“An American essayist has pointed out the emphasis laid by the northern, the Teutonic races, upon individual liberty. He says something like this: The Germanic race has been distinguished at all ages for its political capacity, and the possession of vigorous institutions of self-government; that there grew up among the nations of this race a well ordered system of government, based upon the right of the individual. And why was this? Because they knew of the hardships of living, and the fibre of liberty-loving natures were formed under the kneading strains of perpetual conflict. James McKinnon has pointed out the same thing in his History of Modern Liberty. “Arbitrary and selfish rule was most quickly crushed in Central Europe. No! we shall not return to the old follies, because we shall not be permitted to return; because struggle with Nature will never cease.” “Russia has been a cold country,” answered Thomsen; “and if the gauge of liberty is coldness, we should expect to have seen the fruits of popular government ripening, if you will permit the paradox, in its zero atmospheres; or if wildness and natural enemies--those that make housekeeping difficult, and a man’s skin a precious abode for his soul--why have not the negroes of Africa won over the images of rhetoric which have been wasted upon Greece and Rome--both, by-the-by, hot countries?” “Rome and Greece never knew what Liberty was in the modern sense. Both were types of class government. Before Christianity, there could be no ideal of freedom in its holiest meanings. As for Russia, the germs of liberty are yet buried there, but it is understood; an accident has put the autocracy in power, and like all beneficiaries of a system, its members fight for their living; besides, Russia has not left off its barbarism. But nothing under Heaven will keep her from being free. As to the negro, he lies too far back, too near to the origins, and, in any case, the dangers of the jungle are met by craft, rather than by consecutive exertion and daring.” “You regret that our new growth in the Pacific--the Australian England--has not put on the features of a republic, instead of preserving the heritage of the kingly and royal class institutions under which the old England flourished. Do you think that nations can safely try experiments, like children playing games, or chemists mixing solutions, which, in the latter case, may at any moment blow their heads off? I think not.”