when reposing upon her laurels she became corrupted and debased beneath the martial virtue of the barba rian, the tide of civilization rolled back before the overwhelming torrent of Gothic barbarism, until Alaric pressed forward amid the ruins of the western empire to inscribe his name on the trophies of the Cæsars. Such is the melancholy history of social man, such is the fate of nations. Civilization gradually refines and enlightens, and no sooner is man thus improved, than

ing charity in the beings who surround us and who are the nations of the earth, they fell back before her connected to us by the most endearing ties, let us re-eagles to the fastnesses of impenetrable forests; but flect, above all let the compassionate clergy reflect, that with all our morals, our sciences, and our arts, we are degraded as far below the primitive condition of man as the savage is debased beneath ourselves. Let us not rend the mantle of our charity by fruitless and destructive efforts to stretch it over the obdurate and distant savage, while there are so many among us requiring the aid of the Samaritan. Let us be moderate even in our virtues-the over-zealous priest degenerates into the intolerant bigot and brawling poli-a corrupt will leads him to abuse his transcendant tico-religionist. Let him imitate his Master in the gifts, and Justice the Avenger of crime, degrades him to meekness and retiring simplicity of his character. Let a level with the savage. The day perhaps is not far us have no fiery tracts thrown abroad like brands; let distant, when we shall be enabled to trace the primitive us have no associations, no combinations, no letters, no purity and perfection of man in a state of nature-and pamphlets reviling our southern brethren, no inter- the gradual debasement of the corrupt nations of the ference with their domestic relations. It is time that children of men, as well as the merciful dispensations the clerical order should be excluded from the political of Providence in raising them from time to time from arena-let them visit the sick, and the prisoner--let this state of degradation, and in preparing them slowly them console the afflicted, bind up the broken-hearted, for admission once again into the pale of civilization. bury the dead, and teach the living by example rather We ourselves are debased very far below the primitive than by precept to observe the law, to respect estab-condition of man, and it is impossible for us to fathom lished institutions, and above all to abstain from bearing false testimony against their neighbor. Let the church stand apart from the state.

Such being the melancholy debasement of the Indian people, with whose rise and progress we are wholly unacquainted, but whose awful degradation alone indicates the extent of the crimes they have committed in their generations; it is the first duty of philanthropists who wish to restore them to their former dignity to adopt such measures as the condition and character of these tribes seem to require. If it be true, as we have supposed, that the cause of all the evils which afflict both the Indian and the white man on the borders, is their juxta-position; if it be impracticable for these opposite races to blend harmoniously either from some unknown invincible difficulty, or from some unconquerable repugnance or prejudice; if in the march of civilization the inferior people must give way or perish before the advance of the more powerful; then there is no other mitigation of the sufferings of the Indian than his removal from the vicinage of the white man, and the interposition of such space or such barriers as will abstract from the Indian the opportunity of plunder and rapine, which he never fails to seize, and for which the white man as surely retaliates. From these reflections, it is manifest that the government has adopted and steadily pursues that policy towards the aborigines, which is wisely adapted to the character and condition of that people, and which is well calculated to restore and maintain peace on the frontier. And there is as little doubt, that much of the sufferings of that unhappy people during the last five years has been occasioned by the interference of their northern friends, whose incessant clamor about the rights of the Indian, and the wrongs inflicted by the white man, has incited the former to rebellion, and has stained the hammocks of Florida with the mingled blood of these hostile races. The march of civilization is onward in self-defence. Like the ocean she can never repose, action is essentially necessary for her preservation; to pause is to fall a prey to those savages who prowl around her borders. When Rome was in advance of

the designs of Providence in relation to us. But as national crime invariably induces national debasement, our rapid advances in the paths of licentiousness proclaim that we can arrogate to ourselves no exemption from the decrees of avenging and retributive justice. The day may be, probably is, distant, although it seems to be a law of nature that whatever is destined to be durable is slow of growth. But our growth has startled the nations of the earth. Yet the destinies of mighty empires are not speedily wrought out; the designs of providence are surely but slowly and steadily matured.

There is in the increasing depravity of our people much cause to apprehend, that Providence will cease to bestow upon us those signal benefactions which have marked our early progress; but the calm observer is neither startled by the unfaithful picture and boding augury of the American divine, nor alarmed by the prophetic aspirations of his British reviewer. We flatly deny the justice of imputing the excesses of city mobs, or the depravity of border men, to the great body of the people. And we confidently assert that notwithstanding the military despotism and rigorous laws of other nations, and the comparative impunity of rioters in this country, there is scarcely a nation of Europe in which there is not more bloodshed and outrage by irregular action of the populace in one year, than there has been in the United States since the declaration of American Independence. We advance a step farther, and question whether in the whole current of history from the institution of governments, to the present day, there has been a people of equal extent of territory and of equal population, whose annals, with the exception of the burning and sacking of the convent in Massachusetts, have been stained with as little popular outrage. It would seem then, that Dr. Channing is mistaken in the apprehension or the desire for a "stronger government," and that his tory reviewer should have attributed, not our supposed unparalleled depravity, but our unexampled purity of national character, our unprecedented growth and prosperity, to the ennobling influence of republican institutions.

The language of Miss Martineau was thought suffi- enemies of the cause of freedom, of the peace and prosciently unjust and extravagant, when she charged the perity of our common country, and labor in that most south with having purchased Florida, because it was a destructive of all earthly missions to shake the faith of refuge for their slaves: but the native divine, as if to our people in the strength and stability of their institushow the extent of the privilege of speech in a free tions. And these boding dreams, these hallucinations country, has accused the same vilified people of seek- of minds heated with intemperate zeal, furnish a goodly ing the admission of Texas into the Union as a market and perpetual repast over which the enemies of repubfor slaves which they breed for the purpose, and as alican establishments gloat with rancorous rapture. means of unjustly extinguishing the claim of Mexico, to lands for which they have purchased scrip from the Texan government. We have already said that we had no concern with the Texan controversy. But supposing the accusations of Dr. Channing to be strictly true, have we no cause to complain of his exclusive kindness and sympathy for the Indian, the negro, the Mexican and the Spaniard, and his deep and solemn denunciations of his Anglo-Saxon countrymen? His benevolent heart overflows with tenderness for the stranger and the savage, and seems to be sealed against the white man. His charity appears to water abundantly the sandy desert and the remote wilderness, but it stagnates into a pool of bitterness at the approach of his fellow-citizens. Are the waters of refreshment still reserved for Ishmael, the son of Hagar, the dweller in tents and the robber of the desert, whose hand is against other men to the end of time? Why not imitate the pervading love of his Master, and when his affections are thrown abroad upon the ocean of life, let the circle which they form, continue to extend its waving ripple until it is swallowed up in its immensity? He is so wholly engrossed with the real and imaginary wrongs of the dark and the red man, that he is insensible to the virtues of the whites. Did not the slaughter of the Alamo, exact retributive justice? Was there no gallantry displayed in the action of San Jacinto? Were no laurels purchased in the defeat—no magnanimity displayed in the treatment of the ruthless Santa Anna? The Mexican hordes led on by this bad man waged a war of extermination; their hands were red with the sign of death with which the compatriots in arms of the Texans, had been sealed; yet they were treated with kindness and mercy.

The policy of the government in relation to the removal of the Indians, being definitively settled, let us reflect a moment upon the fatuity of those agitators who seek to resist the action of the executive by inciting the Indian to rebellion, for such is the only result of their interference. The accumulation of Indian tribes on our southern and western frontier, where the slave population is most dense, both of which classes the northern fanatics constantly feed with discontent, concentrate a force hostile and formidable to the white man; and in the event of foreign interposition, which these enthusiasts openly invoke, the Mexican, the Indian, and the Negro, fortified with all the sympathies of their northern brethren, are prepared to assail the Anglo-Saxon of the south. Are these fit allies for the northmen? The British power is invoked. Is this allegiance to the Union, or fidelity to confederates ? The great family of European nations has already been shaken to its centre, thrones subverted, and the superstitious observances of centuries dissipated by the first-breathings of free principles which our French allies of the revolution introduced among them. To weaken our institutions at home by domestic strife, to arm the cold, calculating fanatic north, against the impatient and fiery south, to repel the working of our principles abroad, is the policy of those nations; and they are not a little indebted to those churchmen who delight in evil auguries, and who exaggerate the licentiousness of our people as if it were the greatest of public virtues.* And when one so distinguished as Dr. Channing volunteers his testimony, it is seized upon with avidity, and published to the world, not as the revilings of a prejudiced foreigner, but as the impartial declaration of a native citizen, a vessel of election, an oracle of truth, one anointed of heaven.

We have the greater reason to complain of Dr. Channing, because he speaks ex-cathedra,—the sanctity of his lawn is invoked to give weight to his testimony. He is an American citizen, supposed to be elevated by the character of his function above the influence of party or local feeling; he professes to be consumed with love of country, and to be steadfast in his faith as to the stability of our institutions; and yet he mingles freely in the discussion of the most agitating political questions; he advocates schemes which have already shaken and which still endanger the Union; to check the growth of slavery in the south, he invokes the interposition of a foreign government, and he sup-consequences of a serious character, which flow from these explies the friends of "stronger governments," and the enemies of republics, with endless arguments to inveigh against the demoralizing tendency and frail texture of republican institutions. The reveries and libels of foreigners we might safely despise, though we well knew that the trumpet of Miss Martineau had been filled with the voice of the northmen, for they spoke in a tone to awaken the sleeper and to startle the deaf. Let us not conceal the humiliating truth. These men, in their mistaken zeal, become the most dangerous

The language of European writers in relation to our civil and political establishments, betrays that degree of ignorance which is the mother of fear. The true character of the colonists and the nature of their institutions have never been properly understood by the people of England. Negligent to observe the progress of the human mind in the new world, the inquisitive speculations of its inhabitants upon the natural rights of man, and their extraordinary enterprise in the de*But for the unusual length to which it would have extended our

article, we would have invited the attention of the public to other

aggerated statements of the lawlessness of our people and the weakness of our government They have already occasioned difficulties, by many deemed insuperable, in the settlement of the outrage at Schlosser on the Canada frontier. Our own writers have so frequently published to the world the unbridled licen. tiousness of our people, and the inability of the civil authorities to restrain them, that foreign nations justify an invasion of our territory, and the capture and cutting out of a boat, upon the grounds assumed by Mrs. Trollope, Dr. Channing, and Miss Martineau. But a full exposure of all the consequences of these imputations upon our moral and national character would require a volume.

bric, which reposing on the immutable basis of popular right and general happiness, should exclude the defects and combine the excellences of the multiplied political establishments known to man. Antiquity could conse crate to them no rule which reason did not respect; and they shrunk from no innovation to which reason conducted. Guided by the polarity of reason, they stood out from the shore, and leaving the ancient landmarks far behind them, they sought by a bolder naviga

public felicity. And they found it. Notwithstanding the vaticinations of men of evil augury and timorous apprehensions; notwithstanding the eagerness with which these sickly dreams of a distempered fancy are repeated, by those who can neither appreciate nor admire our government, as if they were the breathings of holy prophecy; we, the American people, unseduced from our allegiance, unshaken in our confidence in the excellence and permanency of our institutions, feel, and are thankful that the Ark of the Covenant is among us. If not more favored, at least more thankful than the chosen people of Jehovah, we will not proudly exult, but meekly bow down in gratefulness for bles sings, such as heaven in its mercy has seldom vouchsafed to man. "Ask of the days of old," exclaimed the indignant prophet when he rebuked the repining Israelite, "ask of the days of old, that have been be fore thy time, from the day that God created man upon the face of the earth, from one end of heaven to the other end thereof, if ever there was done the like thing, or it hath been known at any time"

velopment of the plenteous resources of the country; | prehensive intellect of our revolutionary fathers was when the long suppressed energies of this youthful but exerted in erecting a stupendous and imperishable faadventurous people burst forth into successful action, the disciplined European, trammelled by hereditary prejudices and observances, regarded it as a transient ebullition of feeling worthy only of derision. They mistook it for the mountain torrent that would pass away with the storm that gave it birth: they knew not that it was the stream of human opinion, which the accession of every day would swell, and which was destined to sweep into the same oblivion the resistance of conservative bigotry and powerful oppression. The un-tion to discover in unexplored regions the treasure of compromising love of freedom which induced the early colonists to abandon the homes and the graves of their fathers, and to subdue a wilderness in order to escape oppression; the dangers to which in their infancy they were exposed from the vicinage of a murderous foe, and the hardships incident to their new situation, naturally inspired them with an energy of character and a loftiness of soul, unknown to their European kindred. The restraints of the feudal tenures had been left behind them, and they were warmly attached to the soil upon which they trod; they were the "freeholders of the land, and the rent day had no terrors for them." The equality introduced by the abolition of the law of entail and primogeniture, the general diffusion of useful and practical knowledge, the deep stake each individual had in the government, could not fail to infuse into their bosoms that love of liberty, that independence and elasticity of character, that jealousy of power, which has led to the establishment of a frame of government which is at once a blessing to mankind, and the hope of the nations. If we revert to the continent of Europe, we will discover that the principles upon which our government is framed, had long been recognized, although no people had carried them into practical operation. History is an immense collection of experiments of the nature and effects of the various forms of government. Some institutions are experimentally ascertained to be beneficial, some others to be indubitably destructive to human happiness. The philosophers of Europe had, for a century There is in France a school of philosophers and politi preceding our revolution, listened intently to the testi- cians, who have been appropriately denominated THE mony of ages, and of nations, and collected from them MYSTICS; they are not unfrequently led by clergymen, the salutary principles which regulate the mechanism and constitute, in that crater of political convulsions, of society, and recognise the unalienable rights of the the MOVEMENT party. At the very head of this band citizen. The nature and excellence of free institutions of agitators is the celebrated politico-religious dema had been reduced to demonstration, yet these convincing gogue, the Abbé de la Mennais. Reformation of abuses arguments influenced the councils of no government, by the calm and peaceful agency of wholesome public and awakened to resistance no oppressed people. It opinion, has no attraction for them. The whirlwind was at this propitious period when all Europe presented of revolution is the only agent fitted to their rash dethe repulsive spectacle of a liberal theory opposed to a signs and heated imaginations. And this morbid barbarous practice, when the germs of free institutions desire for revolution does not seem to be entirely had taken root in the understanding and were entwined prompted by that love of change or excitement, or by with the affections of man, that our forefathers escaping that ambition which usually impels men to subvert from the oppressive and time-honored establishments existing establishments; no, they are FANATICS. They which pressed them to the earth, sought at the extre- anticipate stupendous results from the action of enthu mity of the ocean, a clime, in which they might sub-siastic associations forcing public opinion into rapid stitute for established formulas the pure and voluntary and straitened currents, and overthrowing in its resist worship of the Deity, and where they might erect less progress every barrier. By an agency indepen political institutions originating in compact, springing dent of, and transcending all law, they expect through immediately from the will of the people, and reposing a long chain of revolutionary convulsions to effect a upon the rights of man. Deeply impressed with the certain social revolution, which is to consummate the injustice and the absurdity of the various constitutions happiness of the human race, by abolishing every ves which chance had scattered over the world, the com- tige of slavery, and introducing a happy millennium

Let us assure Dr. Channing that we are not the depraved people he has imagined us, and that in the whole book of recorded time, he will scarcely find a people equally numerous who are less depraved. And as the British reviewer bases all his prophetic aspirations of our speedy ruin upon the unfounded charges of the learned divine, the framework of his argument falls, because the foundations are hollow and unsound.

the enemies of republican institutions in the old world derive those atrocious calumnies, which represent us to the nations of the earth as the most turbulent and demoralized of people. The article of Dr. Channing had probably reached Europe when M. Lackanal read to the French Academy of Moral and Political Science, the following extract from his work on the United States, to which we append a few observations by a Paris correspondent:

66

of universal equality. Let us not incline to ridicule and happiest, and most intelligent of the sons of the chilthis fanaticism as too wild and destructive in its cha-dren of men. It is from publications of this kind, that racter to engage the attention of reflecting men. It has its attractive as well as its dark aspects; it is to all appearance a mingling of heaven and earth. There is widely disseminated among us, particularly in the northern and eastern states, a peculiarity of mental character, in which a strong native sentiment of religion is blended with a powerful tendency to skepticism and infidelity. In the delirium of hope, these men divert all those aspirations which properly belong to a future state, towards speculations upon the perfectibility According to M. Lackanal, in the United States, of mankind on earth. Unbelievers of ardent and ima-nothing is easier, than divorce-nothing more secure ginative temperaments are very prone to fall into this His account of our negro slavery, and the condition of from judicial process and social disgrace than insolvency.' fanatic trance; for, when incredulity draws an impene- the free colored people, rivals at least that of Miss Martrable veil over the future, it is perfectly natural that tineau. The Central or Federal Executive power is men should become the dupes of these gross delusions. without means of enforcing the laws of Congress with the And why should this astonish reflecting men, when the States, who resist whenever they please. With every distinguished divine, who has become the apologist of its height. No American entertains the least veneraAmerican, individualism or personal independence is at Kneeland, the blasphemer, boldly sustains Tappan, tion for the law, or respect for the magistrate; he the agitator? creates both one day; he can unmake them the day We will invite public attention to a few more ex-after; he never forgets that they are his work. The tracts from Dr. Channing's libel upon our character and people literally regard the President, the members of government, and hasten to conclude. "We are a rest-Congress, the judges, as their servants, and give them no other appellation. They slap them in the face,-so less people," says Dr. Channing, "prone to encroach-great is their irreverence: witness the slap dealt to ment, impatient of the ordinary laws of progress, less President Jackson, and with impunity. If a member of anxious to consolidate and to perfect than to extend our Congress ventures to call for laws to repress popular institutions, more ambitious of spreading ourselves over excesses, he only provokes new storms, this is what a wide space, than of diffusing beauty and fruitfulness happened after the conflagration of the Ursuline convent near Boston.' Lackanal then read details of General over a narrower field. Henceforth we must cease to cry Jackson's treatment of legislators and judges at New peace, peace. Our eagle will whet, not gorge its appe-Orleans, of the execution of Arbuthnot and Ambrister tite on its first victim; and will snuff a more tempting quarry, more alluring blood in every new region which opens southward. To me it seems not only the RIGHT, but the DUTY of the free states, in case of the annexa-dent, let loose the reins of Democracy, in order to betion of Texas, to say to the slaveholding states, we come at length a necessary dictator. In fine, the futuregard this act as the dissolution of the Union. We will rity of the United States is a curious and pregnant not become partners in your schemes of spreading and problem. Will these wild democracies ultimately fall into the track, shape and polity of the old communities perpetuating slavery, in your hopes of conquest, in of the world, or will the elements now fermenting in your unrighteous spoils. A PACIFIC DIVISION in the America, engender a new régime and a new aspect for first instance seems to me to threaten less contention, human society?' I leave these questions to the sooththan a lingering, feverish dissolution of the Union, sayers. With regard to the superior respect manifested such as must be expected under this fatal innovation. in France for the guaranties of the law, let the point be examined with a little reference to the domestic history We shall expose our freedom to great peril by entering of France under the old Bourbons, during the revolution, a new career of crime. We are corrupt enough already," or even since the revival or vindication of the charter &c. "Still I am compelled to acknowledge an extent of in 1830. France is still under the government of state corruption among us, which menaces freedom, and our necessity; and the popular excesses are far more nudearest interests. That the cause of republicanism is merous and grave, than those which occur in the United States. The riots at Tours, Amiens, Angouleme, suffering abroad, through the defects and crimes of our Bordeaux, Macon, of recent date, cost more blood than countrymen, is as true as that it is regarded with in- all the disorders of the kind which have occurred in the creased skepticism among ourselves. Abroad, repub- United States since the date of their constitution. Last licanism is identified with the United States, and it is week we had information of a female commotion on the certain that the American name has not risen of late in the banks of the Rhone. The women assembled in great numbers, broke down some dykes just constructed, and world." Deeply as we revere the function of the priest-fought a hard battle with the soldiery called in by a hood in its appropriate exercise, a love for truth and sub-prefect to disperse or capture the ladies. Were it justice to our common country, compels us to pronounce not for the military force always at hand, what would these extracts a gross libel on the American character be the ostensible respect for law?-Unfortunately, and government. In the just indignation which every owing principally to the idea of an overwhelming milithroughout Europe, the influence of law seems to be man who respects the national character must feel for tary coercion. Law is received as the work of selfish this unwarrantable and unfounded abuse by a christian power, not of executives and legislatures instituted and divine and native citizen, there is little inclination to acting for the national weal. However, the comparacomplain of the Io triumphes! which the British review-tively few disorders, and the instances of Lynch justice,

er pours forth abundantly over the moral degradation of a people, who, before the publication of Dr. Channing, had persuaded themselves that they were the purest,

and similar measures-adding-tout cela pouvait avoir son utilite; mais ces faits sont peu d'accord avec le respect M. Lackanal thinks that General Jackson, while Presiqu'on proffesse en France pour les guaranties de la loi.'

of which so much is made in the London and Paris papers, together with the historical character of European democracy, have produced an almost universal impression that the American citizen is and must be

General and State authorities."

tolerant feelings of men; they were set apart to bless,

anarchical; and it is upon this supposed lawlessness or time to abandon his appropriate functions to fan the that the writers on the Canada rebellion count as a flame of political excitement, or to seek distinction by sure and all-sufficient auxiliary for that rebellion, what-mingling in the heady current of religious or political ever may be the dispositions and proclamations of our fanaticism. When not employed in the functions of That we shall ultimately attain our destiny-that would suit them far better than the publication of lettheir ministry, prayer in the solitude of their chambers our decline and fall will at some future day add another to the many lessons of experience, to instruct future character and morals. They were consecrated to ministers to eminent statesmen, derogatory to the national generations-will only furnish another proof of the per-ter to the spiritual necessities, not to pander to the inishable nature of all human institutions. But that we shall demonstrate the great problem of the capability of man for self-government, and of the capacity of republiWhether we look to the extent of our territory, emcan institutions to secure the greatest share of happiness and freedom to the greatest number, we can never bracing every temperate clime, and teeming with every doubt, so long as the past is admitted to be an index to variety of production, or to the character and promise the future. Indeed it is by no means improbable that of our free institutions, evidences of the munificence of the Union may be dissolved, and that we may be forced a bountiful Creator crowd around us, and impel us to into new associations by the agitators of the northern maintain that union upon which much of our happiness and security depends, and which none but ourselves can put asunder. Licentiousness and insubordination, the impatience which frets under a system of

states.

And the blow which severs the bond will come

from the south, and the northmen will be startled in the midst of their agitations, by the decisive action of a people who have long since been convinced that upon the delicate subject of slavery there is no longer any union or sympathy between the free and the slave states. That blow already impends. Indeed we have twice seen the union of these states endangered. Once by New England in the dark hour of adversity, and once by South Carolina in the floodtide of prosperity. And during the session of the present Congress, when the southern members were driven from the hall of representatives by the abolitionists of the north, the Union for the time being was virtually dissolved.

But there are better days, there are brighter auspices before us. Even the reverend gentleman himself, prophetic of evil as he is, is constrained to admit that among dark omens he sees favorable influences, reme. dial processes, counteracting agencies. And we will venture to predict, that another lustre will not have passed away before the whole band of agitators, with their clerical leaders at their head, bowing down before the indignation of a long suffering people, will be made to confess and to feel that fanaticism is not religion, that intemperate zeal is not charity, and that political religionism is only calculated for the meridian of Spain It is a melancholy but growing conviction, that a considerable portion of our clergy is falling away from the sound morality and staid sobriety of the fathers of the American church. Ambition seems still to be a weed of quick and early vegetation in the vineyard of Christ; and surpliced priests, forgetful of the sanctity of their function, and swollen beyond the girth of the canon, plunge headlong into the turbid waters of political controversy, and instead of being ministrants of peace and good will, are constantly obtruding themselves upon the public, and mingling in the most exciting and exasperating discussions. Sterne was a lewd hypocrite, and has, we believe, had no imitators in this country; but the politico-religious demagogue, Swift, has many competitors for the vile crown which he preeminently merited. It is because of our reverence for the clerical order, that we regret at all times to hear the voice of one consecrated to christian meekness and charity, lifted up amid the political clamor, where nothing pure can live and retain its purity. The forum is no place for the priest; and if he be earnestly devoted to the service of his Master, the widow and the orphan, the sick and the prisoner, the sorrowful and the dying, all the ministrations of charity will so engage his feelings and occupy his attention, that he will have little inclination

and not to curse mankind.

established order, and the fanaticism which would hur

ry man by unnatural stimulants towards unattainable perfection, these are the restless and natural enemies of republican establishments; and the agitator and politico-religionist are the high priests of intemperance and misrule. We have opened a new volume in the book of man, more precious than the last of the Sybil's. We have collected from the wisdom and experience of departed ages a new theory of government. It is an experiment ripe with promise to unborn generations. We have no past history of our own to guide us; we stand wilderness the consecrated emblems of freedom, and if, forth before the nations of the earth bearing through a after a weary pilgrimage, we shall attain the promised land, and infuse the spirit which animates us into stable and permanent institutions; if we shall kindle the divine flame of liberty upon altars surrounded and protected by a nation of invincible freemen; if we shall substitute, in the structure of governmental machinery, the controlling power of mind for absolute will, and rational equality for artificial checks and privileges; then may the governments of the old world tremble for their time-honored and crippled observances, for the ancient despotisms will be crushed beneath the vast and magnificent structure of democracy, which is already pushing its foundations far and wide, into the confidence and affections of mankind. It is this principle of democracy, now in the full sweep of successful experiment, that alarms the despotism of the old world, and induces its votaries, with thoughts that are fathers to their wishes, to found, upon such unmerited libels as those of Dr. Channing and Mrs. Trolloppe, prophetic arguments of our speedy dissolution. These are men whose thoughts, feelings, habits, associations and prejudices, are closely interwoven with things of the olden time, and have embraced with a thousand delicate tendrils which may be sundered but never disengaged, the crumbling ruins of the ancient fabric, whose mouldering condition is concealed from themselves by the luxuriance of their affections. They look upon all change as ruin, and all decay as the fruitful source of life and beauty. Although they seem to walk with eyes wilfully darkened, yet in their hearts have they trembled; for they have felt the agitations beneath and around them, and they "grope tremblingly among the bristling energies of popular feeling as if they were on the crater of a volcano." They live with the past-they have no hope for the future; and the spirit which ani