Such is our condition, such its causes, such our dangers. Now, for the lesson, look a moment elsewhere. Look at continental Europe, at Rome, Austria, Prussia, and the German States--at France. How uncertain is every government! France--the stablest of them all! Remember the revolution which two years ago shook those States so terribly, when all the royalty of France was wheeled out of Paris in a street cab. Why are those States so tottering? Whence those revolutions? They tried to make iniquity their law, and would not give over the attempt! Why are the armies of France five hundred thousand strong, though the nation is at peace with all the world? Because they tried to make injustice law! Why do the Austrian and German monarchs fear an earthquake of the people? Because they tread the people down with wicked laws! Whence came the crushing debts of France, Austria, England? From the same cause: from the injustice of men who made mischief by law! It is not for men long to hinder the march of human freedom. I have no fear for that, ultimately,--none at all, simply for this reason, that I believe in the Infinite God. You may make your statutes; an appeal always lies to the higher law, and decisions adverse to that get set aside in the ages. Your statutes cannot hold Him. You may gather all the dried grass and all the straw in both continents; you may braid it into ropes to bind down the sea; while it is calm, you may laugh, and say, "Lo, I have chained the ocean!" and howl down the law of Him who holds the universe as a rosebud in his hand--its every ocean but a drop of dew. "How the waters suppress their agitation," you may say. But when the winds blow their trumpets, the sea rises in its strength, snaps asunder the bonds that had confined his mighty limbs, and the world is littered with the idle hay! Stop the human race in its development and march to freedom? As well might the boys of Boston, some lustrous night, mounting the steeples of this town, call on the stars to stay their course! Gently, but irresistibly, the Greater and the Lesser Bear move round the pole; Orion, in his mighty mail, comes up the sky; the Bull, the Ram, the Heavenly Twins, the Crab, the Lion, the Maid, the Scales, and all that shining company, pursue their march all night, and the new day discovers the idle urchins in their lofty places, all tired, and sleepy, and ashamed.