i6S Wisconsin state agricultural society. 
“ American liberty,” said Lieber, belongs to the great division 
of Anglican liberty * * * There are, however, features and 
guarantees which are peculiar to ourselves, and which, we may 
say, therefore, constitute American liberty. They may perhaps 
be summed up under three heads : republican-federalism, strict 
separation of the church from the state, greater equality and ac¬ 
knowledgement of abstract rights in the citizen, and a more popu¬ 
lar or democratic cast of the whole polity.” Guyot, the author of 
Earth and Man, regards religious freedom as the great contribu¬ 
tion that America has made to civilization. Lieber attached much 
importance to what he called republican federalism, or our union 
of separate states under one national government. 
Accepting these as general expressions, let us examine in detail, 
the results of our republican democracy. 
I—AS TO THE INDIVIDUAL, 
“All men are created equal. Government derives its just power 
from the consent of the governed,” said the Declaration. Before 
declarations like these, which have been a constant force in the 
succeeding years of the republic, the privileges that make one 
person the superior to another before the law must, of course, be 
abolished. They could not be explained away. Slavery must 
fall, or the declaration be denied ; and you know the result. 
The question of suffrage came next, and the distinction of race 
was abolished. There remains the abolition of the distinction of 
franchise for the man and none for the woman ; and I can see but 
one result. Suffrage should be limited only by the ability and 
the will to use it rightly. All, except persons of immature age, 
the idiotic, the insane, the criminal, the pauper, or the person 
owing allegiance to a foreign government, are, or will be, particip¬ 
ants in the government of the state and nation. This is not only 
a legitimate consequence of the Higher law expressed in the declar¬ 
ation, but it is demanded by the best interest of the country, 
which requires the judgment of everv person capable of forming 
an opinion upon the men and laws by which he or she is to be 
governed. “ The law of equal freedom,” says Herbert Spencer, 
“ is of higher authority than all other laws and, looking to re¬ 
sults, we may say, with Theodore Parker, that a state without 
