Democracy is contained in the triple statement that men are born free,
equal, and in brotherhood; and in this formula it is the middle term
that is cardinal, and the root of all. Yet it is the doctrine of the
equality of man, by virtue of the human nature with which he is clothed
entire at birth, that is most attacked, as an obvious absurdity, and
provocative more of laughter than of argument. What, then, is this
equality which democracy affirms as the true state of all men among
themselves? It is our common human nature, that identity of the soul in
all men, which was first inculcated by the preaching of Christ's death
for all equally, whence it followed that every human soul was of equal
value in the eyes of God, its Creator, and had the same title to the
rites of the Christian Church, and the same blessedness of an infinite
immortality in the world to come; thence we derived it from the very
fountain of our faith, and the first true democracy was that which
levelled king and peasant, barbarian and Roman, in the communion of our
Lord. Yet nature laughs at us, and ordains such inequalities at birth
itself as make our peremptory charter of the value of men's souls seem a
play of fancy.
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