VOL. IV. RICHMOND, SEPTEMBER, 1838. T. W. WHITE, Editor and Proprietor. POLITICAL RELIGIONISM. BY A SOUTHRON. 1. A Letter to the Hon. Henry Clay, on the Annexation of Texas; by William E. Channing, D.D. Boston. 1837. 2. "TEXAS." Quarterly Review, June, 1838. No. IX. FIVE DOLLARS PER ANNUM. ing their own upon the character of a whole people? Intelligence is progressive and cumulative, however nations may relapse into barbarism; and each departing age pours its increasing treasures into the lap of its successor. The link of mind is never broken. In every age and clime, however stormy and tempestuous, the divine intellect, like the electric flame spring. ing into life from the dark bosom of the clouds, rolls its voice over the chasms of darkened ages, and lights up every summit which lifts its head from amid the surrounding gloom. Far along, From peak to peak, the rattling crags among Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud, It is unfortunate for mankind, that the literary character is not associated in glory with other professional classes of society. The latter pressing more immediately upon the attention of men, are stimulated by personal interests and remunerated by early honors; while the former, habituated to seclusion, produces its rich fruits in concealment, which are neither appreciated nor gathered until a late period of life. Indeed the utility of their labors is not always capable of immediate application, and is not unfrequently undervalued by the passing generation. Thus Milton and Shakspeare felt springing within them the germs of immor-gifted sons; and it is wonderful with what rapidity the tality, and overlooking the opinions of the age in which germs of intellect expand in fruitful soils. How often is the creative spark struck forth in a moment, and after they lived, wrote for posterity. It was when the mind the lapse of ages caught and kindled into a living of Kepler, awake to celestial harmony, was filled with blaze. There is a singleness and unity in the pursuits the enthusiasm of genius, and when he felt that the of genius through all time, which produce a species of age in which he lived would not appreciate the value of consanguinity in the characters of authors. Men of his discoveries, that he exclaimed: "I have stolen the genius, flourishing in distant periods or in remote and golden vessels of the Egyptians, and I will build of inhospitable countries, seem to be the same persons them a tabernacle to my God. If you pardon me I re- with another name, whose minds have in the intervenjoice, if you reproach me I can endure it; the die is ing time been constantly improving, and thus the litethrown. I can wait one century for a reader, if God rary character long since departed, appears only to have himself waited six thousand years for an observer of transmigrated. In the great march of the human inhis works." Genius is immortal, and not unlike the tellect, each still occupies the same place, and is still actors in the Grecian games, the torch of science has carrying on with the same powers his great work been passed from hand to hand, in all ages, by the through a line of centuries. Sometimes indeed it hap"great lights of the world." Genius creates an intel-pens that some useful labor is lost for a season, some lectual nobility which is conferred on literary charac-one of the greater lights is apparently struck from the ters by the involuntary feelings of the public; and it is the noble prerogative of genius to elevate obscure men to the higher classes of society. But this fame is not unfrequently posthumous, and the Grecian virgins scattered garlands throughout the seven islands of Greece, upon the turf beneath which were supposed to lie the remains of the blind old bard, who wandered in penury and obscurity through life, or only sung passages of his divine poem at the festive board of his contemporaries. system; but another Kepler arises to point out the discord in the celestial harmony, and some future observer discovers in the vast fields of space, the fragments of the lost planet, and restores the broken chord. In the history of genius there is no chronology; the whole book is open before us; every thing is present, and the earliest discovery is connected by a thousand links with the most recent. Many men of genius must arise before a particular man of genius can appear. Aristophanes, in his comic scenes, ridiculed the Grecian mythology, The small cities of Athens and of Florence attest the and Epicurus, following in his footsteps, shook the pilinfluence of the literary character over nations; for, the lars of Olympus. The skeptic mind of Wickliffe overone received the tribute of the mistress of the world, shadowed the genius of John Huss-and Luther, girdwhen the Roman youth crowded the walks of her phi-ing himself with their armor, caused the institutions of losophy, and the other, after the revival of letters, dis- Europe to tremble to their foundations. Cicero, in his pensed all the treasures of literature to the admiring sublime morality, startled the warriors of Rome with nations of Europe. Those who govern mankind can- a lesson of unwonted mercy. He wished them to spare not at the same time enlighten them; they merely regu- their enemies even "after the battering ram had smitlate their manners and their morals: but the literary ten the walls." And Beccaria, catching this amiable class, standing between the governors and the govern- spirit, opposed the voice of humanity to the rooted preed, light up with the divine ray of intellect, and give judices of ages. We might extend our illustrations of shape, and character, and beauty and utility to the this sublime truth indefinitely, and we could with whole framework of society. And to descend from equal facility trace the immense, we had almost said the classes to individuals, how often do we behold gifted frightful influence of men of genius over the destinies men, master spirits, springing up, and with pregnant of mankind, since the invention of printing and the reinspiration, from the depths of their solitude, impress-vival and cultivation of polite letters. We might in VOL. IV.-69 dicate trivial and remote causes, sleeping for ages, and suddenly springing, by a happy combination, into stupendous results. The same law obtains in the intellectual and in the animal kingdoms. The submarine labors of the coral animalculæ, and the seeds floating on the bosom of the deep, have planted in the depths of the ocean large and fertile islands. How extensive then, and how incalculable are the consequences of human action, and how resistlessly and absolutely is it swayed by men of genius? writer,* in his review of Miss Martineau on slavery, in the November number of the Messenger, "public opinion is of very slow, very temperate, and very judicious formation. It is the aggregate of small truths, and the experience of successive days and years, which, heaped together, form a general principle, which is of instant conviction in every bosom. It only requires to receive a name in order to become a law; and a law, which is precipitately imposed upon a people, in advance of the formation of this sort of public opinion, will soon be openly abolished, or become obsolete in the progress of events. For my own part, I am satisfied with the existing laws, until the convictions of the majority and the progress of experience shall call for their improvement. I have no respect for those who set themselves up for makers of public opinion; and as for the 'hell broth,' so compounded, I know not any draught which would not be more wholesome, than that which makes the body politic a body plethoric, and leaves no reme dy to the physician but the cautery and the knife." It is a subject of deep regret, that we so frequently find schemes and associations, calculated to create this spurious kind of public opinion, promoted by some of the distinguished members of the clerical order. Overzealous in the service of their master, they prepare for the fanatic and enthusiast perilous employment; and unrestrained by the stern rebuke of the Redeemer, they seem prone to imitate the chief of the apostles in their readiness to smite with the sword those who, in their excited imaginings, are the enemies of religion. The great evil of the present day, and that which threatens the existence of the Union, as well as the peace and security of the southern states, is "POLITICAL RELIGIONISM." And it is on account of the infusion of this fa Although not a genius of the first order, nor one of those great lights which seem destined to shed perpetual lustre over the history of man, the author of the letter to Mr. Clay, on the subject of the annexation of Texas, William E. Channing, fills no little space in the public view, and is not without distinction in the republic of letters. His enlarged intellect has borrowed easy and graceful proportions from his moral virtues. He is a consecrated vessel, set apart for the service of the Deity, and for the propagation of wholesome truths to erring man. His is a ministry of peace and good will. And he has brought to the service of his master a talent, which has not been unimproved, neither has it been buried; he is a shining light, and in ready obedience to the heavenly prohibition, he has not hid it under a bushel. In the prominent power of his intellect, he strikingly though distantly resembles that characteristic of Milton's mind, which he has so beautifully illustrated, and that is the faculty of impregnation. His excursive and active genius travels over the whole field of literature; he gathers every choice plant in the gardens of wisdom, and they flourish with unusual vigor in the fertile soil into which they are translated. A graceful purity of style adorns the solid structure of his reasoning; and he has richly earned the distin-natical and destructive spirit into the strictures of the guished title of the American Atticus. American divine, upon the character and morals of our It is to be lamented, that powers such as this instruc- people, and upon the domestic institutions of the south; tive writer possesses, should, from the general neg-it is because the British reviewer, misled by these inlect of literary merit in this age of utilitarianism, be forced from their appropriate and legitimate sphere, and directed to questionable, perhaps unhappy results. Few minds in this age, and more particularly in this country, where the labors of intellect are so little appreciated, and so slowly rewarded, possess the moral firmness and the persevering steadiness which lead to a solid, but slow and distant, reputation through a life of toil. Few such can resist the seducements of those instant but fleeting and precarious honors, which are snatched amid the hazards, and struggles, and excitements of political discussion. In a government like 1. That the revolt in Texas was sustained by the ours, in which each individual is constantly reminded southern states, and the admission of Texas into the of the deep stake he has in its welfare, and of his imme-Union was demanded in order to create a new market for diate agency and influence in its administration, the slaves, a new field for slave labor, and the accession of tendency to descend from loftier stations to mingle in political power in those states, which subsist by slavethe conflicts of the arena, is irresistible to the many, and breeding and slave-selling, and furthermore to perpeseldom checked by those who have the sagacity to per-tuate in the old and to spread over the new states the ceive the moment when their interposition may decide horrors of slavery. the controversy. Such is the resistless operation of this spirit of interposition, such is the longing of the impatient mind for early distinction, that all classes yield to this petty ambition. It invades the holy precincts of the sanctuary, and the priest not unfrequently becomes the agitator. A sound and healthy state of public opinion is of slow and cautious growth, and we should accurately distinguish between this salutary agent and that feverish and artificial excitement which is produced by associations and combinations. "Public opinion," says an able vectives, has assailed the character of our government, and proclaimed the licentious tendency of republican establishments, that we feel impelled to notice the publications placed at the head of this article. The "Letter of Dr. Channing to Mr. Clay" contains grave charges, upon which the British reviewer, in the article "TEXAS," frames a specious argument to prove the perishable nature of our free institutions. But we can neither admit the truth of the charges made by the divine, nor the solidity of the argument labored by the monarchist. The letter states in substance: 2. He appeals in behalf of the slave to the interposition of the British government; declares that England has a moral as well as a political interest in this question, and pronounces "an English minister unworthy of his office who would not strive by all just means to avert the danger." of the Indian on our frontier, and upon slavery in general, will *Not a few of our reflections upon the nature and condition show that we have read and remembered the "Review of Miss Martineau on Slavery." We could not receive light from a purer source, for that publication is universally regarded as one of the ablest productions of the American press. 3. He charges his countrymen with a lawlessness and some picture, and is startled to learn that it has been corruption of public morals, which is well calculated to sketched by the hand of a countryman. From the disgrace them in the estimation of mankind; and tenor of the whole letter of Dr. Channing, it is manifest paints with so gloomy a pencil, that his British review- that he designs to attribute this national depravity in a er, the avowed enemy of all republican institutions, ex- great measure to the slaveholder and the frontier-man. poses the picture in triumph to the friends of legitima- We will confine our remarks therefore to these two cy in Europe, as the impartial testimony of a ripe scho- points, and endeavor to prove that the border-men of lar, a native citizen, and an anointed priest. the south-western states are no worse than those of other nations, and that the other evils of which he so loudly complains, have been produced mainly by the northern fanatics, and are the first fruits of political religionism. The discussion of these subjects, in the articles under consideration, is so intimately interwoven with the whole subject of slavery in the south, of southern crime and southern policy, that we will confine our attention principally to that theme. With the Texian controversy we have no concern. But before proceeding to discuss this agitating topic, we will make a few remarks upon the loose morality and lawlessness of those hardy pioneers of the wilderness, for whose excesses the nation is held responsible, and by the standard of whose morals the whole American people is judged. Under the imposing title of a citizen possessing high talents and still higher moral character, the British reviewer introduces Dr. Channing to the world holding the follow-cities or upon our frontier, there is a greater degree of ing extravagant language: Man is a frail and rebellious creature, and the sternest sanctions of the law have in all ages been required for the maintenance of peace and order. But all the force of the laws has, under every frame of government, been found insufficient to repress the spirit of insubordination. The stormy impulse of the passions, and the hope of impunity, still impel daring and wicked men to violate the law of the land, and to commit the most detestable and atrocious crimes. But, that either in our crime or more profligacy than is to be found in similar "We are corrupt enough already. In one respect classes in other countries, or that our people are more our institutions have disappointed us all. They have demoralised than those of other nations, has no founnot wrought for us that elevation of character which is dation in fact. We are the descendants of the Eurothe only substantial blessing of liberty. Government pean, we are the children of sin, and we have brought is regarded more as a means of enriching the country, with us into this country the frailties and the passions than of securing private rights. We have become wed- of our nature and of our forefathers. But our great ded to gain as our chief good. That under the predo- cause of complaint is, that we are falsely charged with minance of this degrading passion, the higher virtues, surpassing profligacy by the friends of a stronger and the moral independence, the simplicity of manners, more artificial frame of government, upon the testithe stern uprightness, the self reverence, the respect mony of our own writers, who libel their kindred; and for man as man, which are the ornaments and safe- this unusual depravity is attributed to the licentiousguards of a republic, should wither, and give place to ness promoted and inculcated by free institutions. And selfish calculation and indulgence, to show and extra- it is to be deeply regretted that there are to be found vagance, to anxious, envious, discontented strivings, among us those, who in their fanatic zeal to extirpate to wild adventure, and to the gambling spirit of specu- slavery in the south, exaggerate the failings and the lation, will surprise no one who has studied human na- vices of their countrymen, and thus furnish with perture. A spirit of lawlessness pervades the community, petual argument the enemies of republican institutions. which, if not repressed, threatens the dissolution of our The heart has been made sick with details of crime and present forms of society. Even in the old states mobs violence on our southern and western borders; and they are taking the government into their hands, and a have been diligently dressed and served up, as precious profligate newspaper finds little difficulty in stirring morsels, as a rich feast for our European friends. The up multitudes to violence. When we look at the parts outrages of the pioneers, the border morals, lynchof the country nearest Texas, we see the arm of the law ing, and frontier regulations, are the same in all new paralyzed by the passions of the individual. The sub-countries. And the classic and well stored mind of Dr. stitution of self-constituted tribunals, for the regular Channing treasures many a salutary lesson drawn from course of justice, and the infliction of immediate pun- the flight of the Roman eagle, sweeping onward in his ishment in the moment of popular phrenzy, are symp-resistless flight from point to point in a constantly adtoms of a people half reclaimed from barbarism. I know not that any civilized country on earth has exhibited, during the last year, a spectacle so atrocious as the burning of a colored man by a slow fire in the neighborhood of St. Louis! And this infernal sacrifice was offered, not by a few fiends selected from the whole country, but by a crowd gathered from a single spot. Add to all this, the invasions of the rights of speech and of the press by lawless force, the extent and toleration of which oblige us to believe that a considerable portion of our citizens have no comprehension of the first principles of liberty. It is an undeniable fact, that in consequence of these and other symptoms, the confidence of many reflecting men in our free institutions is very much impaired. Some despair. That we must seek security for property and life in a 'STRONG-ence, and take counsel of the ripe understanding, before ER GOVERNMENT,' is a spreading conviction." vancing frontier, to the uttermost boundaries of the haunts of men, until he had looked down upon a submissive world, and folded his unwearied wing beneath the shadow of universal dominion. The fields of Northumberland, and the cruel inroads of the Percies, live in Scottish minstrelsy, and the observant eye of so ripe a scholar has traced the destructive progress of the freebooters of the border, by the light of the torch, and the red stain of the brand, that have marked the progress of rapine on the frontier of civilization. We can readily appreciate the sympathies of a good man, we can excuse the complaints of an apostle of peace, when the melancholy lessons of history are repeated in his own age and in his own clime; but we must be cautious to consult the lessons of experi we proclaim to the world, in the fervor of a heated ima The reader shrinks with abhorrence from this loath-gination, the enormities of border license. Let us la ment the stern necessity, but restrain the current of indignant feeling, lest we exaggerate the extent of evils which loom up in deceptive magnitude through the mists of prejudice, and seem the more formidable because of their propinquity. ruthless rapine and sacrilege, which would have disgraced the darkest age of feudal barbarism. If an enthusiast and agitator pluck down ruin on his press, and perish by a bloody death, himself red with the blood of his brother, in the town of Alton, fanaticism burns and plunders the living, desecrates the altar, and violates the dead on the heights of Charlestown. And if it were the populace which projected the crime and hoodwinked justice, it was the legislature of Massa act by withholding retribution. Crime prevails where. ever man is a dweller. It is by no means extraordinary, that as man recedes from the centre of civilization, and reaches the uttermost limit of the social circle, the salutary restraints of the law should be more feebly felt, and deeds of violence and disorder should more frequently occur than in the bosom of society. We are not of the number of those who form our estimate of the morals or character of a people, by the conduct of those who scarcely feel the bonds of society. Such as they are, were those, two generations ago, who now dwell in peace and concord, revelling in all the luxu rious refinements of polished and humane association. The annals of England and Scotland will furnish to the learned divine, as well as to his British reviewer, a tale of blood and license far surpassing the sad but unfrequent excesses on our frontier. When civilization sends forth her pioneers to open and tame the wilder-chusetts which sanctioned, aye, and still sanctions the ness, the quiet, peaceable and orderly, remain at home; the frontier-man is the bold, and hardy, and reckless adventurer, who alone is fit to contend with the stubborn forests and the savage tribes who tread them in solitude. Is it to be a matter of wonder or of regret, that society purges off and throws among them the dissolute outcast or the exile of crime? The pilgrim fathers were a different race, not thrown upon the frontiers of an ancient or established people, to push the march of civilization, but stern men, whom the profligate tyranny of the Stuarts, and the intolerant ravings of fanaticism, sent forth to people the inhospitable shores of the new world with the sturdy and unbending spirits of the old. With no love but for freedom-with no hope but in God! their lonely barque was freighted with the consecrated emblems of liberty, and turning to the setting sun, they sped onward, to throw the illimitable waste of the ocean a barrier between themselves and their oppressors. Stern and indomitable spirits-pious and practical professors of the doctrines of the meek and merciful Redeemer-incapable of submission to oppression, and too few to shake the foundations of a throne laid deep in the recesses of time; they gathered up the fragments of their broken fortunes, and "wandered from their fathers' houses into these ends of the earth, and laid their labors and estates therein." To the west, to the successors of these border-men, who carry with them the germ of civilization, do we confidently look for the security of the republic. They throw open the wilderness; the fastnesses of the forest retreat before them, and the valleys which now ring with the yell of the savage, will soon teem with abundance. The landed proprietors have always been, and still are, the bulwark of established institutions. Upon them, in the hour of danger, falls the burden of defence. Their staid habits and steady virtue tend to check the march of corruption and commercial wealth, that mortal foe to the only sentiment which sustains republics. We look to the wilderness for pro under those excellent institutions which breathe a spirit of equality, this commercial spirit may be counteracted; for, the main pillars which sustain it in other countries have been thrown down by our sagacious forefathers. Such were the Pilgrim Fathers; and but that their graves are voiceless, they would teach to their descend-tection from the cities. In our happy country, and ants salutary lessons of patience and forbearance; they would point to their own protracted sufferings in the old world for melancholy examples of intolerance and fanaticism. They planted in this country the germ of civilization, which in our day has burst forth in wild luxu-Entail and primogeniture have ceased to create and to riance, and stretched its branches to the four winds perpetuate a privileged class. In every age, from the of heaven. There have gone forth from among their palmy days of Rome and Athens to the stormy revolu descendants a host of turbulent spirits. These pio- tions of Paris, centralism has been fatal to the best neers are the links which bind civilization with interests of a people. As our empire expands over the barbarism, the city with the wilderness. They are great western frontier, the large commercial cities of a rude and unpolished generation, carrying with the Union will cease to overshadow, to corrupt, and to them the elements of order, disarranged by their conti- control the Union. Our north-eastern brethren, hardy guity to savage and lawless multitudes, Crimes pecu- and intelligent, are consumed with this commercial liar to the situation and character of a people are com- cancer. If, with Franklin, they have diligently inves mitted everywhere; and if these unsettled classes tigated the practical truths of material philosophy, they perpetrate enormities which curdle the blood of a more recognise him as the founder of a trading people, they refined people, these latter indulge in excesses appro-adhere with the religious observance of the Spartan to priate to themselves, which, although less shocking, are no less destructive to the morals and happiness of mankind. And if the "negro perish by a slow fire" on the plains of Missouri, the flames of a sacked convent, in the midst of the cities of Massachusetts, attract attention to the cries of unprotected woman and helpless infancy. If Texas be the field of blood, Boston has sent forth and protected the midnight incendiary. If the laurels of San Jacinto be stained with purple, the monument of Bunker Hill has disclosed its pallid form by the lurid glare of the torch in a night of his mercenary precepts, and have superadded to them parsimonious habits and wary cunning. A prying curiosity into the concerns of their neighbors, is another leading trait in their character, sketched by the same hand; and to this bias in their nature, we may attribute, in a great degree, their blindness to their own Vandalism, in the sacking of a convent, and their deep solicitude to deliver their southern brethren from the horrors of slavery, even with the aid of foreign inter position. Let us not be understood to undervalue the enterprising activity, the love of freedom, the moral rectitude, the intellectual acumen of the New England- | domestic and political establishments of man, " blasting ers. We would willingly do them no injustice. But their opponents with interdicts, and opening sluices and when in their intemperate zeal, they proclaim freedom removing mounds for the sweep of devastation." Veto the slave, and denounce the slaveholder, even from rily, they know not what they do. And it infuses not the sanctuary; when they exhibit their southern bre- a little vexation into the southern feeling on this subthren to the eyes of the world as the most profligate ject, that it is impossible to make these northmen comand unfeeling of mankind, surely it may not be amiss prehend the true character of southern slavery, the to invite their attention to those defects in their own frightful mischief they promote, or the imminent dancharacter, which should be amended, before they be-ger of prompting the undisciplined passions of the come apostles of reformation. dark man. Slavery was already existing in most of the states at the time of the first confederation, and was distinctly recognised and protected under the federal compact, at the time of the adoption of the present constitution. In fact, two-fifths of the slaves became an integral portion of the basis of federal representation, This being the case, by what authority or under what pretence is it, that other people, incapable of compre hending the true character of the domestic relations of the south, and who are parties to this fundamental compact, presume to interfere? It is a crime. Is it committed, because a limited jurisdiction enables them to assail the south in this most vulnerable point with impunity? Our sagacious forefathers, well knowing the oppressions which spring from the union of religion with civil authority, have in most of the states declared the clergy unfit to represent the people. They were anxious to erect every possible barrier between the church and state; the union of which had always been fatal to the purity of each. When was this clerical body, thus disfranchised, made the expounders of By what right do so many of our northern and eastern brethren demand and attempt, by all the powers of combination and association, the abolition of slavery in the southern states? They have permitted themselves to become the agents of foreign agitators; for this fanaticism is of foreign birth, and originated in England, with the very people who introduced and planted slavery in our soil. Her example is no precedent for us; for, the structure of our government, the fundamental law of the land, and our peculiar position, present insuperable obstacles to the march of this foreign enemy. An immense empire, belting the globe with territory, may indeed abolish slavery, indemnify the owner, and preserve public tranquillity in a few small and distant islands of the ocean. In our country there is no such power vested in the government, even if the scheme were practicable, or its consummation desirable. To supply the absence of such authority, the powerful engine of public opinion is used. All the elements of society are disturbed, public and private right is invaded, and the integrity of the Union is threatened by this destructive agency. Ministers of constitutional law, or authorised to declare how much the gospel, messengers of peace and good will to man, have abandoned their appropriate functions, and like another Peter the Hermit, preach a crusade of blood and folly. Whether we direct our attention to the desperate struggles of the different sects for ascendancy, among a new and unsettled people in the great valley of the west; or whether we observe the jealous zeal with which some professors of various denominations, instead of rebuking the evil passions of mankind, abase themselves to court or color public opinion, with an assiduity which would shame the obsequious courtiers of Dionysius or Canute; we are brought to the melancholy conviction, that there are church men still animated by worldly ambition, and that religion, in many of its teachers, has degenerated into a wild spirit of proselytism. How often have we heard the voice of the priest, anointed only to bless mankind, swelling the fanatic outcry, and diligently employed in the manufacture of a spurious public opinion, which like the pestilent simoon, is to overwhelm with indiscriminate ruin domestic tranquillity, private right, public faith, and federal compact? Upon what principle do the clergy claim this right of interference with the domestic polity of the land? Is it under the exploded claim "jure divino?" Or do they take their stand with Dr. Channing upon "God's moral and eternal law?" From the high ground taken by some of the clergy in relation to slavery, one might suppose that they deem themselves special messengers-"one would infer that they had just descended from a forty days' communion in the mount with the Deity, beaming with celestial radiance," and empowered to revise and correct the of the federal compact is opposed to and abrogated by the law of the gospel? Indeed the civil disabilities of the clergy were intended by our pious ancestry, not so much for the security of republican institutions, as for the preservation of the purity and simplicity of religion itself. Whenever the high priest descends from the altar to bedraggle his robes in the vile mire of an electioneering progress, from that moment religion falls into contempt with the mass of the people, and its ministers become the most profligate and the most contemptible of mankind. Already many of the northern clergy have shaken, if they have not entirely lost, the confidence of the southern people; and we are shocked from day to day with startling evidences of abatement in that respect, which a pious people always extend to a worthy ministry who command and merit their esteem. And if the question of slavery fell peculiarly within the province of the clergy, and might be safely agitated, why should many of them labor so constantly and so disingenuously to mingle this question, in all its local incidents, with national politics, ecclesiastical agitations, and treaties of war and peace with foreign states? Why does Dr. Channing invoke the interposition of European powers, and recommend a dissolution of the Union rather than slave states should be created in Texas? In this land we have few time-honored associations, little reverence for ancient establishments, and with a clear vision, we are accustomed to judge everything by its merits. Our government secures to us freedom of religious opinion, and under this generous rule, the different sects are left to repose in security, or to contend with each other for the ascendancy; |