But the progress of ideas and events has so modified the American system, and done so much towards restoring a perfect democracy, where the demagogues have every thing their own way, that the chance of getting up any considerable revolutionary party, except to operate abroad, is not worth counting. Indeed, it is not necessary to hasten the march of things here, which is sufficiently rapid towards that point where democracy resolves itself either into complete individualism or into an absolute social despotism. I saw and felt this, and looked upon my own country as more ready to assist me in my philanthropic or Satanic efforts to revolutionize foreign countries than in need of similar efforts on its own account. Let me not, however, be misunderstood. Let me speak as I think and feel as I lie here confined to my room, from which I am to be removed only to my grave. I love not democracy, which I regard as from below, not from above; but I love as little, perhaps much less, absolute or unlimited monarchy,—your Czarism, Cæsarism, or Imperialism. I may think it unwise, wrong, wicked even, to attempt to overthrow by revolutionary violence, an absolute government, where it exists, and is not intolerable in practice, for the sake of introducing a republic, or even a constitutional monarchy; but I hold no government a good one, where one man alone represents the will and the majesty of the nation. I demand a government of estates, whenever that is practicable, but always a representative body, with real legislative power, capable of imposing real and effective restraints on the administration. I demand for the nation the means of making known freely and effectively, within the limits of the moral law, its will. I demand freedom of discussion, deliberation, and decision. I demand the freedom of the press, temperately, and answerable for its abuse, (which, however, must be a real abuse;) to criticize publicly the acts of political authority, to point out the defects of its policy, and to suggest measures for the public good. I demand a political constitution in which the nation governs through a king or president, and parliament or legislative body or bodies. I am, what is sneered at by your imperialists, a parliamentarian, a constitutionalist, and have no sympathy at all with the Cæsarism of either France or Russia. I am no radical, no revolutionist, no friend of sedition, but I love a wise, prudent, well-regulated liberty, which leaves me all my power to do good, and therefore, necessarily, to some extent, even to do evil; for if you so bind me by the civil power that I can do no evil, you take from me my manhood, make me an automaton, and deprive me of all power to do good and to acquire merit. Such is my political creed, and therefore let no man dare, because I favor not now the wild radical movements of the age, accuse me of being an enemy to liberty, or a worshipper of Cæsarism, or what is called absolutism.