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lished a regular government in their conquests. As no effort was made by this state, whose population amounts to above 700,000 free people, to prevent the conquest, so none was made to expel the enemy. Enslaved by faction, she whined, and scolded, and murmured, and winced, and threatened, and cursed the administration for not defending her, although she had made every possible exertion to enfeeble the government, and render it incapable of defence.

To sum up the whole.

Massachusetts was energetic, firm, bold, daring, and decisive in a contest with the general government. She would not abate an inch. She dared it to a conflict. She seized it by the throat, determined to strangle it!— She was untameable as a lion, or a tiger, or a panther. But she was long-suffering, and mild, and patient, and harmless, and inoffensive, and gentle, and meek, as a lamb, or a turtle-dove, when she came in contact with the enemy!

There is some mystery hangs about this affair, which time alone can develope. That the British should attack Massachusetts, where they have so many friends, and spare Pennsylvania, where the great majority are hostile to them, is so contrary to all the rules of true policy, as to be almost inexplicable. I dare not trust myself to hazard a conjecture on the subject.The tame acquiescence of such a powerful state, in so degrading a situation, must have some extraordinary motive. None occurs to my mind that I would choose to commit to paper.

But mark the contrast!-what a contrast! Tennessee, with a large territory of 43,000 square miles-a white population of only 217,727, and a black one of 44,535, to guard against, is assailed by the most powerful combination of Indians, and those of the bravest character that ever existed since the first settlement of this country. She neither winced-nor whined-nor cursed the government-nor shrunk from danger-nor threatened a separation. She arose in her strength. She girded on her armour. She called her sons from the counter and the plough-from the anvil and the loom-from the bench and the bar-from the senate-house and the council-chamber--and with a very small degree of assistance from Georgia, she vanquished the hardy warriors, whom a false reliance on British aid had allured to their ruin. Every successive effort on the part of the deluded assailants was equally pregnant with destruction. Com pletely vanquished, they bent their necks to the yoke. They cursed that seduction which tempted them from ease, and comfort, and happiness; and on the forehead of their nation imprinted the broad seal of perdition.

Since the above was written, Tennessee has earned tenfold fame by the heroism and public spirit her hardy sons have displayed at New Orleans, where they acquired not merely for themselves and their own state-but for the entire nation, a wreath of imperishable glory. In this grand achievement Kentucky partook largely. Both these noble states poured forth their sons by thousands, some of them from a distance of nearly eight hundred miles, to repel the invaders of their native country. With what effect they performed this patriotic service, history will convey to posterity, countless ages hence.It will be a subject of laudable pride to belong to a nation, whose lawyers, and doctors--whose farmers and shopkeeperswhose clerks and mechanics, hastily collected together, signally defeated an army of veterans, as formidable as any equal number ever arrayed in arms.

The genius of Columbia hides her face with shame, and sorrow, and anguish, when she regards the ancient state of Massachusetts, degenerated from, and a disgrace to, her hardy ances tors. But she looks down with pride, and pleasure, and exultation, on the youthful, high-spirited, patriotic, and heroic Tennessee and Georgia.

It is hardly possible to find a stronger contrast-more disgraceful on the one side-more honourable on the other.

The blind leading the blind.

There is no man whose zeal in inflaming the public mind, has equalled that of the writer of the Road to Ruin. He has published as many different sets of papers to excite the abhorrence and detestation of the eastern states against the administration, as would fill two or three large volumes. He is, in politics, as very an enrage as ever lived. So violent are his pas sions on this topic, that they lead him eternally astray. He commits himself by the most extravagant positions, which nothing but the epidemical madness of the times would have suffered to escape the keenest ridicule.

In "the Road to Ruin," he most pathetically deplores the destruction of commerce, and the introduction of manufactures, both of which he regards as equal subjects of lamentation.-And to make the stronger appeal to the passions of his readers -to enhance the misfortune of the loss of commerce-he very gravely states its profits at "fifty per cent!!!" It is even so, reader. 66 Fifty per cent !!!! It is hard to conceive a higher grade of extravagance and folly. The average profits of successful commerce are not twelve per cent. And if the whole of the commercial capital employed in this country, du

ring the last twenty years, be taken into view, including that of the merchants who have become bankrupts, it is probable that the profits do not exceed eight per cent. The failures among that class are very numerous, and out of all proportion greater than among any other. Of the merchants in New York and Philadelphia who were in eminence ten years ago, I think I am warranted in saying, that nearly two-thirds have been utterly ruined. It is well known that the West India trade has been almost always a losing one. In fact, of the few fortunate merchants who escape ship-wreck, it may be fairly said,

"Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto."

This writer is either a deceiver-or he has deceived himself. In either case he is "a blind leader of the blind." And it can never be sufficiently deplored, that a man in this situation should have had so very pernicious an influence on the destinies of eight millions of people and their posterity. He has chosen a most felicitous title " The Road to Ruin"-and verily he has so long been leading his deluded followers on "the road to ruin," that he has brought them to the very verge of the precipice.

1

Lest the reader should suppose I have done him injustice, I submit his own words. If I have tortured his meaning, on my head be all the censure I have so freely bestowed upon him

"We take from trade a capital which produced FIFTY PER CENT, and we invest it in manufactures, PRECARIOUS IN THEIR NATURE, which may never produce twenty, and which may prove our ruin."'*

This short paragraph is as fallacious as any equal number of lines ever published. Every position it lays down is deceptious. When the writer emphatically states, that manufactures are "precarious in their nature," he must mean, by way of contradistinction, that commerce is blest with absolute security.Both are arrant errors. Commerce is proverbially insecure.— No degree of prudence affords full security in that department. Manufactures, prudently managed, have as much certainty as any other human undertakings whatever.

One word more. What dependence can be placed upon the assertions, the insinuations, the allegations, on subjects abstruse or difficult to decide upon, of a man who makes such an egregious, such a momentous error in a case where detection treads so closely on his heels ?†

*See in the Examiner, vol. i, page 141, the Road to Ruin, No. VIII.

+ I here make a public apology for having erroneously ascribed these seditious and inflammatory publications to the late amiable judge Lowell. My distance from the place of their publication will, I trust, apologize, as well as account for

the error.

CHAPTER LVI.

Pulpit politics. Prostitution of the sacred functions. on board the Ocean. An anthology of sedition.

war.

Massacre Success of the

No sound nat a divine

"Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. sught to be heard in the church but the voice of healing charity." idea!] "The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion, by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them, are for the greater part, both ignorant of the character they leave, and of the character they assume. Wholly unacquainted with the world, in which they are so fond of medling, and inexperienced in all its affairs, on which they pronounce with so much confidence they know nothing of politics but the passions they excite. Surely the church is a place where one day's truce ought to be allowed to the dissentions and animosities of mankind."

Burke.

Of all the abominations that disgrace and dishonour this country in these portentous times, I know nothing more deserving of reprobation than the prostitution of the pulpit for party or political purposes. No man of correct mind can seriously reflect upon it without shuddering with horror.

A clergyman, whose functions pre-eminently require him to preach "peace and good will among men," ascends the pulpit among a congregation assembled to unite in praising and adoring their Omnipotent Creator. He holds in his hands the testament of Jesus Christ, which breathes nothing but peace-he pronounces, and has for a text, the words of Jesus Christ, or of his apostles, of the most pacific tendency: and, as a suitable accompaniment, for an hour long he employs all his zeal, all his talents, all his influence, for the anti-christian, the inhuman purpose of enkindling among his hearers the most baleful, the most furious passions -of preparing them for insurrection and revolution-for all the horrors of civil war !

"The alternative then is, that if you do not wish to become the slaves of those who own slaves, and who are themselves the slaves of French slaves, you must either, in the language of the day, CUT THE CONNEXION, or so far alter the national compact, as to insure yourselves a due share in the government."

This elegant and sublime morceau, which breathes so much of the spirit of St. Paul, "let every soul be subject to the higher powers," is taken from a sermon preached in Boston, by the Rev. Mr. Gardiner, July 23, 1812. The christian injunction of "cutting the connexion," that is, rebelling against their own government, wonderfully accords with the declaration of the text, which, gentle reader, is-"I am for peace.”

Psalm 120, v. 7. Never was there a more wonderful associa tion-"Cut the connexion”—and ~ “I am for pcace!" From such apostles of peace, good Lord deliver us!

It is impossible much to aggravate the hideousness of this procedure. But when the preacher commits himself by falsehood, even unde signedly, as sometimes happens, it caps the odious climax. On the eve of a general election a few years since in Massachusetts, to answer the purposes of party, a fabulous story was circulated, that the French had massacred the crew of a vessel called the Ocean. It was one of the thousand falsehoods invented to answer momentary purposes of the same kind. A clergyman, whose name I spare, seized the story with avidity-wove it into his sermon-and invoked the vengeance of heaven on the murderers. But mark the end of it. The holy zeal of the auditory had not time to cool, when, to cover the preacher with confusion, a resurrection of the murdered crew took place. They returned home, safe and sound, from the stillettos and daggers of the blood-thirsty Frenchand held out a strong memento to the preacher against a repetition of such an anti-christian procedure.

The practice of preaching political sermons is utterly improper, even when a congregation are all united-all of one sentiment, if such a case ever occurred. But when they are divided, as must necessarily almost always happen, what a view does it present? That portion of the congregation differing from the politics of the preacher, are reduced to the alternative of either absenting themselves from divine worship, or sitting patiently silent under the undeserved reproaches, and abuse, and maledictions of a man who fiies in the face of all his duties, and to whom they cannot offer a reply.

To enable the reader to form a correct estimate of the abomination which I have here denounced, and of the justice of the denunciation itself, I present him with an anthology, selected from the sermons of three clergymen, the Rev. Messrs. Parish, Osgood, and Gardiner, to whom no small portion of the seeds of insurrection, rebellion, and civil war, so plentifully sown in the eastern states, is justly chargeable. Never, since the first establishment of the clerical functions, were they more miserably employed-more contrary to the divine injunctions of the meek and mild Jesus, whose disciples these reverend gentlemen profess to be-whose doctrines they profess to teach-and whose example they profess to follow, and to hold out for imitation.

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