ourselves. We will mind our own business.' And, in the proud consciousness of this virtuous resolution, they wrap themselves up in their comforts, and keep aloof and indifferent, and flatter themselves that they are the wise and the prudent, they are the enlightened, judicious ones. They are no meddlers. They do not trouble themselves about what does not concern them.

But though we will not meddle with public affairs, who shall answer for it that public affairs will not meddle with us? With such facts as I began with mentioning, glaring in our faces, sickening our very hearts with horror and indignation, who will say that public affairs may not interfere with us, with our very lives, yes, and with what ought to be dearer to us than our lives? Let them take their own course, as you say. And then, as surely as we breathe, bad men will gain the ascendency,—ignorant, unprincipled, ambitious men, despisers of human life and human rights, ready to shed blood to any extent to gratify the devilish lust of power. Into such hands will public affairs fall. And then there is no man—there is no woman, so retired but she shall find to her cost, that she has an interest, the very deepest,—that her all is involved in these things,—that they may tear from her her father, her husband, her brother or her son, aye, and her own life also, which she is pampering so delicately.

There is some excuse for the people of France, ground down as they have been by ages of oppression, denied the right to think, to judge, to act for themselves, made to believe that their rulers held their power by the grace of God—there is some excuse for them. But, whatever may be their excuse, there can be no doubt that it is the ignorance, the indifference, the cowardice, the selfishness of the people at large that have caused their public affairs to wade so often towards a settlement, through such frightful streams of innocent and unoffending blood. Here, in our land, the peace and security of private life are as fully and extensively insured as they are, precisely for this reason, because of the lively and general interest which the people in their private capacity take in things of public concern. In this country more than in any other, the people keep a watchful and commanding eye upon public matters. And, with all the excitement and agitation which it involves, it is the great pledge of our private and personal security.

But if the indifference to public affairs, which is now confined only to a class—only to a portion of the people—to too large a portion, indeed, but still only to a portion,—if it were to become general, if things were allowed to go on their way, without any interest taken in them by private persons, by those whose intelligence goes to create a commanding public opinion, then you would soon find your private interests, the comfort and lives of individuals, threatened and assailed. If your public affairs, as they are directed in your Public Councils, were uncontrolled by the sentiments of private men, they would soon be coming down into our streets and into our private dwellings with a most disastrous influence. They would make their appearance in the shape of armed men. They would be heard in the rattle of musketry and the roar of cannon; and the door-posts of the humblest and of the richest homes of the people might be spattered with the blood of inoffensive men, women, and children,—of the very persons who maintain that they have nothing to do with public matters.

Already, well off as we may be in comparison with other nations, have not our public concerns, through the criminal neglect and insensibility of the people, taken such a direction as, if it does not put us in peril of having our blood spilt in the streets, yet endangers the sacred rights of Free Thought and Free Speech, and makes it hazardous to property and to