GOVERNMENT. 105 



of justice, by every noble instinct, we are bound to make it 

 our highest and chiefest object to restore them, not the liber 

 ty first, but the capacity for the liberty for exercising the 

 duties of the liberty which is their natural right. And so 

 much of the liberty as they are able to use to their own as 

 well as our advantage, we are bound constantly to allow 

 them, nay, more than they show absolute evidence of their 

 ability to use to advantage. We must not wait till a child 

 can walk alone before we put it on its legs ; we must not wait 

 till it can swim, before we let it go in the water. As faith is 

 necessary to self-improvement, trust is necessary to education 

 or restoration of another : as necessary with the slave, the 

 savage, the maniac, the criminal, and the peasant as necessa 

 ry, and equally with all necessary as with the child. 



Is not this our American doctrine in its only consistent 

 extension 1 We govern in trust only for another, and a part 

 of our trust is the restoration of the right-ful owner by help 

 ing him towards that sound and well-informed mind and intel 

 ligent judgment that makes him truly free and independent. 



This is the only government that we of the free United States 

 of America, whether as fathers or children, statesmen or jury 

 men, representatives or rabble, either claim or acknowledge. 

 And it is of this that all true Americans believe, &quot; that is the 

 best government that governs the least.&quot; Using government 

 in its properly restricted sense, as the authority and forcible 

 direction of one over another, we hold this to be as self-evident 

 as that the life of free love is better than the life of constrained 

 legality, that the sentiment of mutual trust is nobler than that 

 of suspicion or of fear, that the new dispensation of Christ is 

 higher than the old one of Moses. What else there is than this 

 care over the weak and diseased in the public administration of 

 our affairs, is no more than associated labour the employment 

 of certain common servants for the care of the commonwealth. 



PART II. 5* 



