Think you that a single man, called a king or an emperor, could hold under his thumb, or tread down under his heel, ten or twenty or fifty millions of people, if they had sufficient mental enlightenment, and at the same time, sufficient moral excellence, to render them worthy of a better lot? Were mankind in their state of original purity and wisdom,—as easily might a king hold in subjection the starry heavens, and control the planets in their courses, as he could make a million or a thousand men obey his arbitrary will. And were the nations, now slumbering in ignorance and vice, to wake to a renewed state of knowledge and right, of goodness and truth,—as well might an emperor lay his hand on this globe of Earth, and stop its revolution on its axis, as stay, or check the rising of a people determined and worthy to be free!
No! it is because the nations,—or, what is the same, a majority of the individuals of whom the nations consist,—are not in a state fit for freedom, that they remain so sunk in servitude. And what is it, it may be asked, that constitutes fitness for freedom? We would answer, in the first place, that it is not merely a desire for freedom, that constitutes such fitness; it is not merely an awakening to a sense of wrongs, and a new consciousness of possessing civil and political rights,—that fits man to enjoy such rights:—other preparation is needed. Such an awakening seems now to be generally going on among many of the nations, and hence the violent throes and spasmodic efforts to shake off the yokes to which their necks have so long been callous. But this new consciousness and desire alone does not give fitness for freedom, and hence it is not found able to secure it. A
