Page:Review of the Proclamation of President Jackson.djvu/16

 lived to see a small territory fall an easy prey to the ambition of a more powerful neighbor. Free government, therefore, seemed to be prohibited to mankind.

Centuries rolled by after the annunciation of this supposed political maxim, and it still continued undenied and undoubted by the learned. At length, Barbarism enveloped the better part of the civilized world, and the torch of Science was extinguished. It is in these dark ages, when the light of Science had ceased to shine upon a benighted world, that the historian first sees a new Star appear, to shed its lustre upon humanity.

Feeble were its rays at first, but they were soon collected by the watchful industry of Patriotism, and their heat then sufficed to rekindle the expired vestal flame of Liberty and Right, which has never since ceased to burn bright and clear. Learning may continue to deplore her losses by the ravages of the Gothic conquerors of the Western Empire, but Freedom finds ample compensation for this loss, in their great invention of Representative Government, and its necessary companion, Trial by Jury.

The present generation is not indebted to their barbarian progenitors for the inestimable blessing of Representative government only. To our Anglo-Saxon ancestors we also owe the invention of written Charters, the best guarantees of Liberty, while those who freely give, or those who bravely exact them, have the wisdom to understand the nature of the grants, and the firmness to preserve their provisions inviolate. Under such Charters, extorted from their Kings by the clear heads and stout hearts of their English ancestors, do their posterity enjoy all of Liberty now felt in Great Britain. To the sensitive jealousy always manifested by that people, at any attempt to violate the conditions of these grants, is the world indebted for the first idea of Constitutional Law, and legal Liberty.

The violation of this Liberty brought one King of Great Britain to the block, to atone with his blood for the crimes he had committed against its sacred guarantees. The attempted violation of this Law, hurled another from his throne, to expiate in exile his intended sins against the charters. Such is the foundation of British liberty, and such the means by which it was, and is still, secured.