Let the world have peace for five hundred years, the aristocracy of blood will have gone, the aristocracy of gold will have come and gone, that of talent will also have come and gone, and the aristocracy of goodness, which is the democracy of man, the government _of_ all, _for_ all, _by_ all, will be the power that is. Democracy is direct self-government over all the people, by all the people, for all the people.
By way of parenthesis, it is interesting here to add that in _The Christian_ (a London, England, weekly paper), for September 17, 1910, there was a letter giving an even earlier use of the phrase, as follows:
SIR: In your report of Principal Carpenter's striking speech at Budapest, you cite his reference to the well-known fact that "It was from Parker that Abraham Lincoln borrowed his famous phrase, 'Government of the people, for the people and by the people.'" But the further fact should be remembered that Parker himself borrowed it--doubtless through his perusal of the current _Monthly Repository_--from Rev. Robert Aspland, our once-famous Hackney minister. It occurs in Mr. Aspland's speech at the great Whig banquet of 1828, which celebrated the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, and at which, amongst many distinguished speakers, Mr. Aspland, by common consent, bore away the palm of eloquence.--AN EX-M. P.
These facts in the history of a great phrase I am glad to present, but the most important fact is not the name of the originator, but the names of the men who made the phrase live in the hearts of their fellows as biting, stinging, awakening truths. Parker was one of these. Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, John G. Whittier, Lowell, John Brown, Lovejoy, Lincoln, were others. And you and I, friendly reader, are to-day basking in the fuller and larger sunlight of freedom let into the house of our common humanity by the fearless, uncompromising, daring courage of these men.
Let us not be laggards in the army of human progress; nor content even to be abreast with the times. Let us be athirst for deeper waters, clearer streams. Let us get nearer the mountain top than either of these two crowds. Let us drink of the fountain spring itself and know nothing else but the fundamental principles of human relationship, and, drinking of them to the full, go forth and radiate them in their original purity, sweetness, and power, diluted only by our imperfect human expression. Let us, in this and all similar matters, make the words of Browning ours, that we may ringingly declare to the world as well as quietly radiate them: