Nor is it the least among the sources of more serious satisfaction
which I have found in the pursuit of a subject that at first appeared
to bear but slightly on the grave interests of mankind, that the
conditions of material perfection which it leads me in conclusion to
consider, furnish a strange proof how false is the conception, how
frantic the pursuit, of that treacherous phantom which men call
Liberty: most treacherous, indeed, of all phantoms; for the feeblest
ray of reason might surely show us, that not only its attainment, but
its being, was impossible. There is no such thing in the universe.
There can never be. The stars have it not; the earth has it not; the
sea has it not; and we men have the mockery and semblance of it only
for our heaviest punishment.
In one of the noblest poems[169] for its imagery and its music belonging
to the recent school of our literature, the writer has sought in the
aspect of inanimate nature the expression of that Liberty which, having
once loved, he had seen among men in its true dyes of darkness. But
with what strange fallacy of interpretation! since in one noble line of
his invocation he has contradicted the assumptions of the rest, and
acknowledged the presence of a subjection, surely not less severe
because eternal.
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