No mere man, since the fall, ever held power without being in much danger of abusing it, when interest or fear did not restrain him. It is the clearest dictate of an impartial judgment, therefore, that those alone who are defended against venality by personal integrity and honour, should be trusted with places of authority. But too little regard, however, is paid to this principle of propriety and safety. As a general fact, the moral worth of a candidate for office is the last quality inquired for; and the absence of that worth, the last circumstance which will prevent his election. If the true, unostentatious, pure-minded man, should, for his competency and his merit, be carried into office over the corrupt and clamorous partisan, it would attract general observation, as an exception and a marvel. The offices in the gift of the government are bestowed with equal recklessness in respect to character. The most vile and abandoned of the community are often the successful applicants for place. "The spoils to the victors" has been, if not the motto, at least the practice of every political party in the country for the last forty years. The motto means, the offices to the members of the triumphant party, with or without qualifications. As splendid prizes on-broad sheets, for hungry lottery gamblers, or as the riches. and sensual pleasures of a splendid city, promised to an army thirsting for rapine and plunder, so emoluments and honours are hung out and offered, at the opening of the political campaign, to whet appetite and to impel to more desperate struggles.

This is a fair exemplification of the spirit and the principle by which a large proportion of four hundred thousand offices are filled in this country. That the claims and qualifications of the high-minded, the intelligent, the uncorrupt, should be disregarded, and the incompetent and wicked set up to bear rule, is a dereliction of political rectitude, for which the land ought to be clothed in sackcloth and ashes.

State and national legislation often shows a great destitution of magnanimity and justice. There is first a narrow, sectional principle, governing public measures. The legislator, instead of regarding himself as he is, à representative of the

THIRD SERIES, VOL. II. NO. IV.

39

whole broad national domain, instead of guarding, with a large and impartial patriotism, the grand aggregate interests of his entire country, comes all the way down to look exclusively upon the claims of a little spot where resides his own personal constituency. He votes and advocates, not according to universal justice and utility, but according to lines of latitude and longitude. In respect to one-half the questions which come up for legislation, we correctly predict beforehand, at our firesides, how any one of the people's representatives will vote, simply by ascertaining where lies his farm, his merchandise, his clients, his patients, his personal interests, his dear political friends. We need, in order to be informed what course legislation will take in matters touching the great principles of equity and justice, not Montesquieu, Vattel and Blackstone, but the last published partisan print.

Too many of our politicians seem to limit their vision to immediate, as well as personal and sectional advantages. For the sake of a trifling good at hand, great, growing, permanent interests are unhesitatingly sacrificed. "They are the little hucksters, who cannot resist the temptation of a present sixpence, who reinvest every week, and derive their petty profits every night, instead of being the large-minded operators, who send their cargoes to the other side of the world, and wait years until the return of a fleet for their profits."

There is also a mode of carrying measures by a bargain and exchange of votes, which evinces an abandonment of the principles of equity and true, patriotism. Different sections of the State-have each their objects to accomplish. Now says a friend of one of these measures, "Vote for my bill and I will vote for yours." Agreed! What are the reasons and considerations for your project?" "It will relieve and enrich an important portion of the community, by opening a thoroughfare for the surplus produce. It will increase the revenues of the State, by increasing the tolls on one hundred miles of railroad with which it is connected." "Good, very good! My improvement has advantages no less. It is a canal; it will afford water privileges, invite capitalists, erect

manufactories; it will carry out produce, and bring in merchandise, population, wealth." " Enough! very well argued, I go for it." In this method many wise and good measures may be carried, but the objection is, they are not carried on principle; the evil is, sentiments of justice and of right are abandoned and outraged. It would be more admissible to buy men to do right, if we did not, in doing so, sell ourselves to do wrong, or at least sell ourselves to do another's bidding without inquiry. It would be more admissible to buy men to do right, if it did not appeal to them directly to act from interest and not from righteousness, and thereby turn legislation into a shameless system of unprincipled selfishness.

There is, on the part of some public men, a sacrifice of conscience and of personal opinion to a servile obedience to a constituency. This is a manifest dishonour to the principles of rectitude. The candidate, previous to his being up for public favour, was a man, an independent man; he thought for himself, he acted for himself; the moment the canvass commences he is transformed strangely; his opinions now are the opinions of his political supporters; his will is their will; his whole being is shaped on their model. Had he remained a private citizen, he would have remained a man ; now he is an automaton of artificial springs and joints, and moves just as the blessed people pull the wires. O shame! Creature of the Eternal mind, immortal intelligence, susceptible, gifted, powerful, thou wast not made for such pliancy! Why become a bubble to float whither the wind is setting on, or to break and melt undistinguished into the common air? Why be one of the figures of a puppet-show, when you might be a human being, independent, self-developing, self-instructing, self-acting? A legislature, made up of men who give their votes and make their patriotic protestations, not according to any established principles of righteousness and duty, but according to dictations received from home, should have its sittings in a grand magnetic telegraph office, and each man be furnished with a wire bringing up opinions from his constituents on every question proposed.

A public dereliction of political rectitude has been evinced in respect to pecuniary obligations. Without avowed repudiation, there has been on the part of some of the states such laxness of sentiment, and such neglect of equitable liabilities, as to shock the moral sense and awaken the just alarm of all honest men. There has been a series of stay laws, appraisement laws, and insolvent laws, which have seriously impaired the validity of contracts, and though enacted possibly with benevolent intentions, have acted powerfully to sink punctuality, honesty, and good faith. Men thus made dishonest by law, have not been slow to make themselves more deeply dishonest by depravity, just as an army given up by authority to plunder to any the smallest extent, will give themselves up to an unbounded violence and rapine. In some parts of the country, such has been the looseness in principle and practice in respect to pecuniary obligations, both on the part of government and of people, as seriously to diminish the value of property. Every private and public improvement, every acre of land, every dwelling, every bushel of wheat, every pound of meat, every promissory note, suffered a serious. depreciation; all pecuniary engagements became less reliable; general distrust, general hesitation in business, general embarrassment, portended ruin.

An alarming moral laxity shows itself on the part of the public authorities of the country, in respect to the punishment of crime. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed," stands the law of God unrepealed, unamended, unmodified. Several legislators, however, deeming themselves more wise than God, and more benevolent than Jesus, who intimated no abrogation, have sought to blot this solemn precept from the criminal code. The same disregard of rectitude appears in the refusal of juries to convict men for street-fighting, duelling, horse-racing, gambling. This state of things certainly shows a melancholy palsy of the public conscience.

Executive pardons, rendering convictions, when they are obtained, null and void, evince a sad and dangerous insensi

bility to crime. This lessening and removing of penalties has greatly diminished the power and majesty of law in general, and thereby laid open the property and the peace of honest citizens to the unprincipled and the wicked. In this way, at the instigation of vicious lawbreakers, government has treacherously and ungratefully violated its solemn compact with the people, by which it covenanted to overawe violence and dishonesty, and afford them protection and peace.

There lies in the heart of this country an immense evil, a pregnant mischief, in the form of domestic slavery. This system, it is true, was originally introduced by private cupidity under the patronage of the government of the mother country. But, for its perpetuation as well as for its oppressions, there rests a fearful responsibility on those public authorities under which it has continued to exist and to increase. Said Thomas Jefferson, after alluding to the effects of slavery, "If God be just, I tremble for my country." Wherein the national legislature refuses to do what it can, wherein the state legislatures refuse to do what they can, to mitigate and remove this vast evil, full of dangers and unspeakable corruptions, there lies a great unpardoned sin at their doors. It is a huge wickedness in our public men, after adopting with enthusiasm the words of our declaration, "all men are created free and equal," then to turn away coldly from three millions of beings like themselves, crushed in physical power, crushed in intellect, crushed in heart, crushed in character, crushed in hope, crushed in life, crushed in eternity.

There are certain false political maxims originated and industriously circulated, usually by men of official dignity, which are flagrant outrages on rectitude and honour. One of these is the doctrine that all is fair in politics. You may not steal a neighbour's purse 'tis trash, 'twas and has been slave. to thousands; nevertheless it is sacred! If you touch it, you will be branded as a thief; but "all is fair in politics." If this same neighbour is in the field as a candidate, of his good name, the dearest property a man has on earth, you may rob him without measure and without mercy. You may not turn