This treatise on government belongs to the same class of works as Louis Napoleon's Life of Caesar, having for its principal object one that lies below the surface, and the effect of both is damaged by the name on the title-page. The moment we learn that Louis Napoleon wrote that Life of Caesar, the mind is intent upon discovering allusions to recent history, which the author has an interest in misrepresenting. The common conscience of mankind condemns him as a perjured usurper, and the murderer of many of his unoffending fellow-citizens. No man, whatever the power and splendor of his position, can rest content under the scorn of mankind, unless his own conscience gives him a clear acquittal, and assures him that one day the verdict of his fellow-men will be reversed; and even in that case, it is not every man that can possess his soul in patience. Every page of the Life of Caesar was composed with a secret, perhaps half-unconscious reference to that view of Louis Napoleon's conduct which is expressed with such deadly power in Mr. Kinglake's History of the Crimean War, and which is so remarkably confirmed by an American eyewitness, the late Mr. Goodrich, who was Consul at Paris in 1848. Published anonymously, the Life of Caesar might have had some effect. Given to the world by Napoleon III., every one reads it as he would a defence by an ingenious criminal of his own cause. The highest praise that can be bestowed upon it is, that it is very well done, considering the object the author had in view. So, in reading Mr. Calhoun's disquisition upon government, we are constantly reminded that the author was a man who had only escaped trial and execution for treason by suddenly arresting the treasonable measures which he had caused to be set on foot. Though it contains but one allusion to events in South Carolina in 1833, the work is nothing but a labored, refined justification of those events. It has been even coupled with Edwards on the Will, as the two best examples of subtle reasoning which American literature contains. Admit his premises, and you are borne along, at a steady pace, in a straight path, to the final inferences: that the sovereign State of South Carolina possesses, by the Constitution of the United States, an absolute veto upon every act of Congress, and may secede from the Union whenever she likes; and that these rights of veto and secession do not merely constitute the strength of the Constitution, but _are_ the Constitution,--and do not merely tend to perpetuate the Union, but are the Union's self,--the thing that binds the States together. Mr. Calhoun begins his treatise by assuming that government is necessary. He then explains why it is necessary. It is necessary because man is more selfish than sympathetic, feeling more intensely what affects himself than what affects others. Hence he will encroach on the rights of others; and to prevent this, government is indispensable.