The Evohitiou of the State. 99 



taken from the aggregate of every race and every clime, in 

 every country of the world. Marcus Aurelius, standing at 

 the threshold of the Christian era, looking forward seven- 

 teen centuries in the history of his race, said, "mankind 

 are under one common law, and if so, they must be fellow- 

 citizens and belong to the same body politic. From whence 

 it will follow that the whole world is but one common- 

 wealth." 



Now, whatever may be said of ancient republics, of 

 special reigns of special kings, the candid mind must see 

 that the voice of this average man was heard loudest, and 

 with more effect, in this new commonwealth, than it had 

 elsewhere been heard in the history of the world. And it 

 was listened to. From the time of the establishment of 

 Christianity, the voice of the priest has been substituted 

 for that of man. The darkness of the middle centuries, 

 and the clanging swords of war, had stifled this power of 

 protest ; but the invention of printing gave an audience to 

 the average man; the compounding of gunpowder short- 

 ened, by making more fatal, the wars of conquest ; and 

 out of this progression of the arts and sciences emerged 

 the man, to be accounted for in future governments. Here, 

 in his new environment, free from misalliance with the 

 church, disturbed by no questions of State boundaries and 

 perplexing balances of power, the new man founded the 

 new State, and, in token of his different status in the new 

 world, he was given the ballot as his scepter. 



What the evolutionist has to observe, is, that the organic 

 law, under which the great republic started upon its career, 

 contained no new conception of human rights. Government 

 by the governed was as old as Aristotle. It was the dream 

 of Plato. At no time in known history had it been absent 

 from the thoughts of men. It had simply waited for its 

 fitting environment. Like the grain-seed in the mummy's 

 wrappings, it throve at once when placed in proper soil 

 and stimulated by a congenial climate. A most emphatic 

 exposition of what an ill-adapted soil and an unfavorable 

 climate would do for a similar endeavor was to be imme- 

 diately furnished, in the abortive attempt, in France, to 

 establish, on a like theory of government, a permanent 

 republic. As Prof. Adams has suggested in his work on 

 " The Democracy and Monarchy of France," Rousseau had 

 indeed overstated the problem of a perfect form of govern- 



