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Show iincSe 3adi and : Pis 11eple lrncls.H In the last dialogue Uncle Jack's reasoning regarding vested rights and false liberty were too much for the logical acumen of the nephew. The old man's principles, resting on eternal jus- , tice and truth, were unanswerable, so Dick, who had nothing to fall back on but popular opinion and pretended superior su-perior intelligence of the nineteenth century, yields to the uncle's logic. This he reluctantly admits in the opening sentence of their second conversation, but with a certain obstinacy which is always peculiar to pride. The uncle frankly admits that he, too, was tainted taint-ed with the same errors, in his youth that affected the nephew. That now he had thrown aside his swaddling clothes, and after years of experience with stern facts and the living realities of life; his conclusion was that neither age, intelligence or progress could change the principles upon which truth and justice rested. The nephew opens the second conversation. UNCLE JACK. CONVERSATION 2. "You gave, my dear uncle, in our last conversation, an unexepected turn to the subjects on which we were talking, talk-ing, and I confess that I hardly know what to say to the view you presented; but I am not satisfied with it. I think there must be some sophistry on your part somewhere, though I may not be able to detect it. All the more enlightened enlight-ened men of our enlightened age seem to have fully settled the question that librty is practicable, nay, conceivable, only under a democracy. But if liberty lib-erty requires the assertion and maintenance main-tenance of vested as well as of natural rights, we should be obliged to maintain, main-tain, as a condition of maintaining liberty, even monarchy where it is a vested right, and assert the doctrine of legitimacy to its fullest extent. We should be obliged to respect nobility where it is a vested right, and with it the exclusive privileges of rank. This is so contrary to the spirit of our age, that I cannot accept it." "But, my dear Dick, in appealing to the authority of the nineteenth century against my views, you abandon the very - cause you espouse. Natnural rights rest on the authority of reason, which is the same in all men, and is no more in all men than it is in each particular man. They are the rights of each individual man, and can neither nei-ther be confirmed nor denied by the thority of one age or another. They have nothing to do with the consent of mankind, or with the people, collectively col-lectively taken, in any age or country. The people canneither give them nor take them away, and, therefore, are good against the people acting as sovereigns, sov-ereigns, good against kings and nobles, .good against all human authrity whatever.. what-ever.. If you allow an appeal, beyond the individual to the age, to the ages, to the community, to the people, you recognize rights not included : in the list of natural rights. Either the nineteenth nine-teenth century is an authority which has the right to, give the law to the reason of the individual, or it is not. If it is, you abandon your doctrine;1 if it 1s not, it deserves no Consideration with me, and even if it condemns my views, I am under no obligation to abandon them. You cannot assert the supremacy of my natural rights as man, and then call in the opinion of the age as an authority to which I must submit. Moreover, the authority of the nineteenth century, whatever it be, is hot and cannot be greater than that of any other century, and can never set aside the authority of all the ages which have Drecieded it. i If you may appeal to it in support of your denial, I may appeal to. all its predecessors in support of by assertion, of vested rights, for they have all asserted them, and, indeed,' even those who deny them in this. age are only a minority", who have less right than we old fogies to speak in the name of the nineteenth century." - "But if we are the minority, we, nevertheless, nev-ertheless, represent the intelligence of this country." n - . ; "In. your own estimation, very possibly; pos-sibly; in reality, not so certain. You have-given me no remarkable proofs of your superior intelligence, and when you have more years over your head you will not need anyone to tell you that much which you now call your "wisdom is nothing but ignorance and folly. In my youth I reasoned as you do, prided myself as being superior to the prejudices of past ages. I gloried in the name of reform, and I was madder mad-der than you are in my zeal for political po-litical changes and social ameliorations. Hitherto. I said, the world has gone wholly wrong; nobody has understood the true science of government and society. For the first time in the history his-tory of the human race true science is possible, and true wisdom is conceived. I thought I and my radical associates' were the only sages the world had ever seen, and that the hopes of mankind were centered in us, or rather in myself my-self alone, as their chief. But I have lived long enough, Dick, to laugh at my folly, and to see that my egotism was the result of my feeble understanding under-standing and deplorable ignorance. There never was a time when the world could not have survived my loss, or when I could not have died without its suffering any serious detri-I detri-I ment. He is a very ignorant man who fancies ail ignorant but himself, and a very proud man who imagines that he is superior to all the wovld beside. No little of our lofty estimate of our own superior knowledge is the result of our real ignorance. We fancy we understand pr positions, simply because be-cause we do not understand them, and comprehend them in their various relations re-lations with other propositions. In the early life we take without examination the principles or premises which the popular sentiment of our conclusions, sometimes logical and sometimes illogical, illog-ical, and then assume these conclusions as certain truths according to which the world should be constructed, society so-ciety organized, and government constituted con-stituted and administered. Finding, the moment that we took out of ourselves, our-selves, that the world is constructed, society organized, and government constituted con-stituted and administered on precisely contrary principles, we assume the attitude at-titude of hostility tb all generally received re-ceived principles and usages and believe be-lieve it our mission to revolutionize the whole moral, social and political world and reorganize the whole according to the conclusions we have drawn from the premises furnished us by popular opinion. "All this is very natural, and I am not disposed to be very hard upon the young men of our age. , In nine cases out of ten those who reject with horror their conclusions maintain with a dogged tenacity their premises.: I had the ' terity when a young man to publit . in essay in which I only pushed the principles stoutly contended for by all my Protestants and democratic demo-cratic countrymen to their logical consequences, con-sequences, and for which I was denounced de-nounced from one end of the country to the other as holding horrible doctrines. doc-trines. They were horrible doctrines; I now see and own it; but they were doctrines which every Protestant and democrat should accept, or renounce the premises he holds. My error was not an error of logic, for my conclu-i conclu-i sions followed necessarily from my premises, but in . accepting false premises; pre-mises; the error of my Protestant and democratic countrymen was not in re-colling re-colling from my conclusions and denouncing de-nouncing them as horrible, but in doing do-ing so while they held the premises which warranted them. I took some interest in the Dorr rebellion re-bellion in Rhode Island, and felt it ray duty to support the public authorities against it. I even went so far as to visit the. state and give one or two -public addresses against the revolutionary revolu-tionary movement and in favor of the party of law and order. My addresses were listened to with sufficient respect, and at their conclusion I was invited to eat an oyster supper with a club composed of several old sons of the state, who had been the firm supporters of the government against Mr. Dorr ,and his party; and yet, to my surprise and very great scandal. I found myself obliged to defend in this club itself, against. those old dons themselves, the only principles on which the Dorrites could be consistently condemned. 1 (To be Continued.) |