of the community, or there cannot exist true national feeling. It matters not, what the political constitution may be, whether monarchical or republican,; if it be well established, and wisely administered, it will beget national sympathy in its behalf, and be a strong bond of union. Let any one reflect how the interests of every individual citizen, among ourselves, is affected by the statutes and ordinances of our government. When we buy and sell, whatever be our occupation, our interests are protected by the government under which we live. A statute of government may quicken the energies of the manufacturing corporation in which we are concerned, or paralyze and crush them; it may send our ships to whiten, with their sails, distant seas, or dismantle them and leave them to rot at our wharves.

But there is one thought of great importance, which is naturally suggested, and that is, that the principle of allegiance to the supreme authority of the land, essential to the permanency of our institutions, is also essential to the existence of a spirit of true nationality. It follows, then (what is not much thought of, in our day certainly), that a sacred regard, a profound reverence for public law, is an important element of nationality. Public law is the most solemn act of national sovereignty; national sovereignty thus utters its voice. It is only thus, that it ensures public order, and, of course, public welfare. It thus protects the citizen in his rights, encourages industry, fosters talent and enterprise, represses crime, compels individual interest to yield to the public good, and thus cherishes mutual sympathy and a feeling of common interest. To bow, therefore, with reverence, when the sovereignty of the nation lifts up its voice in public law, unless it conflicts with the law and will of God, is the dictate of a true national spirit; just as a sacred regard to the parental will, is the impulse of a truly filial spirit. He, then, who violates, or endeavors to paralyze the energy of, the laws of the land, or to annul legislative acts, or to evade their authority, or to secure his own ends or the ends of those with whom he acts, by means and measures which contravene the statutes or constitutional principles of the government, is no

patriot. He may be an artful and successful demagogue, a good partisan, but he is no patriot. He may not be aware of it; but, in pursuing a course which necessarily tends to dishonor the national sovereignty and thus to weaken the sentiment of a high-toned nationality, he is a traitor to the vital interests of his country, and to his highest obligations as a citizen. He sets up his own will against the public will, his own interests against what the supreme authority of the land has pronounced to be the public interest; and what is this, but opposing the dictates of a pure nationality? Suppose every individual should do so, what would our nationality, our noisiest patriotism, be worth?

But unjust laws and statutes may be enacted; and shall not the people expose their injustice and resist their execution? Must the people be dumb, — sit in mute reverence when their rights are assailed? Certainly they may expose the injustice of such acts and use the proper means to rescind them; but they may not resist them until all methods to rescind them have been faithfully tried and failed. The public voice is not unheard or disregarded in our legislative halls, and we always have a remedy short of revolt or treason. Better suffer injustice for a short year, or for years, than set the example of rebellion. One act of rebellion may, if unrebuked, it will, do us, as a people, more harm than years of unjust legislation. We repeat it, we have a remedy, and that should be first and faithfully tried. Disobedience and revolution is the last resort. Our fathers tried the virtue of years of forbearance,- of remonstrance repeated again and again, which had to be borne over the wide Atlantic up to a distant throne, before they took the last terrible resort of revolution. This forbearance was not policy with them. No one will dare to call it weakness. It was principle, springing from sacred regard to the government under which they lived.

The appeal, so often heard, to the Constitution, has a meaning. To revere the Constitution is a dictate of true nationality. When men have come to trample that sacred palladium under foot, our nationality has lost its centre of

attraction. It has no object on which to fasten. Men must obey the supreme authority, or how can they respect it? How can they administer it in this land, particularly, where every citizen may be called to administer public law? There can be no freedom without law; none, surely, where law is not obeyed. We quote, again, the words of a popular writer: "Whoso cannot obey, cannot be free; still less, bear rule. He that is the inferior of nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the equal of nothing." And again: "Obedience, little as many may consider that side of the matter, is the primary duty of man. It is not a light matter when the just man sees himself in the tragical condition of a stirrer up of strife. Rebel, without due, and most due cause, is the ugliest of words. The first rebel was Safan." Just and noble sentiments for this day!- when men too often show an impatience of authority, human or divine, and cry for liberty, when, in fact, they mean unbridled license; when, in the city, organized mobs set law and order at defiance; and, in the country, under the disguise of lawless savages, they trample on vested rights older than our existence as a nation, and as sacred as any established by human governments; when, even, the supremacy of the Constitution of State and nation is made to yield to the will of a numerical majority.1

1 The ancient philosophers rebuked what they termed the akoλaría, the licentiousness of the ancient democracies. The following passage is from a note appended to Dr. Arnold's Sixth Lecture on Modern History, by Professor Reed: "Aristotle describes in various passages the kinds of democracy in which the akoλaola prevails; when, for instance, the multitude has the mastery over the laws, and the equality is by numbers, and not by worth; and justice is made to mean whatever the majority please; — whenever the supremacy of the constitution is made to yield to mere votes or decrees, which is brought about by the demagogue who corrupts the popular government, as the flatterer spoils a king; the supremacy of the multitude over the law being encouraged for selfish purposes by the demagogue, who makes everything a subject of direct appeal to the people, whose opinion at the same time he can fashion or control. This is that absence of law which destroys a polity. Aristotle shows, moreover, that when a popular government becomes extravagantly democratic, intractable licentiousness will surely engender tyranny. This άкoλaσía, the vice of the ancient republics, appears then to have been the undisciplined, ungovernable condition of deliberate and habitual lawlessness, by which is meant that state of things, where

We have thus adverted to the most important sources of national spirit, historical reminiscences, national literature, the system of public education, embracing religious institutions, and the political constitution and laws of the land.1 So far as one fails to cherish these sources of national character and welfare, so far does he fall short of the standard of true patriotism. He, who proclaims himself a nogovernment man, or, who would disarm laws of their sanctions, and justice of its power, and would bring into contempt the administrators of public law; he, who derides religion and its institutions, who scorns education, or, in his zeal for the instruction of the mass, would pull down our higher seminaries of instruction; we may add, he who, in a narrow, selfish spirit is ready, at any opposition to his favorite views of policy or of certain peculiar institutions, to sit down, in a petulant humor, and count the cost of national disunion or dismemberment, is not a patriot! He might make a cosmopolite, and enroll himself under the banner of some "orator of the human race"! but he lacks one or more of the elements of pure, high-toned nationality, and, so far, lacks that which constitutes the character of a good citizen.

It is well for the citizens of the Republic to be reminded of what nourishes this sentiment. We are taught thus,

men make a law of their own passions, impatient of authority, human or divine; what Milton calls the Senseless mood that bawls for freedom,' but meaning 'license when they cry liberty.' The doctrine of the Stagyrite is none the worse for being old."

1 Kossuth, in a speech delivered in New York, in a passage in which he referred to the sources of nationality, thus indicated, substantially, the points which have been suggested in this article, which was written for a different object several years ago:

"It is not language only which makes a nation. Community of interests, community of history, communities of rights and duties, but chiefly community of institutions among a people bound together by its daily intercourse in the towns, the centres of their home commerce and home industry, the very mountain ranges and system of rivers and streams, the soil, the dust of which is mingled with the ashes of those ancestors who bled on the same field, for the same interest, the common inheritance of glory and of woe, the community of laws, tie of institutions, tie of common freedom or common oppression ; — all this enters into the definition of a nation."

what are the foundations of national welfare, and what are the great interests, which, as good citizens, we ought to encourage and support. An intelligent, elevated national feeling is essential to the permanency of any political system. Such a spirit is quick to perceive whatever threatens evil, or promises good, to the State. It is jealous of national honor. Whatever tarnishes that, it feels, as its possessor would a stain on private character. It is ready to yield whenever private interest interferes with the public welfare. It takes broad views. It shakes off the trammels which hamper the man of mere party zeal, or the bigot of sectional prejudice. It rebukes unprincipled ambition, and mad lust for place and power. At the ballot-box, in the legislative hall, in official station, its ends and aims are pure and elevated, and the important trusts committed to it fulfilled for the general good.

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On the monument erected in honor of Commodore Decatur are inscribed these words: "A man who always maintained the cause of his country, right or wrong." Many imagine, that a true nationality requires this of every patriot. England against the world," was once pronounced to be a motto suitable for the guidance of every Englishman. It is as good for the Frenchman, and the Russian, and the Austrian. Where were justice among nations, if this becomes national justice? It is much as if an individual should resolve, beforehand, never to acknowledge himself in the wrong. For nations, as for individuals, there is a right and a wrong. We cannot see how association, or community, makes wrong to become right; or how the vote of a majority can change black into white; and we must think that the nation, like the individual, that contemns justice, will, sooner or later, reap the recompense of injustice. The nationality of which we have spoken, does not, necessarily, imply a love of ourselves, as a people, to the exclusion of due regard for other nations and people. True patriotism does not imply jealousy or contempt towards foreigners. A Chinese or a Japanese patriotism is fit only for semibarbarians. It is a selfish, sordid passion, unworthy of