GOVERNMENT. 277 



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 ad- 

 vantage. 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 neces- 

 sary with the slave, the savage, the maniac, the criminal, and the 

 peasant- as necessary, and equally with all necessary as with 

 the child. 



Is not this our American doctrine in its only consistent exten- 

 sion ? We govern in trust only for another, and a part of our 

 trust is the restoration of the rightful owner, by helping him to- 

 wards that sound and well-informed mind and intelligent 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 jurymen, representatives or 

 rabble, either claim or acknowledge. And it is of this that all true 

 Americans believe " that is the best government that governs 

 the least." 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 dispensa- 

 tion 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 labor 

 the employment of certain common servants for the care of the 

 commonwealth. 



Education, then, with certain systematic exercise or discipline 

 of the governed, having reference to and connected with a gradual 

 elevation to equal freedom with the governing, we hold to be a 



