[244] As it is perceived, we have confined ourselves to the most general principles. The following year, in 1819, in our lectures on Hobbes, 1st Series, vol. iii., we gave a more extended theory of rights, and the civil and political guaranties which they demand; we even touched the question of the different forms of government, and established the truth and beauty of the constitutional monarchy. In 1828, 2d Series, vol. i., lecture 13, we explained and defended the Charter in its fundamental parts. Under the government of July, the part of defender of both liberty and royalty was easy. We continued it in 1848; and when, at the unexpected inundation of democracy, soon followed by a passionate reaction in favor of an absolute authority, many minds, and the best, asked themselves whether the young American republic was not called to serve as a model for old Europe, we did not hesitate to maintain the principle of the monarchy in the interest of liberty; we believe that we demonstrated that the development of the principles of 1789, and in particular the progress of the lower classes, so necessary, can be obtained only by the aid of the constitutional monarchy,--6th Series, POLITICAL DISCOURSES, _with an introduction on the principles of the French Revolution and representative government_. LECTURE XVI. GOD THE PRINCIPLE OF THE IDEA OF THE GOOD. Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation of moral truth, of the good, and of the moral person.--Liberty of God.--The divine justice and charity.--God the sanction of the moral law. Immortality of the soul; argument from merit and demerit; argument from the simplicity of the soul; argument from final causes.--Religious sentiment.--Adoration.--Worship.--Moral beauty of Christianity. The moral order has been confirmed,--we are in possession of moral truth, of the idea of the good, and the obligation that is attached to it. Now, the same principle that has not permitted us to stop at absolute truth,[245] and has forced us to seek its supreme reason in a real and substantial being, forces us here again to refer the idea of the good to the being who is its first and last foundation. Moral truth, like every other universal and necessary truth, cannot remain in a state of abstraction. In us it is only conceived. There must somewhere be a being who not only conceives it, but constituted it. As all beautiful things and all true things are related--these to a unity that is absolute truth, and those to another unity that is absolute beauty, so all moral principles participate in the same principle, which is the good. We thus elevate ourselves to the conception of the good in itself, of absolute good, superior to all particular duties, and determined in these duties. Now, can the absolute good be any thing else than an attribute of him who, properly speaking, is alone absolute being?