History weighs the social institutions of men in the scale of Humanity.
Time, slowly but surely, accumulates the evidence which relates to their
materials. It calmly but firmly unveils the statues which men erect as
their principles, and with "that retributive justice which God has
implanted in our very acts, as a conscience more sacred than the fatalism
of the ancients," lays bare the secret springs of action which have
prompted the deeds of heroism or baseness, of virtue or crime.
Nations are political institutions, and like the system of nature, which
is governed by positive and fixed laws, so they likewise are swayed and
directed by mysterious forces, and influenced and moulded into form by
those external circumstances which are greatly within the control of man.
Their rise and decadence is in direct ratio to the nature and integrity of
their customs, the structure of their social fabrics, the vigor of the
spirit of independence which animates their thoughts, or the strength of
the despotism which consumes their vitals. "Liberty brings benedictions in
spite of nature, and in defiance of the same nature tyranny brings
maledictions. Slavery has always produced only villany, vice, and misery."
Men cannot perpetuate a creed or a system that is not founded on the
eternal principles of justice and virtue, no more than they can control
the elements--no more than they can remove or obliterate those
geographical boundaries, beyond which the human races cannot pass in
pursuit of the forms of wealth or the dreams of ambition.
The Belgian, who has studied so long and so faithfully the laws of
metaphysics, exclaims, "All those things which appear to be left to the
free will, the passions, or the degree of intelligence of men, are
regulated by laws as fixed, immutable, and eternal as those which govern
the phenomena of the natural world!"