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THE COURANT ; A SOUTHERN LITERARY JOURNAL 206
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For the Courant.
THE LESSER LIGHTS.
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How bightly, 'mid the fleecy clouds,
That float like foam-bells o'er the night,
Shine here and there some lone bright stars,
As rare as moments of delight;
But dazzled eyes oft turn from these
To gaze upon some lesser light.

And when in gorgeous lands we roam,
Where balmy glories load the bowers,
And rich, rare wonders charm the eye,
And love-bells mark the 'wildering hours,
We soon grow tired, and turn from these,
With love, unto the lesser flowers.

And so it is in human life;
Some souls are stars in life's dark nights,
Dazzling and clear, and though we gaze
And wonder how they gained such heights
of human greatness, yet we love
Better than those-- the lesser lights.
Wisconsin. HATTIE TYNG.

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FRANCIS LIEBER'S INTRODUCTORY LECTURE
TO HIS COURSE ON POLITICS
DELIVERED IN THE COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL, N.Y., OCT. 10, 1859

We are met together to discuss the State -- the soci-
ety which, in infinite variety, from mere social specks
of political inception to empires of large extent and
long radition, covers the whole earth wherever human
beings have their habitation-- that society which, more
than any other, is identified, as cause and as effect, with
the rise and fall of civilization-- that society which,
at this very period of mingled progress and relapse, of
bravery and frivolity, intensely occupies the mind of our
whole advancing race, and which is the worthiest sub-
ject of contemplation for men who do not merely adhere
to instinctive liberty, but desire to be active and upright
partakers of conscious civil freedom.

In the course of lectures which has been confided to
me, we shall inquire into the origin and necessity of the
State, and of its authority-- is it a natural or an in-
vented institution? -- into the ends and uses of Govern-
ment, and into the functions of the State-- is it a bless-
ing, or is it a wise contrivance, indeed, yet owing to
man's sinful state as many fathers of the Church con-
sidered all property to be, or is it a necessary evil,
destined to cease when a man shall be perfected? we
shall inquire into the grandeur as well as into the shame
of Political Man. We shall discuss the history of this,
the greatest human institution, and ultimately take a
survey of the literature appertaining to this enduring
topic of civilized man.

This day I beg to make some preliminary remarks,
chiefly intended to place myself before you in the posi-
tion which, so far as I can discern, a public teacher of
politics in this country and at this period, either occu-
pies of necessity, or ought to occupy.
Antiquity differs from modern civilization by no char-
acteristic more signally than by these two facts, that
throughtout the former there was but one leading state
or country at any given period, while now several
nations strive in the career of progress, abreast like the
coursers of the Grecian chariot. The idea of one lead-
ng nation, or of a "universal monarchy," has been
revived, indeed, at serveral modern periods, and is even
now proclaimed by those who know least of liberty, but
it is an anachronism, barren in every thing except mis-
chief, and always gotten up, in recent times, to subserve
ambition or national conceit. It has ever proven ruin-
ous, and Austria, France and Spain have furnished us
with commentaries.

The other distinctive fact is the recuperative power
of modern states. Ancient statees did not possess it.
Once declining, they declined with increasing rapidity
until their ruin was complete. The parabola of a projec-
tile might be called the symbol of ancient leading states
--- a curve, which slowly rises, reaches its maximum, and
precipitately descends, not to rise again; while the line
of modern civilzation, power, and even freedom, re-
sembles, in several cases, those undulation curves which,
having risen to one maximum, do not forego the rising
to another, though they decline in the meantime to a
minimum. Well may we call this curve the symbol of
our public hope. If it were not so, must not many a
modern man sink into the gloom of a Tacitus?

Now, closely connected with these, and especially with
the second fact, it seems to me, in this observation, that
in almost all the spheres of knowledge, action or pro-
duction, the philosophizing inquirer into antiquity
makes his appearance when the period of high vitality
has passed. The Greek and Roman grammarians in-
quired into their exquiste languages when the period
of vigorous productiveness in them, of literary creative-
ness, was gone or fast going ; when poets ceased to sing,
historians ceased to gather, to compare and relate, and
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orators ceased to speak. The jurists collected, system-
ized and tried to codify when a half and energizing
common law was giving rapidly away to the simple man-
dates and decrees of the ruler, or had ceased to be
among the living and productive things ; the aesthetic
writer found the canons of the beautiful, when the
sculptor and the architect were stimulated more and
more by imitation of the inspired master-works created
by the genius of by-gone days, and Aristotle founds the
science of politics--we can hardly consider Pythagoras
as the founder-- when Athens and all Greece were drift-
ing fast toward the breakers where the Roman wreckers
were to gather the still glorious wrecks, and Cicero
writes his work of the Republic when that dread time
was approaching, in which, as a contemporary President
of the French Senate has officially expressed it, the Ro-
man democracy ascended the throne in the person of
the Ceasars--rulers of whom we speak,speaking plain
language, simply say that Tacitus and Suetonius have
described them--people, whether we call them democ-
racy or not, broken in spirit and so worthless that they
rapidly ceased to know how to work for their living, or
to fight for their existence--rulers and people whose
history bears the impressive title, Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire.

It is different in modern times, thank God! Modern
critics, philosophers and teachers in almost every branch,
have lived while their age was productive, and frequent-
ly they have aided in bringing on fresh and sometimes
greater epochs. In the science of politics this fact ap-
pears in a strong light. England has advanced in
power, freedom and civilization since Thomas more,
Harrington, Milton, Bacon, Sydney, and Locke, William
Temple, and even Ferguson, wrote and taught France,
whatever we may think of her present period of impe-
rial transition and compressing absolutism, had far ad-
vanced beyond that state in which she was from the
times of Bordinus and Montequieu down to Rousseau
or the Physiocrats, and will rise above the present pe-
riod, in which Guizot and de Tocqueville have given
their works to her. Italy, however disappointed her
patriots and friends may be at this moment, and how-
ever low that country which is loved by our whole race,
like the favourite sister of the family, had once sunk,
stands forth more hopeful than prehaps she has done at
any time since Thomas ab Aquino* and Dante, † or
Machiavelli and Paolo Sarpi, and all her writes down
to Filangieri, that meditated on the State. If there are
those who think I have stated what is not warranted
by the inadequate settlement of Northern Italy, if, in-
deed, it prove a settlement, and by an arbitrary peace
which, in its sudden conclusion, by two single men, un-
attended by any counsellor of their own, or representa-
tive of any ally, in behalf of near ninety millions of
people, presents absolutism and foreign rule more
nakedly than any other fact in modern Europe that I
remember-- if the affairs of Italy can be viewed in this
light. I must point to the fact that in spite of all this
arbitrariness, the question : Do the people wish for this
or that government, this or that dynasty ? forces itself
into hearing, and is allowed ot enter as an element in
the settlement of national affairs. It may indicate an
imperfect state of things that this fact must be pointed
out by the publicist as a signal step in advance, but it
will be readily acknowledged as a characteristic change,
for the better, if we consider that in all those great set-
tlements for the last century and of the present, by
which the territories of the continental governments
were rearranged, reigning houses were shifted and states
were made and unmade, Italy was consulted about her-
self no more than the princely hunter consults hthe hart
which his huntsman cuts up for distribution among the
guests and fellow-hunters. This century may yet see a
united Italia, when at length it will cease to be di dolor
ostello of that song of woe.

Germany, with whatever feelings he that loves her
may behold taht noble country, robbed as she is of her
rightful heirship and historic adumbration, as a nation
in full political standing among the peoples of the
earth, for her own safety, national honour, and the bene-
fit of general peace and civilization, has, nevertheless,
advanced towards unity and freedom since the times of
Grotius and Spinoza (I call them hers), and Puffendorf,
Wolf, Schlötzer and Kant, and will advance beyond
what she is in these days of Zacnariae, Welker, Mitter-
maier and Mohl. Truth forces the philosopher to state
the fact, such as it is, although as patriot he finds it
difficult to acknowledge the pittance of national politi-
cal existence as yet doled out by modern history to that
country, whose present intellectual influence vies with
the political she once possessed under the Hohen-
staufen.

The teacher of political science, in these days, with-
out amusing himself with shallow optimism, has then
the encouraging consciousness that his not is not neces-
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* De Rebus Publicis et Principum Institutione Libri IV.
† De Monarchia.

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sarily the mere summing up and putting on record of a
political life of better and of by-gone days, never to
return, not to be surpassed. The historian, whom
Schlegel calls the prophet of the past, may, in our days,
also be the sower of fresh harvests. The teaching of
the publicist may become an element of living states-
manship; he may analyze essential fundamentals of his
own society, of which it may not have been conscious,
and the knowledge of which may influence future
courses; he may awaken, he may warn and impress the
lesson of inevitable historic sequences, and he may give
the impulse to essential reforms; he may help to sober
and recal intoxicated racers, hurrying down on danger-
ous slopes, and he may assist the manly jurist and ad-
vocate in planting on the out-lying downs of civil life
those hardy blades which worry back each aggressive
wave, when walls of stone prove powerless against the
stormy floods of the invading sea of power; he may
contribute his share to the nautical almanac, and the
sailing directions for the practical helmsman ; he may
Pronounce truths which legislators quote as guiding
rules in the parliament of his own country, or statesmen
when met in a Congress of entire nations ; his teaching
may modify, unconsciously to the actors themselves, and
even in spite of their own belief, the course of passion
or set bounds to the worst of all political evils, public
levity and popular indifference—if he will resolutely
speak out the truth, and if he occupies a free position.
Others must judge whether I am accustomed to do the
one; I think I occupy the other.

Few public teachers of public law may have occupied
a freer position than I do here before you. I belong to
no party when teaching. All I acknowledge is Patria
cara, carior libertas, veritas carissima. No government,
no censor, no suspicious partisan watches my words; no
party tradition fetters me ; no connection force special
pleadings on me. I am surrounded by that tone of
liberality, with that absence of petty inquisition which
belong to populous and active cities, where the varied
interests of life, religion and knowledge meet and
modify one another. Those who have called me to this
chair know what I have taught in my works, and that
on no occasion have I bent to adjust my words to gain
the approbation of prince or people. The Trustees of
this institution have called me hither with entire trust.
Neither before nor after my appointment have they in-
mated to me, however indirectly, collectively or indi-
vidually, by hint or question, or by shewing me their
own convictions, how they might wish me to tinge one
or the other of the many delicate discussions belonging
to my branches. I can gain no advantage by my teach-
ing ; neither title, order, rank or advancement on the
one hand, nor party reward or political lucre on the
other—not even popularity. Philosophy is not one of
the roads to the popular mind. All that the most gifted
inmy precise position could possibly attain to, is the
reputation of a just, wise, fearless, profound, erudite
and fervent teacher. This, indeed, includes the highest
reward, which he who addresses you will endeavor to
approach as near as lies within him.

But if the modern teacher of political science enjoys
advantages over the teacher of ancient times, there are
also difficulties which beset the modern teacher, some
peculiar to our own period and some to our own coun-
try at this time.

Political science meets, to this day, with the stolid
objection : What is it good for? Are statesmen made
by books, or have the best books been made by the best
statesmen? The name given to an entire party, under
Louis Philippe—the doctrinairs—seems to be signficant
in this point of view. you are, so we are told even by
men of cultivated minds, not farther advanced than
Aristotle was; and what must we think of the tree, if
we judge by its fruits, the fantastic conceptions of the
so-called Best State, with which the history of your
science abounds? And Hume, the philosopher, said :
"I am apt to entertain a suspicion that this world is
still too young to fix any general truths in politics which
will remain true to the latest posterity." But, if the
world is old enough to commit political sins and crimes
of every variety of error, it can not be too young to sink
the shafts for the ore of knowledge, though the nug-
gets of pure truth may be rare. Does the miner of any
other science hope for more?

Some friends have expressed their surprise that in
my inaugural address I should have considered it neces-
sary to dwell on the dignity and practical utility of po-
litical science as a branch of public instruction. I
confess their surprise astonished me in turn. Not more
than twenty years ago, Dahlmann said that "the major-
ity of men believe to this day that every thing must be
decided by the light of nature," meaning what is gener-
ally understood by common sense. Have things changed
since these words were spoken? As late as in the year
1852, de Tocqueville, when presiding over the Academy
of Morals and Politics, occupied himself in his annual
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