, as being not distinguished from the laws in its form, an uncollected, or-as growing by successive additions, according as it was necessary to secure some point against the chief executive-a cumulative constitution.* Thus the petition of right, the declaration of right, the habeas corpus act, may be said to be new statements of rights conceived to have existed before, without clear definition or enactments of new rights by the English parliament with the consent of the crown. But they resemble ordinary laws in this that they can be repealed, without resort to the community, by some representative power. Instruments of government in a collected form, like our constitution and many of the newer ones of Europe, are generally more difficult of alteration than ordinary laws. Our constitution is defended against hasty alterations by two provisions-the first, that amendments shall be proposed by two-thirds of both houses, or by a convention, called by Congress on application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the several states; and the other, that such amendments shall be valid when ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the seve ral states, or by conventions in three-fourths of them.

The third plan would, by some, scarcely be called a consti*This is Dr. Lieber's term.