received the attention it deserves at the hands of the philosopher, in every point of view, whether psychological, moral, economical, or political. Unassisted by any public power, by the leading minds of the age, by religion, literature, or any concerted action, it nevertheless rules with unbending authority, often in spite of health, comfort, and taste, and it exacts tributes such as no sultan or legislature can levy. While it often spreads ruin among producers and consumers, it is always sure to reach the most absolute czar and subject his taste. Though the head may wear a crown, Fashion puts her shears to its hair, if she has a mind to do so. Far more powerful than international law, which only rules between nations, she brings innumerable nations into one fold, and that frequently the fold of acknowledged folly. How can we explain this stupendous phenomenon? It is not necessary to do so here. The fact, however, must be acknowledged. It is the most remarkable instance of unanimity, but will any one say that Fashion is a vox Dei? The very question would be irreverent were it not candidly made in a philosophical spirit.

Nor is the dominion of fashion restricted to dress and furniture, nor to the palate and minor intercourse. Bitter as the remark may sound, it is nevertheless true that there are countries void of institutions, where a periodical on political fashions might be published, with the same variety of matter as the Petit Courrier des Dames.

There was a fearful unanimity all over Europe in the sanguinary and protracted period of witch-trials, joined in by churchmen and laymen, Protestant and Catholic, Teuton, Celt, and Sclavonic, learned and illiterate. If the fallacious and in some respects absurd "Quad ab omnibus, semper, ubique," ever seemed to find an application, it was in the witchtrial from the earliest ages of history, and in all countries down to the time when very gradually it ceased to be ab omnibus, semper, ubique. But was Sprenger's sad Malleus Maleficarum on that account the voice of God? What fearful fanaticisms have not swept over whole countries with deplorable unanimity! The Romans were unanimous enough when they slaughtered the worshippers of that God whose authority is invoked to dignify the voice of men in the fallacious maxim. If the voice of the people were the voice of God, the voice of the people ought not only to be unchangeable, but there ought to be one people only. Two nations frequently clamor for war, and both, under the motto Vox populi vox Dei, draw the sword against each other.

A remarkable degree of unanimity prevails in all those periods of excited commercial speculation, such as the Mississippi scheme in France, the South Sea scheme in England, the railway mania we have seen in the same country, or the commercial madness in our land some fifteen years ago.

If we carefully view the subject of unanimity, we shall find that in the cases in which vast action takes place by impelled masses-and it is in these cases that the maxim is invoked-error is as frequently the basis as truth. It is panic, fanaticism, revenge, lust of gain, and hatred of races that produce most of the sudden and comprehensive impulses. Truth travels slowly. Indeed, all essential progress is typified in the twelve humble men that followed Christ. The voice of God was not then the voice of the people. What the ancients said of the avenging gods, that they are shod with wool, is true of great ideas in history. They approach softly. Great truths always dwell a long time with small minorities, and the real voice of God is often that which rises above the masses, not that which follows them.

But the difficulty of fixing the meaning of this saying is not restricted to that of ascertaining what is the voice of God. It is equally difficult to find out what is the voice of the people. If by the voice of the people be meant, as was stated before, the organically evolved opinion of a people, we do not stand in need of the saying. We know we ought to obey the laws of the land. If by the voice of the people be meant the result of universal suffrage without institutions, and especially in a large country with a powerful executive, not permitting even preparatory discussion, it is an empty phrase; it is deception, or it may be the effect of vehement yet transitory excitement, or of a political fashion. The same is true when the clamoring expression of many is taken for the voice of the whole people.

The doctrine Vox populi vox Dei is essentially unrepublican, as the doctrine that the people may do what they list under the constitution, above the constitution, and against the constitution, is an open avowal of disbelief in self-government.

The true friend of freedom does not wish to be insulted by the supposition that he believes each human individual an erring man, and that nevertheless the united clamor of erring men has a character of divinity about it; nor does he desire to be told that the voice of the people, though legitimately and institutionally proclaimed and justly commanding respect and obedience, is divine on that account. He knows that the majority may err, and that he has the right and often the duty to use his whole energy to convince them of their error, and lawfully to bring about a different set of laws. The true and stanch republican wants liberty, but no deification either of himself or others; he wants a firmly built self-government and noble institutions, but no absolutism of any sort-none to practise on others, and none to be practised on himself. He is too proud for the Vox populi vox Dei. He wants no divine right of the people, for he knows very well that it means nothing but the despotic power of insinuating leaders. He wants the real rule of the people,

that is, the institutionally organized country, which distinguishes it from the mere mob. For a mob is an unorganic multitude, with a general impulse of action. Woe to the country in which political hypocrisy first calls the people almighty, then teaches that the voice of the people is divine, then pretends to take a mere clamor for the true voice of the people, and lastly gets up the desired clamor. The consequences are fearful, and invariably unfitting for liberty.

Whatever meaning men may choose, then, to give to Vox populi vox Dei, in other spheres, or, if applied to the long tenor of the history of a people, in active politics and in the province of practical liberty, it either implies political levity, which is one of the most mordant corrosives of liberty, or else it is a political heresy, as much so as Vox regis vox Dei would be. If it be meant to convey the idea that the people can do no wrong, it is as grievous an untruth as would be conveyed by the maxim, the king can do no wrong, if it really were meant to be taken literally.

However indistinct the meaning of the maxim may be, the idea intended to be conveyed, and the imposing character of the saying, have, nevertheless, contributed to produce in some countries a general inability to remain in the opposition-that necessary element of civil liberty. A degree of shame seems there to be attached to a person that does not swim with the broad stream. No matter what flagrant contradictions may take place, or however sudden the changes may be, there seems to exist in every one a feeling of discomfort until he has joined the general current. To differ from the dominant party or the ruling majority appears almost like daring to contend with a deity, or a mysterious yet irrevocable destiny. To dissent is deemed to be malcontent; it seems more than rebellious, it seems traitorous; and this feeling becomes ultimately so general that it seizes the dissenting individuals themselves. They become ashamed, and mingle with the rest. Individuality is destroyed, manly character degenerates, and the salutary effect of parties is forfeited. He that clings to his conviction is put in ban as unnational, and as an enemy to the people. Then arises a man of personal popu larity. He ruins the institutions; he bears down everything before him ; yet he receives the popular acclaim, and, the voice of the people being the voice of God, it is deemed equally unnational and unpatriotic to oppose him.

Caleb Cushing.

BORN in Salisbury, Mass., 1800. DIED at Newburyport, Mass., 1879.

THE NATION'S PROGRESS.

[From a speech at Baltimore, Md., 11 July, 1853, made while journeying from Washington with Franklin Pierce, to open the Crystal Palace at New York.]

HERE was a time-and I see before me some few gray heads who

THERE

may remember it-there was a time when the United States consisted of a narrow ribbon, as it were, of territory, extending along the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. When the thirteen United States, strong in their sense of right-strong in their sanguine anticipations of the future— strong in the vigor of wise and good men-when these thirteen United States, I say, dared the power of Britain, we were then a comparatively humble people, occupying merely the narrow slope of the mountains looking towards the Atlantic. Time passed on. To those days of feebleness followed that period in which the vast Valley of the Mississippithe vastest body of cultivable earth that exists, in one mass, on the face of the earth-I say, the time came when that vast Valley of the Mississippi was opened to the enterprise and the industry of Americans. And then it was that the symbolic eagle of our arms took its flight across the Alleghanies, and spread its protecting wings over that great and rich Valley of the Mississippi. Then, then it was that we began to feel that we were great-that there might be, in the future, some untold destiny of magnificent greatness and glory for those original thirteen States. I say, we then first began to feel that it must and should be so. And it has become so; for that Valley of the Mississippi region, almost unknown to geographical inquiry, looked upon as the yet unconquered home of the savage,-what is it now? Is it not now the glorious, the unparalleled centre of these United States?

This is now the United States-that colossus of power, that colossus. of liberty, that colossus of the spirit of nations, which invites all men from the four corners of the globe to come hither, and find here a refuge from oppression; here to find inexhaustible resources for the development of industry and enterprise; here to add each an item from his intelligence, his virtue, his strength-to add the atom of his own individual capacity to the vast total of the untiring enterprise and industry of the people of the United States. This is the point at which we now stand; and I repeat that it is to no trivial question of the past, it is to no exhausted passions of the past, that we of this day are confined. Our flight is into other elements. Our duty is for other objects. It is,

gentlemen, in the confidence of our strength; for force is, of itself, the irrepressible instinct of action.

He who is strong, who feels coursing in his veins the blood of maturity and vigor, needs action and must have action. It is the very necessity and condition of existence.

I say, then, we are strong in our territorial extent; strong in the vast natural resources of our country; strong in the vigorous men and in the fair women who inhabit it; strong in those glorious institutions which our fathers of the Revolution transmitted to us; but above all, strong, stronger, strongest, in the irrepressible instinct of patriotic devotion to country which burns inextinguishably, like the vestal fire on its altars, in the heart of every American. I say, gentlemen, that is the point in the history of our country to which we have arrived.

John Todd.

BORN in Rutland, Vt., 1800. DIED at Pittsfield, Mass., 1873.

OLD-FASHIONED TALK ON THE WOMAN QUESTION.

[Woman's Rights. 1867.]

TOBODY pretends that the sexes are equal in weight, in height, or in bodily strength. The bodies of the two sexes seem to have been planned for different ends. As to the mind, I have no difficulty in admitting that the mind of woman is equal to ours,-nay, if you please, superior. It is quicker, more flexible, more elastic. I certainly have never seen boys learn languages or mathematics, up to a certain point, as fast or as easy as some girls. Woman's intuitions also are far better than ours. She reads character quicker, comes to conclusions quicker, and if I must make a decision on the moment, I had much rather have the woman's decision than man's. She has intuitions given her for her own protection which we have not. She has a delicacy of taste to which we can lay no claim. "Why, then," my lady reader will say, "why can't we be independent of man?" for this is the gist of the whole subject. I reply, you can't, for two reasons; first, God never designed you should, and secondly, your own deep instincts are in the way. God never designed that woman should occupy the same sphere as man, because he has given her a physical organization so refined and delicate that it can never bear the strain which comes upon the rougher, coarser nature of man. He has hedged her in by laws which no desires or