Memoir of William Ellery Channing

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: celestial fervour through the soul. We owe to nationality national independence, not civil and personal liberty; and this last is the great interest and hope of human nature. Let its friends, however separated by oceans or tongues, feel themselves brethren, and cherish a union stronger than that of...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: celestial fervour through the soul. We owe to nationality national independence, not civil and personal liberty; and this last is the great interest and hope of human nature. Let its friends, however separated by oceans or tongues, feel themselves brethren, and cherish a union stronger than that of country. This may be thought an interest for men only to think and write about. But believing, as I do, that liberty is a moral good, to be promoted, not by the sword, but by magnanimity of thought and feeling, by a conviction of what we were made for, of the dignity of our intellectual and moral being, I feel that woman may do her full share towards the liberation of the world. St. Croix, 1831. I rejoice in the bright prospects opening on England. You are to have reform, and to gain it peacably, and at the right moment, that is, when you are grown up to the blessing. It comes to you as the necessary result of the growing intelligence and wealth of the people, and these, joined with the good principles of the middle classes, will make it a blessing. It is a stage of a mighty revolution which has long been going on, and I hope will give a peaceful character to the stages which are to follow. Boston, March, 1887 (-. I am looking, not without solicitude, to your political movements. The triumph of the Tories has been confidently expected here, and we are such good conservatives, that all of us would not groan at that event. These things show how little faith men have in human nature and in its progress. What we have gained seems to most an accident, to have no root in our nature, and accordingly the only wisdom is to hold fast, not to seekfor more. My fears, perhaps, are not strong enough. The present state of society has great perils, but not, I think, perils of convulsi...