social organism, as the worst insanity proves to the individual. There is no record of society's being afflicted with the caucus-and-ballot-box mania for any considerable length of time, without having to be confined in the straight jacket of military despotism; or prescribed a double dose of essentially the same kind of tyranny from which it had been so madly supposed that an escape had been made. What, then, I ask, in behalf of Thomas Paine, whose distinguishing characteristic, was to "go ahead," is the use of fooling any longer with the speculative, abstract, tantalizing shadows of human rights, which our corrupt, spoil-seeking demagogues impudently palm off on us for liberty? And why persist longer in repeating the miserable religious and moral failures into which our religious and moral quacks plunge us?

To what purpose have both religion and politics been so freely discussed, for nearly a century past, in the United States, by all who had more tongue than brain, and more vanity than depth of research? This is not saying that some wise and very worthy people have not also been led into the fallacy that abstract subjectivism was sufficient to remedy despotism. I was once in that unfortunate predicament myself; and the axiom of Thomas Jefferson (I believe it was Jefferson's, at any rate it is the axiom of his loudest followers) was, that error may be safely trusted where reason is left free to combat it. But I ask in all soberness, has error been safely trusted in the United States, though reason is there as free to combat it as the majority will let it be? And with what good effect, so far as social architecture is concerned, have carefully culled, and almost as carefully isolated facts been laid before the multitude, whose views are necessarily confined to the specialities which constitute their calling, since the acute stage of revolution in this country?

I tell you that facts, to be worth any thing, must be systemized; and that, too, immeasurably more in social or state affairs than in any others; and that this requires the wisest heads that can grow on human shoulders, aided by all science and art, and by the most laborious and uninterrupted preparation. Social Science is the art of arts; not the art of political trickery.

In spite of all the freedom of the tongue and of the press which the majority will allow to be exercised, or can allow to be exercised till social science and art take charge of education, is not our political system corrupt to the very core? Are not they who have charge of the public treasury a very

gang of thieves? And are not they whom "elective franchise" places at the head of affairs, plunging the nation into bankruptcy every few years, and at shorter and shorter intervals, by their reckless wastefulness, in letting the lifeblood of industry, as now carried on-money-pour abroad like water, for the sake of catching their dippers full of it?

And as to religion:-has not the empire state, New York, in 1860, enacted Sunday-laws which would have done credit to the Blue Code of Connecticut in 1650? Are not churchbuilding, and church-going, and revivalism, ay, and Mormonism, rife among that very multitude that highest court from whose dread decrees there is no present appeal, to whom free discussion and facts have been presented to the extent they can be by present methods?

The popular free-discussion of affairs of the last degree of complication-religious and state affairs-except during the crisis period of revolution, only renders that worst of despotisms, anarchy, chronic: it seats in the social organism, that political gangrene-demagogism-which has always hitherto, sooner or later, required the cauterization of military despotism, (a remedy all but as bad as the disease) in order to be got rid of—in order to save even-civilization. Despotism is the most inveterate of all the diseases of the social organism which ignorance has inflicted; nay, it is a complication of all its diseases. What, my fellow-man, would any of you think of the physician who should consult with an individual organism with a view to taking that organism's opinion as to what course he (the physician) had best pursue in order to cure him, (the organism) of scrofula, complicated with every other bodily disease to which flesh is heir? Would not the patient, if he had one spark of common sense left, order such a doctor out of doors? with "Sir, I expected aid from your science and your healing art; and did not employ you to mock and insult me in my wretchedness."

Would any one who possessed a spark of reason, even, venture at sea in a vessel, with respect to the management of which, the vote of all who happened to go on board was going to be taken? And do the managers of the ship of state require less preparation, than do common sailors? Do they not require so much more useful knowledge than they have ever been qualified with, that they have always wrecked or capsized the ship of state, except where it is only a question of time when they will do so? Evidently, church and state management require art and skill infinitely superior to

what "supernaturalism" and its legitimate child, monarchism, or its bastard issue, caucus-and-ballot-boxism, are capable of. From the dissecting room; the chemical laboratory; the astronomical observatory; the physician's and physiologists study; in fine, from all the schools of science and art, should human law be declared, instead of being "enacted" in legislative halls, by those who, in every respect besides political trickery, fraud, and "smartness," are perfect ignoramuses.

Nature throughout, must be so modified (not changed); so liberated from the thraldom of antagonism or counteraction; in short, so improved by art, that the conditions which now necessitate despotism and evil will be superseded by those which will make liberty, and all that is desirable, as spontaneous as is the order of the spheres.

Man naturally desires to be good. There is not, never was, and never can be, a sane human being who would not like to have things so arranged, that every human desire could be fully gratified, instead of, as now, almost wholly denied gratification; man's "holy or heavenly" desires, the very quintessence of sensualness, are a constant, and will be an everlasting testimony to the truth of this.

Priescraft cannot be put down, till man obtains his "being's" end and aim," or is satisfied that it is attainable, in this material, this perceptible, this sense-world. To desire must be to possess, with the exception (if it can be called an exception) of the intervention of just exertion enough to give to possession its due value. Mankind will, with few exceptions, scorn reason, so long as it arrays itself against human instinct; against what man feels to be true. And until science and art give man (or assure him that they can give him) the perfect and sufficiently lasting happiness which he instinctively knows that the power which created him owes him and stands pledged to give him or turn out to be an almighty failure, he will pursue that happiness even beyond the grave; with priestcraft for his guide, of course.

Can nature or all existence, fail? and allow the drafts which, on the indisputable testimony of the human passions, she has authorized her highest beings to draw on her, to be protested? Surely, "supernaturalism" itself is less absurd than this.

Friends of human rights! Believers in progress! Is anything more certain, than that combined science and its corresponding art, or full and complete development, must prove adequate to all for which "miracle" can be intelligibly invoked?

Ignorance with respect to this, then; ignorance of how to develop nature's resources, and modify and harmoniously combine her powers, so as to liberate her tendency to perfection from all obstructions-so as that her means will correspondent to her ends, constitutes the tyrant in search of whom we started. There he stands! But he is not invulnerable, nor is his fearfully, ay, all but "supernaturally" strong fortress impregnable. Let us "up and at him," then, as determinedly as our sires of glorious memory charged his minions at Bunker Hill. Parleying, as we have learned by long, sad experience, is sheer nonsense; quarter being out of the question. This arch enemy of mankind must be annihilated before liberty can be an actuality. And the religious faith of the human race must be transferred from the mysterious and impossible, and from their correlates, the subjective and speculative, to the intelligible and practical. And these must be shown capable of fulfilling man's highest aspirations, before he can truly understand the mission, and fully appreciate the worth of THOMAS PAINE.

In con

I trust I have shown that, to conquer the tyrant which ignorance of how to be free constitutes, was the common aim, and the real, however glimmeringly perceived object, of the exertions of Rousseau, Paine, Comte, and all the other author-heroes and heroines, who have ever written. clusion allow me to propose a crisis-question for the pratical consultation upon, of my friends, whose religion (If I may be allowed to accuse them of having any) reason and free discussion compose :

How can man be extricated from having to grovel round and round and round in the hopeless orbit which has mystery for its center, monarchy for his aphelion, demagogism for its perihelion, and unvarnished wretchedness or gilded misery for its whole course, except by scientifically, artistically, and unitedly creating the requisite conditions for Actual Liberty?

All have their hobby. Mine, it will be pretty clearly perceived is, that nature, through devolopment, will prove allsufficient.

Come, all ye who delight in the amble of that well-tried hack, popular religious, political, and sociological discussion, and who do not like the complexion of present religious, political, and social institutions, and who are not enamoured of the millennium which I have shown would constitute their ultimatum :-If you object to Art-Liberty, please to let the world know definitely, what you do propose.

APPENDIX.

As one of the most heroic acts of Thomas Paine's life, and one which also showed the profoundness of his political wisdom, was his speech in opposition to the execution of Louis XVI., I wish to draw particular attention to it; and therefore give it a place in an Appendix; for I have observed that even the most cursory readers generally look at the end of a work.

This speech, Mr. Paine well understood, would expose him to the fiercest wrath of the Jacobins, who, sustained by the triumphant rabble, had resolved, in the king's case, to dispense with even the forms of "justice," to the extent of setting aside the rule which required the sanction of a twothirds majority for the infliction of the death penalty. "We vote," protested Lanjuinai's, when the balloting was ordered to commence, "under the daggers and the cannon of the factions."

In order to more fully understand in what fearful peril Mr. Paine voluntarily placed himself by delivering this speech, it will be necessary to know that "the factions" to which deputy Lanjuinais referred, were composed of the cruel monsters (and their abettors) who, a short time before, had "laboured," as their horrible, but " disinterested" leader, Maillard, termed it, during thirty-six hours, at massacreeing the unarmed prisoners, who had been committed on mere suspicion of not being friendly to the powers that then held sway; and for which "labour," its zealous and industrious performers, all covered with blood and brains, demanded in. stant payment of the committee of the municipality, threatening them with instant death if they did not comply.