The Illinois free trader. (Ottawa, Ill.) 1840-1841, 1840-07-24

est of mankind of its enjoyment, and, if
learned, they will struggle from reason; if
ignorant, from impulse, like the grasp of
the drowning man at straw, for its re-
acquisition. Hence it is, that the history
of the world, is the spectacle of mankind
struggling to acquire, or sinking beneath
the loss of their liberty. Rarely in this
worlds drama has is happened, that any
Of its actors have enjoyed, beyond the
period of single generation, its undis-
turbed possession. Deprived of it, they
struggled to reacquire: perhaps successful,
they lose their perceptions of its value
demagogue, or tyraDt ayails himself
of the crisis: lost, its value is again per-
ceived, and the struggle for its reclama-
ton commences. If there be any who
deem this an idle theory, let them permit
the history of all past times to remind
them of its truth. 1t was not until Rome
became corrupt that she had her Caesar:
it was not until the Roman people were
swept from the face of creation, that their
struggles for liberty ceased. The history
of Rome, in this respect, is the history of
mankind. Its emblem, if not its cause,
may be found in the physical constitution
of man--like him, the states and political
communities he erects, progress from in
fancy and tender years, the period of
weakness, but of truth, to the strength
and power of manhood; and, in the course
of a period of years proportlonate to their
greatness, and the materials of their con-
stitution, subside into decay and dissolu-
ton; while the soil, the inert matter up
on whose foundations they are raised, like
the spirit which created it, is eternal. Of
all the vast empires or petty states which
the page of history represents as the busy
actors upon the stage of life, there is not
one upon whose foundations the tooth of
time has not engraven an epitaph.-
While the formation of matter over which
man has exercised dominion, resist the
assaults of the corrodng elements, and
retain for many thousand years, the forms
and purposes which he willed on their
reproduction the spirit of man though
unassailed by these, contains in itself the
impulses of that ceaseless change, which
defes the ingenuity of mankind to chain
it to fixed formation and purpose. The
work of his hands will outlast the work
of his head, and his own dust survive the
empire of his mind. The Pyramids of
Egypt, the very clay of the kings who
built them still remain: while the govern
ments which they formed, and hundreds
which have succeeded them, have yielded
to the empire of that ceaseless law, which
bids them arise, flourish, decay, and pass
into dissolution. From the force of this
law, we may not be exempt 1t may be,
and it will be, that the temple of liberty
which our fathers have raised, will in the
course of centuries, pursue the law of its
creation, and crumble and decay that
there will spring from its foundations a
new, and a better or meaner structure,
according as the incidents of fortune, or
the caprice of man may determine.
But it is not therefore necessary that
we should cherish, with less anxiety and
soicitude, that inheritance of liberty
which our fathers have left us. So far
from it, that to know that ii is law of its
nature that it shall decay, is to know the
essential means of imparting to existence
duration. Could man, ignorant of the
ultimate law of his nature, guard against
those causes which continually impel an
acceleration of his fate ! Knowing it, is
he not enabled by his caution in avoiding
the accidents of fortune, and his care in
preserving his health, to give to his brief
existence duration and value it could not
otherwise attain! 1t is so with liberty.
Knowing that it, like man. of whose ma
ture it is part, must at length yield to
tina. inherent law which consigns both to
dissolution, he explores, in the history of
/, the past, the aspect of the present, and
} his forecast of the future, the causes OF
its decay, and the means of It's preserva-
t ton. Our fathers, at sacrifice never sur
t passed, have bequeathed to us this inner
itance in purity never equalled. 1t is
} but for us to preserve, what they have
t transmtted-it is but for us 10 cherish
r what they have created. But if it be
:, true, that such is the obliquity of mans
S nature, that liberty, its noblest element
t tends, with it, to decay if it be true
: that the ceaseless vigilance with which il
should be guarded, requires of his nature
D an incessant toll, more fatigueing, and less