God forbid! but this gives us no high character: and it is to be remembered that a degree of wickedness, which in a monarchy and a profligate aristocracy is expected, and hardly noticed, and which is but as another coating of moss over the weather-beaten castles of oppression, may shake our institutions to pieces. "The best governments," said Lord Bacon, in one of his excellent aphorisms, " are always subject to be like the fairest crystals, wherein every icicle or grain is seen, which in a fouler stone is never perceived." A disregard of rectitude and a violence and cruelty of invasion on our part, like that which has marked the unprincipled career of England in China and Affghanistan, would have turned the whole world against us.

We have the evil of a national conscience warped by conflicting interests among State governments. At the iniquitous suit, and under the rapacious outcry of one of our States, a national treaty with the Indians is no more regarded than a parchment of the dark ages. One or two acts of public fraud upon large masses, allowed or connived at by the government, will go far to compromit its principles; and besides, will set an example to the State governments that cannot fail to be followed. If the government of the United States begin with injustice and oppression, no matter upon what class, or for what supposed necessity, the government of the States will continue the career in public repudiation, and then private corporations will follow the example in enormous acts of swindling, and private individuals and fraudulent bankrupts and defaulters will complete the game.

Corruption thus may spread to the heart's core, while yet every thing external looks fair and flourishing. This monstrous form of public debauchery, the repudiation of State debts, rivals the catalogue of State vices all the world over. The burning indignation and sarcasm of a Juvenal would have found nothing to surpass it in meanness, in cowardice, in falsehood, in iniquity, even among the rotting corruptions of public and private morality in the carcass of the Roman Empire. And what argues, and no wonder that it should, to the mind of observers from abroad, a portentous dereliction of moral principle and public conscience throughout the whole country, is the callousness, the apathy, the cool endurance, with which the proposition of such perfidious, such swindling, such sweeping insolvency has been received. Surely, if we go on in this way, we shall become a by-word to the nations. It will no longer be Punica fides that points the moral of the school-boy, and tips the arrow of the public satirist with gall.

Another evil which I shall notice, and a great danger, because it springs partly out of the freedom we enjoy, is to be found in the nature, prevalence, and power of our Newspaper Literature. It is left in great measure to chance, or to the upturnings of political party scum, who shall be its leaders, and what may be its shape; and yet there is nothing that should be guarded with more watchfulness, nothing into which the spirit of a pure morality and high political honour, and true patriotism, is more needful to be breathed.

There is nothing of such mighty power among us, no machinery that will exert a more inevitable influence either to bless or to destroy. The influence of our newpapers upon our higher literature is deplorable; but this would be nothing if the public utterances of our newpapers were utterances of truth. They are becoming a school of Sophists worse than ever were bred in the literature of Greece. As to the Sophists in that country, the opinion of Schlegel that the political purity of the Grecian governments was at last entirely overthrown by them is deeply to be pondered; for the same sophistry may reign here, which there had the merit of creating a spirit of corruption and debasement, which neither party-strife, nor protracted wars, nor foreign bribery, nor bloody revolutions, had been able to produce. No Sophists ever walked beneath the open air of that delicious clime, and taught the people, whose influence was to be compared to that of the daily issues of the newspaper press in this country. Nor can we speak the painfulness of our emotions, when we see these daily schools of thousands of our people under the care of mere hirelings; when we see some of the leading journals of our land in the hands of men utterly destitute of moral principle.

I shall mention but one more danger; it is connected with the prevalence of Romanism. Men have sometimes descanted on the danger of an imperium in imperio. Looking at the universal nature of Romanism as developed in the world's history, I confess that I am afraid of it. The Ro

manists move in close phalanx. There is a power in the Vatican at Rome, which they still acknowledge; they are proud of it; and never yet has one of the assumptions of that MAN OF SIN, who still "sitteth in the temple of God showing himself that he is God," been laid aside. It is an amusing picture that Bunyan has drawn of the Pope in his cave, as a rheumatic old giant, biting his lips, and mumbling between his teeth to the passing pilgrims, "You will never mend till more of you are burned." There are signs in some quarters of Giant Grim's rheumatism being cured. At all. events, he still has an arm long enough to reach across the Atlantic; and if it be true that the Roman Catholic voters in this country will move at his bidding, then, since it is true that the phalanx of such voters is strong enough to sway the balance between parties, there may be some probability in the assertion that ten years will not pass away, before the President of these United States will be nominated in the Vatican. That Romanism is the same in this country as in the old world, is sufficiently manifest from its hostility against the Scriptures. We have witnessed in this very State a monstrous act of sacrilege in an Auto da fe of Romanists for the burning of the Word of God, and two hundred Bibles were committed to the flames! I confess that am afraid of the action of Romanism upon my country's liberties. I am afraid of the influence of whatever is afraid of the Bible. If there be a sect that lives by shutting out the light, in a country like ours, such a system is dangerous. It has been remarked with great point and power,

on the occasion of the recent Biblical Conflagration, that the only light, which the system of Romanism would willingly shed from the Bible on the people, is "the light of its holy leaves on fire."

Gentlemen of the New England Society; -I am grateful for the opportunity of addressing you on this occasion. We all recognise and venerate the New England privilege of speaking one's mind. Sentire quid velis, et quod sentias dicere, to think what you please, and to speak what you think, we hope will ever be an element in the civil, social, and religious atmosphere of that beloved native region of ours, where no slave breathes, and if the genius of New England can prevent it, never shall! Suffer me to close with THE MEMORY OF OUR PILGRIM FATHERS, and with the grateful recognition of the truth, that as they did what never had been done in Europe, founded an Empire in selfdenial, suffering, and the most unwavering trust in God, so we, more than any other nation in the world, two hundred years after the landing of the Pilgrims, are thrown entirely upon the Spirit of GOD for the success and stability of our institutions. A Despotism may stand by the very misery of its subjects; a free and happy Republic can stand only by the blessing and the help of God.