A state regards classes, and
not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but
external accidents, as property, birth, &c. But a church does the reverse
of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as
individual persons, allowing no gradation of ranks, but such as greater or
less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A church is,
therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy. The church, so considered, and
the state, exclusively of the church, constitute together the idea of a
state in its largest sense.
_September_ 20. 1830.
GOVERNMENT.----FRENCH GEND'ARMERIE.
All temporal government must rest on a compromise of interests and abstract
rights. Who would listen to the county of Bedford, if it were to declare
itself disannexed from the British empire, and to set up for itself?
* * * * *
The most desirable thing that can happen to France, with her immense army
of gensd'armes, is, that the service may at first become very irksome to
the men themselves, and ultimately, by not being called into real service,
fall into general ridicule, like our trained bands. The evil in France, and
throughout Europe, seems now especially to be, the subordination of the
legislative power to the direct physical force of the people.
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