The works of Charles Kingsley
Book Description
Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1898. Excerpt: ... thoughts they dare not utter? "Liberty has risen from the dead, and we too will be free!" Yes, mad and sinful; therefore are we as we are. Yet God has forgiven us--perhaps so have those men whose forgiveness is alone ...
MoreBook may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1898. Excerpt: ... thoughts they dare not utter? "Liberty has risen from the dead, and we too will be free!" Yes, mad and sinful; therefore are we as we are. Yet God has forgiven us--perhaps so have those men whose forgiveness is alone worth having. Liberty? And is that word a dream, a lie, the watchword only of rebellious fiends, as bigots say even now? Our forefathers spoke not so -- The shadow of her coming fell On Saxon Alfred's olive-tinctured brow. Had not freedom, progressive, expanding, descending, been the glory and the strength of England? Were Magna Charta and the Habeas Corpus Act, Hampden's resistance to ship-money, and the calm, righteous might of 1688--were they all futilities and fallacies? Ever downwards, for seven hundred years, welling from the heavenwatered mountain-peaks of wisdom, had spread the stream of liberty. The nobles had gained their charter from John; the middle classes from William of Orange: was not the time at hand, when from a queen, more gentle, charitable, upright, spotless, than had ever sat on the throne of England, the working masses in their turn should gain their Charter? If it was given, the gift was hers: if it was demanded to the uttermost, the demand would be made, not on her, but on those into whose hands her power had passed, the avowed representatives neither of the Crown nor of the people, but of the very commercial class which was devouring us. Such was our dream. Insane and wicked were VOL. II. -- 14 the passions which accompanied it; insane and wicked were the means we chose; and God in His mercy to us, rather than to Mammon, triumphant in his iniquity, fattening his heart even now for a spiritual day of slaughter more fearful than any physical slaughter which we in our folly had prepared for him -- God frustrated them. We confess our sins. Shall th...
You must be a member of JacketFlap to add a video to this page. Please
Log In or
Register.
View Charles Kingsley's profile