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We shall be more likely to reach an instructive appreciation by discarding such substitutes for examination, and considering, not what pantheistic, absolutist, transcendental, or any other doctrine means, or what it is worth, but what it is that Mr. Carlyle means about men, their character, their relations to one another, and what that is worth.
Well, you say, perhaps, though you be excluded from the European continent, England still remains to your cotton commerce. Who could guarantee that the English aristocracy will not join in the absolutist combination, if the people of the United States, by a timely manifestation of its sentiments, does not encourage the public opinion of England itself?
It is your own government which prophetically foretold in 1827, that the absolutism of Europe will not be appeased until every vestige of human freedom has been obliterated even here. And is it upon the ruins of Hungary that the absolutist powers are now about to realize this prophecy?
The classic school of criminology has substituted for the old absolutist conceptions of justice the eclectic theory that absolute justice has the right to punish, but a right modified by the interests of civilized life in present society. This is the point discussed in Italy in the celebrated controversy between Pasquale Stanislao Mancini and Terencio Mamiani, in 1847.
It is inconceivable that the Belgian question should have been left so entirely in the hands of the two western powers, and that the settlement should have taken the form of a foreign coercion of a legitimate king for his unreadiness to make concessions to his revolted subjects, had not the attention of the three absolutist powers of eastern and central Europe been directed to another quarter.
And remember that you can mightily react upon the public opinion of Britain, and that the people of Britain can react upon the course of its own government. It were indeed a great misfortune to see the government of Great Britain pushed by irritation to side with the absolutist powers against the oppressed nations about to struggle for independence and liberty.
It is in the last few decades that the western mind has slipped loose from this absolutist conception of God that has dominated the intelligence of Christendom at least, for many centuries. Almost unconsciously the new thought is taking a course that will lead it far away from the moorings of Omnipotence.
Great Britain, it is clear as matters now stand, can avoid a war with the continental powers of Europe only by joining their alliance, or at least by giving them security, that England will not only not support the liberal movement on the Continent, but that it will submit to the policy of the absolutist powers. It is not impossible that England will yield.
I am as ready to die as First Consul for the preservation of the Republic and the Constitution as to fall upon the field of battle; but it is necessary to reassure France, who will approve my policy." The members of the council listened, struck with consternation at such absolutist and revolutionary violence, but already too much dismayed to defend the cause of the most elementary justice.
D'Arthez's absolutist opinions were not known; it was taken for granted that he shared the views of his clique, he fell under the same anathema, and he was to be the first victim. His book was to be honored with "a slashing article," to use the consecrated formula. Lucien refused to write the article. Great was the commotion among the leading Royalist writers thus met in conclave.
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