Page:Home Education by Isaac Taylor (1838).djvu/30

 them on all occasions to search for a reason, satisfactory to themselves, before they bow to the dictates of those who have no right to their submission. Moreover, the bosoms of young persons Who have been well trained amid the gentle influences of the domestic circle, and have lived in the intimacy of intelligent and ingenuous parents, and of other adults, are likely to be fraught with profound and delicate sentiments—with the love of truth, of justice, and of honour; and they are therefore equally disinclined either to exercise despotism, or to yield to it. Young men so nurtured under the paternal roof, when, for the first time, they encounter the rude wilfulness, and the selfish violence of vulgar spirits in the open world, may perhaps recoil, and be tempted to leave the field in disgust: but they presently (if not naturally feeble-minded) recover their self-possession, and plant their foot firmly in the path where what is just and good is to be maintained against insolent power, or lawless aggression.

The substantial liberties of a community involve nuch nore than either the bare protection of persons and chattels, or the ample exercise of political rights; for there is a liberty of thought and of speech which may be curtailed, or almost destroyed, in countries that are the loudest in boasting of their freedom. There is a liberty, moral and intellectual—the true glory of a people, which consists in, and demands the unrestrained expansion of all faculties, the exercise of all talents, and the spontaneous expression of all diversities of taste, and of all forms of individuality. But this high liberty of mind, forfeited often in the very struggle of nations to secure or to extend political liberty, must assuredly be favoured by whatever cherishes distinctness of character; and it must as certainly be endangered by whatever breaks down individuality, and tends to ilnpose uniformity upon the whole.

In this view, a systematic fairly claims