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In asceticism we prize self-sacrifice for its own sake. We hunt out what we value most; we judge what would most completely fulfill our needs; and then we abolish it. Abolish it for what? For nothing but the mere sake of abolishing. This is to turn morality upside down; and in place of the Christian ideal of abounding life, to set up the pessimistic aim of impoverishment.

The conspiracy was talked of for some days, and at last I agreed that I would join. Brownrigg, Dawes, Church, and the whole agreed that they would. A few days after, however, having thought of the affair, I mentioned to Atwell, what a dreadful thing it was to take a man's life, and commit piracy, and recommended him to "abolish," their plan.

In short, it will always convince him that the true interest of intelligent beings, who love happiness, who desire to render their own existence felicitous, demands that they should root out all those phantoms, abolish all those chimerical ideas, destroy all those prejudices, which by traducing virtue, obstruct their felicity in this world.

For the greater uniformity of the average way of life and its general neediness will not in itself abolish the division of classes. I have already often enough pointed out that no mechanical arrangements can avail us here.

Wilson in the name of a higher principle. The President of the United States, it was further urged, is a historian, and history tells him that the help given to his country against England neither came from the French people nor was actuated by sympathy for the American cause. It was the vindictive act of one of those kings whose functions Mr. Wilson is endeavoring to abolish.

These were that the Ionian Islands, long a hunting-ground for the Barbary pirates, should be henceforth treated as British territory; that the British Government should be accepted as arbitrator between the Barbary Powers and Naples and Sardinia, who had a long list of claims and grievances against them; and that the Barbary Powers should enter into a definite undertaking to abolish all slavery of Christians within their dominions, and to treat all prisoners of war, of whatever nation, in accordance with the customs of civilised nations.

I then declared that if the desire of those of my countrymen who were favorable to my election was gratified "I must go into the Presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponent of every attempt on the part of Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia against the wishes of the slaveholding States, and also with a determination equally decided to resist the slightest interference with it in the States where it exists."

You may keep on framing stringent game laws as long as you choose, but you cannot kill an overmastering instinct. I am not prepared to say, "Abolish the Game Laws;" but I do say that those laws cause wild, worthless fellows to be regarded as heroes. No stigma whatever attaches to a man who has been imprisoned for poaching; he has won his Victoria Cross, and he is admired henceforth.

To abolish the old brutal method is not to abolish the struggle for existence, but to make the result depend upon a higher order of qualities than those of the mere piratical viking. Mr. Pearson has been telling us in his most interesting book, that the negro may not improbably hold his own in Africa. I cannot say I regard this as an unmixed evil.

Legrand d'Aussy mentions that in an old French fable the king of Torelose is 'au lit et en couche' when Aucassin arrives and takes a stick to him and makes him promise to abolish the custom in his realm.