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under a free government, it is accorded to all, whether they are citizens or not. But the right to take a part in the government, to say who shall administer it, and what provisions shall be made for the maintenance of civil liberty, is not a natural right. It belongs to society as a whole, but not to every individual in that society. It is not generally supposed to belong to minors, to women, to foreigners, except on specified conditions, and in the most of our States it is not granted to the free blacks. What the principles are on which this right should be conceded, and what should be their application in particular cases, it is not always easy to say. Here an end is to be secured. Society is bound to secure it in the best way it can, but the means and materials for doing this may be very different at different times and in different nations.

On this point it may be said, first, that a reasonable presumption of hostility to the welfare of the society would be a sufficient ground for excluding any one from having a voice in the government. Hence criminals are excluded; and there may be factions, or races, known to be hostile to the government, who may be justly excluded while that hostility remains.

Secondly. Incompetency to understand and promote the ends of society would be a sufficient ground for exclusion from political rights. It is on this ground that minors are excluded, and foreigners who are presumed to be ignorant of the nature and working of institutions under which they have but recently come. It is true that many minors, and many foreigners not naturalized, are better qualified to exercise political rights, and so for what is sometimes called political liberty, than many who do exercise those rights; but where there is no absolute right society may, and must, fix the best average limit it can. According to

this, under institutions like ours, society would have a right to say, as has been proposed, that no man should vote who could not read. It may be expedient in given circumstances that such persons should vote, but they have no right. It may be wrong that they should be permitted to do it. Society cannot be bound to entrust its interests and destinies to ignorance, or chance, or passion.

Once more; if there be such relations established by God that one portion of the community cannot take part in administering the government without injury to the ends of society, then that portion may be excluded. It must be on this ground, if upon any, that women are to be excluded from the right of voting and holding office under our government. They cannot be excluded on the ground that they are not interested in the welfare of the government, or that they are incompetent. But it is never safe to violate any true instinct of humanity. There are some things that depend not so much upon reasoning as upon sentiment and a felt propriety. When a country is invaded and civil liberty is to be defended, it is not so much from any laying down of principles and formal reasoning as from a felt propriety that the women remain at home, while the men go to the battle. In the same way, when civil liberty is to be instituted and sustained, it may be from the same felt propriety that men alone should be concerned in the conflicts of public debate, and at the polls. It may be that in her relations to man, when she is elevated to her true position, God has made provision that her influence shall as effectually reach a free government for good as if she were immediately concerned in it; or if not, there may be obstacles which would render it inexpedient that she should have that power at present; and in either case society would have the right to withhold it. Certainly, if

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there be such relations established by God that one portion of the community cannot take part in the government without injury to society, then that portion may be excluded. How far this may be the case in any particular instance, each society must judge for itself, as it does upon other and similar questions.

I cannot close this lecture without observing that this subject of rights, regarded as a barrier against encroachment, and as involving duties, demands the especial attention of a free people. Among such a people there will always be a tendency to regard liberty as a right of unrestrained action, and rights as something to be enforced. It is those days when liberty was gained and rights enforced that nations celebrate. But is easier to gain liberty and enforce rights than, having gained them, to practise the self-control that shall respect rights, and the self-denial and faithfulness and patient waiting required in performing the duties that our rights involve. This is the turning point with us. Can we use our freedom and enjoy our rights without encroaching upon the liberty and the rights of others? Will parents, and magistrates, and citizens, fulfil the duties that correspond to their rights? Will they see that individual and unauthorized action is so restrained that all shall have their rights? There is no grander sight than that of a great people, powerful and free, under the guidance of a comprehensive wisdom, always arresting its action at the point where it touches the rights of others, protecting those of the most feeble, and trusting calmly for its aggrandizement to the gradual but resistless power of intelligence, industry, and freedom, under the guidance of justice. And there is no sadder sight than such a people governed by fraud and cunning, torn by faction, disintegrated by selfishness, denying to

others what they claim for themselves, with no faith in the natural power of free institutions to perpetuate and extend themselves without force, and thus putting into the hands of others a cup, which, in the circuit and balance of God's retributions, must be returned to their own lips, and which they must be compelled to drain to the very dregs.

LECTURE XII.

A FUTURE LIFE. ITS RELATION TO MORALITY.-THE PHYSICAL ARGUMENT.-MORAL ARGUMENTS.

WHAT man ought to do will depend on the end for which he was made. If he was made for this world only, then he ought to live for this world. But if he was also made for a life after this, and his conduct in this life would affect his condition in that, then he ought to live with reference to that. We labor for the morrow, because we expect to awake in the morning. It is thus that the doctrine of a future life connects itself with morality; and as we have seen that man is connected with all that is below him, it will be a fitting close of our subject to inquire what indications there are in his nature that he is also connected with that which is beyond and above him.

Than this no inquiry can be of greater interest. Whether there is a God or not; whether this visible structure of the universe is to be eternal or not; whether the generations of men are to be perpetuated, or are to be destroyed by some general convulsion of nature, are questions that little concern the individual man if he is evoked into being like the bubble upon the ocean, to appear but for a moment, and then vanish forever.

The first indication of a future life that I shall mention is drawn from the nature of the mind as simple and indivisible, and so incapable of destruction except by annihilation.