our descent, and our freedom-all call upon us, and warn us. If this work then aid, in ever so slight a degree, in the discharge of these high duties; if it help to show that the political and national Know Thyself is as important as the individual; if it impress more forcibly upon your minds the advice of Pliny-Habe ante oculos hanc esse terram quæ nobis miserit jura, and give it a meaning far wider than that which the Roman could give to it; if it prove an additional incentive to hold fast to our liberty, and to cultivate it with fresh purity of purpose; if it increase our love of sterling action, and disdain of self-praise; if it tend to confirm civil fortitudethat virtue which is acquired by the habit of at once obeying and insisting upon the laws of a free country, and shows itself most elevated when it resists alluring excitement; if, in some measure, it serve to restrain us from exaggeration and judging by plausibility-two faults that are rifer in our age than they have been almost at any other period; if it steady the reader against that enthusiasm which Wesley designates as "the looking to the end without the means;"* if it deepen our abhorrence of all absolutism, whether it be individual or collective, and by whatever name it may be * General Minutes appended to his edition of the Book of Common Prayer, for the American Methodists. called; and if it strengthen our conviction of the dignity of man, too feeble to wield unlimited power, and too noble to submit to it-then indeed I shall be richly rewarded, and shall not consider myself too bold if I point to you as Epaminondas, in his dying hour, pointed to Leuctra and Mantinea.* COLUMBIA, S. C., July 1853. L. *Diodor. Sic. 1. xv. c. 87, 6. XV. RESPONSIBLE MINISTERS.-COURTS DECLARING LAWS UN- CONSTITUTIONAL.-REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT -XVI. REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT, CONTINUED. - BASIS OF PROPERTY.-DIRECT AND INDIRECT ELECTIONS . XIX. INDEPENDENCE OF JUS, SELF-DEVELOPMENT OF LAW, CON- XXIII. IN WHAT CIVIL LIBERTY CONSISTS, PROVED BY CONTRARIES XXIV. GALLICAN LIBERTY.-SPREADING OF LIBERTY XXV. THE INSTITUTION.-ITS DEFINITION.-ITS POWER FOR XXVI. THE INSTITUTION, CONTINUED.-INSTITUTIONAL LIBERTY. -INSTITUTIONAL LOCAL SELF-GOVERNMENT XXVII. EFFECTS AND USES OF INSTITUTIONAL SELF-GOVERNMENT. XXX. INSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, THE ONLY GOVERNMENT WHICH PREVENTS THE GROWTH OF TOO MUCH POWER. -LIBERTY, WEALTH, AND LONGEVITY OF STATES XXXI. INSECURITY OF UNINSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENTS.-UN- II. A PAPER ON THE ABUSE OF THE PARDONING POWER X. CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA XIII. THE PRESENT CONSTITUTION OF FRANCE XIV. REPORT OF THE FRENCH SENATORIAL COMMITTEE ON THE PETITIONS TO CHANGE THE REPUBLIC INTO AN EMPIRE, IN NOVEMBER 1852, AND THE SENATUS CONSULTUM XV. LETTER OF THE FRENCH MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR, |