that bridge of glorious span by which we trust to pass at last from the farthest brink of time to the nearest shore of eternity!  Have we no culture, no refinement,—­but skill only to live coarsely and serve the Devil?—­to acquire a little worldly wealth, or fame, or liberty, and make a false show with it, as if we were all husk and shell, with no tender and living kernel to us?  Shall our institutions be like those chestnut-burs which contain abortive nuts, perfect only to prick the fingers?

America is said to be the arena on which the battle of freedom is to be fought; but surely it cannot be freedom in a merely political sense that is meant.  Even if we grant that the American has freed himself from a political tyrant, he is still the slave of an economical and moral tyrant.  Now that the republic—­the res-publica—­has been settled, it is time to look after the res-privata,—­the private state,—­to see, as the Roman senate charged its consuls, “ne quid res-PRIVATA detrimenti caperet,” that the private state receive no detriment.

Do we call this the land of the free?  What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice?  What is it to be born free and not to live free?  What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom?  Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast?  We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom.  It is our children’s children who may perchance be really free.  We tax ourselves unjustly.  There is a part of us which is not represented.  It is taxation without representation.  We quarter troops, we quarter fools and cattle of all sorts upon ourselves.  We quarter our gross bodies on our poor souls, till the former eat up all the latter’s substance.

With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—­mere Jonathans.  We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards,—­because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth,—­because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufactures and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.

So is the English Parliament provincial.  Mere country-bumpkins, they betray themselves, when any more important question arises for them to settle, the Irish question, for instance,—­the English question why did I not say?  Their natures are subdued to what they work in.  Their “good breeding” respects only secondary objects.  The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.  They appear but as the fashions of past days,—­mere courtliness, knee-buckles and small-clothes, out of date.  It is the vice, but not the excellence of manners, that they are continually being deserted by the character; they are cast-off clothes or shells, claiming the respect which belonged to the living