society needs to be officered. But his study of the tyrannies of an "efficient state" administered by Napoleonic officers to whose talents a career was opened, has awakened in him as it never did in Carlyle, a deep suspicion of the "natural method," has put him on a criticism of democracy, which is the most valuable element in his political writing.
Might with right, Emerson never confused as Carlyle confused them—hopelessly; as democracies may at any time, under bad leadership, confuse them. "Our institutions," he declares in his "Politics," "though in coincidence with the spirit of the age, have not any exemption from the practical defects which have discredited other forms. Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey the laws too well." His patriotism was free, emancipated. In the year when he became of age, 1824, he wrote in his Journal: "I confess I am a little cynical on some topics, and when a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart." In his Journal of 1833–5 he wrote "the life of this world has a limited worth in my eyes, and really is not worth such a price as the toleration of slavery." He cried out at the land-grabbing of the Mexican War. He spoke repeatedly between 1837 and 1861 in behalf of free speech, in behalf of emancipating the slaves, and in favor of violating the Fugitive Slave Law. Against the howling of mobs, as Mr. Woodberry
