When the fires of liberty began to creep through Europe in the middle ages, at a time when hereditary monarchs and the catholic church ruled the world, men placed its safeguards in municipal corporations. The idea of municipal corporations descended from Rome to the rest of Europe, and "free cities" became the germ of personal freedom. But a new world was needed for the great experiment of individual freedom. Macauley calls government an experimental science and therefore a progressive science; history shows this to be true. Liberty did not spring "full armed" like Minerva from the head of Jove. The liberty possessed by the world has been gradually secured, and it was left for our country first to incorporate in its foundation a recognition of individual rights. A hundred years before the revolutionary war, Massachusetts and Virginia resisted English tyranny. Massachusetts, in 1664, called herself a "perfect republic." She preserved a neutral harbor by force of arms against opposing English factions; she enacted laws against the supremacy of the English parliament, and she established her own mint. This last is noticeable, as in the progress of liberty, rights of property, of which money is the exponent, have always been one of the foremost. Bancroft says Virginia was always a land of liberty; that Virginia placed the defense of liberty not in municipal corporations, _but in persons_, and that the liberty of the individual was ever highly prized. The difference between a monarchy and a republic is the difference between force and consent; it is the difference between being governed and governing yourself; it is the difference between the _men_ of Russia and the _men_ of the United States; it is the difference between the political rights of one man as the government and the political rights of the people as the government. But the world has never yet seen a true republic, though it has for hundreds of years been taking steps towards one. The original principles of just governments are five, all of which were acknowledged by the United States at its foundation. These principles are: _First._ The natural right of each individual to self-government. _Second._ The exact equality of these rights. _Third._ That these rights when not delegated by the individual, are retained by the individual. _Fourth._ That no person can exercise these rights of others without delegated authority. _Fifth._ That the non-use of these rights does not destroy them. These five underlying principles are the admitted basis of all governmental rights, and the old revolutionists acted upon them. They were men of middle life; they were under an old and established form of government to which they had not delegated authority, and during all these years they had made no use of their natural, equal rights. When they chose to assume the exercise of these rights, they at once took them up.