4. But the man said, Nay, for I will abide under this tree.

5. And Abraham pressed him greatly, so he turned and they went into the tent, and Abraham baked unleavened bread and they did eat. 6. And when Abraham saw that the man blessed not God, he said unto him, Wherefore dost thou not worship the most high God, Creator of heaven and earth?

7. And the man answered and said, I do not worship the God thou speakest of, neither do I call upon his name, for I have made to myself a God, which abideth always in my house, and provideth me with all things.

8. And Abraham's zeal was kindled against the man, and he arose and drove him forth with blows into the wilderness.

9. And at midnight God called upon Abraham, saying, Abraham, where is the stranger?

10. And Abraham answered and said, Lord, he would not worship thee, neither would he call upon thy name, therefore I have driven him out before my face into the wilderness.

11. And God said, Have I borne with him these hundred ninety and eight years, and clothed him, notwithstanding his rebellion against me, and couldest not thou, that art thyself a sinner, bear with him one night?

12. And Abraham said, Let not the anger of the Lord wax hot against his servant, for lo I have sinned, forgive me, I pray thee.

13. And Abraham arose, and went forth into the wilderness, and sought diligently for the man and found him, and returned with him to the tent, and when he had entreated him kindly, he sent him away on the morrow with gifts.

14. And God spake unto Abraham saying, For this thy sin shall thy seed be afflicted four hundred years in a strange land:

15. But for thy repentance will I deliver them, and they shall come forth with power and gladness of heart, and with much substance.*

All of these evils to which we have been drawing attention, are most unnatural, most monstrous. They do not accord, in any degree, with the theory of our government, founded as it is upon mutual forbearance, conciliation and compromise; nor does it accord with such an administration of it, as the brilliant patriotism and virtues of our ancestors would seem to have guaranteed. Considered in any light it is anomalous, and the public mind should be at once aroused to a sense of all the fatal consequences which must ensue, unless we return at once to the paths of rectitude and lofty republican honor, from which, in our own eyes, as well as in the eyes of the world, we have so widely strayed. There is no head among us sacred enough to be preserved from the sharp and corrosive vituperation of parties,-no distinction of place or office, which appears to be recognized

* Franklin's Works, 1 vol. xxiii.

as of sufficient sanctity to preserve the incumbent inviolable from the angry and poisoned shaft. From the lowest constable, with the bench warrant in his hand, to the highest functionary, treating upon national interests, every officer appears to be considered, not as the servant, but as the slave of the people, fit only to be kicked and buffeted about at pleasure, and made the sport of every whim and caprice. What wonder, then, that they turn around and kick in their turn, kick for kick.

It is a small matter in our day, even to burn in effigy the man that occupies the chair of Washington, or to insult him. openly at public entertainments, in the presence of foreign ambassadors. All of this is a mere trifle. It is a mere trifle, too, for a governor of a State to refuse peremptorily to deliver up a fugitive from another State, simply because a slave, violating officially one of the highest and most important sanctions of constitutional law. It is equally a trifle for an ex-President to hand in a petition for a dissolution of the Union, or bushels of others to effect that which would be tantamount to it. A whole legislature unanimously resolves to commit depredations upon rights rendered sacred by constitutional provision, and who is there to complain? Another legislature repudiates its debts, and claims the privileges of bankruptcy. A senator purloins a treaty, and in violation of his oath publishes it to the world, and who arraigns him at the bar of justice? It may well be asked, in what will this terminate? And whether we can expect, ere long, that men of any true merit will consent to occupy place or office, which would rather degrade than elevate them? The olive, the fig-tree or the vine will decline the honor, whilst a fire will come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon.*

The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, reign thou over us. But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness wherewith by me they honour God, and go to be promoted over the trees? And the trees said unto the fig tree, Come thou and reign over us. But the fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou and reign over us. And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou and reign over us. And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble and devour the cedars of Lebanon. [Judges, ix. 8-15.

There is another thing, too, in this connexion, worthy of serious attention,-the instability of the public mind, its continued oscillation from extreme on one side to extreme on the other. Nothing in the world is more common than a revolution in public sentiment, extending throughout the length and breadth of the land. The more radical the change, the more likely to occur; since the experience of late days has confirmed the old maxim, "it is easier to make great innovations than to make small ones." A few years ago, an administration was hurried out with fire and sword, hootings and mad vituperations, stump speeches, songs and processions. What has been the result? Why, the fire and sword, hootings and songs, would gladly be used again to hurry out the new administration, and bring about a restoration of the old one; revulsions as sudden as they are extensive, and alternate commendation and execration of the same principles by the same men. If such a lamentable condition of public morals, sentiment and honour, continues for any length of time, it will be a question for earnest consideration, Is man, indeed, capable of self-government, or have we so long been laboring under a splendid delusion?

Where are the friends of liberty and the lovers of country? the Bruti and Cincinnati of the age? Are there such, indeed? let them speak, if no party Shibboleth is to be uttered by their lips. Are not these influences sweeping and sweeping over our prospects the besom of destruction? It can matter little, nor touch in any degree the great question before us, to inquire what particular party is in power; if it be PARTY, it is enough;-party, whose breath and spirit, like the simoon or harmattan of the desert, is charged ever with pestilence, it blasts where it is excited, and virtue, withering, shrinks from its presence. Better, far better, in our judgment, the fool who never changes his opinion, than the wise man who changes it every day; better the bigot than the political weathercock. Give us rather that rigid and dogmatic adherence to principles, until experience has thoroughly exploded them, than a state of fickleness and vacillation like this. The one originates in the noblest principle of the mind, faith in its own convictions; the other is the index too often of a mind void of all principle, and unconditionally submissive to the dictates of authority,-a condition more degrading, perhaps, than any other to which humanity could be subjected.

But, need we search in the past to confirm our fears? it would not be to search. Who that is at all familiar with history, does not anticipate us? Greece had ruined herself by the intrigues of her dominant parties, wreaking their vengeance upon each other, was there never a Philip or an Alexander. The Roman empire was a great market-house, where the rival factions met to cheapen bargains, or to knock down at the highest bid the imperial crown; and sure enough they did knock it down, and one purchased it in Gaul, another in Britain, a third in Italy, and amid the clash of arms and the floating of rival standards, where had fled Liberty, Rome and the Roman name? The Italian republics, lights of the middle ages, were split to pieces by the rival factions of the Guelph and the Ghibbeline; and the best blood of France oozed out at every pore, as the mad enthusiasm of her statesmen and philosophers was hurried into all the wildest revolutionary speculations; and, in disregard of the admonition of a sage writer, roused the people to tear away old systems, without instructing them how to erect new

ones.

But, is not the principle too clear for such remote illustration? Need we so much concern ourselves to examine into the past for its development? It is, at home that duty inclines our eyes, although our inclinations are to look any where else. At home,-and what shall we fix upon here as a fit illustration? Shall we say the ballot-box? Who can gainsay us? The ballot-box,-the so-much lauded bulwark of English liberty,-the boast of republicanism,-the pride of every generous heart. Let us mark the development of the principles we are discussing, even at the BALLOT-BOX. Where is that immaculate purity which we have reason to believe once characterized it? Ichabod! Ichabod! often degraded and deformed,-too often the tool of corruption, the prostituted and venal minister to ambition and wealth. Well may we employ the language of Thomas Jefferson, with reference to those who dance attendance upon ambition and wealth: "Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition."*

Too

* We beg leave, in some degree, to exempt our own State from these unmeasured denunciations, and regret at the same time that we are obliged to qualify the exemption; for proofs of bribery and corruption have not been wanting here in the past, and many of the melancholy facts detailed above.

Does any one conceive the picture too highly colored or exaggerated in its proportions?-let him look at the enter tainments which politicians, like the Roman Crassus, have been in the habit of setting out to catch the unwary and pamper the degraded, let him heed the inflammable appeals addressed to the gullibility of the people, in which their very voice is recognized, as it were "the voice of a god," in which they are reminded of that innate force which lurks in their arms.-that bone and sinew which is theirs, to move the republic at their will,-to elevate or to crush it. How profound and extraordinary the sagacity which the politician discovers in the crowd he addresses! Why, it would be nothing for them to apply "fluxions" to gravitation, and determine within the tenth part of a grain the influence which one of Ceres' satellites, if she have one, exerts upon the dog-star,-nothing to "square the circle," or ascertain the effect which the melting down of a silver dollar would have upon the currency of the world. Vast is your acquaintance with standard republican doctrines, oh people! everlasting the regard the orator has for your interests; would that ye "all had but one neck, that he might embrace it!" Who is he that has so much patience not to be sick, tired, worn out, disgusted with all this? Mark the philosophical deduction which time has amply honored: "Every tyrant was first a demagogue." "Political charity," says Governeur Morris, "is puss' velvet paw, soft so long as she purs with pleasure, but let the meanest little mouse of an opposite party peep at the veriest paring of an office, away jumps the cat, her paws extended, her eyes flashing fire." *

Where, then, are the sources of all this evil? Too great avidity for speculation, trade, dollars and cents; too entire disregard of political education; too sudden fulness and maturity of growth at which statesmen arrive; too many hands at the political bellows, not enough at the plough; too radical a deficiency in moral and religious instruction!

If the Temperance Reform tends in any degree to remove this evil, which it assuredly does, succeeding ages will have reason to bless it as one of heaven's best boons. The man who goes drunk to the ballot-box, should be ipso facto disfranchised, since he is a fit subject for "treason, stragemen and spoils" to operate upon; and it is to be presumed that there are few politicians, however depraved and abandoned to every dissolute passion, who would DARE to spread out now, as in the past, tables loaded with intoxicating drink to poison and prostitute the minds that shout and huzzah in their presence, at least in South-Carolina.

* Quoted in Jasper Adams' Moral Phil.