keep at a distance all those counsellors who would appeal, not to his passions, but to his good sense, and render unavailable whatever of practical wisdom and moral honesty the great body of the people may possess. They drive the people on to their ruin, and prevent all effectual interposition for their salvation.

We speak not lightly of the people; we have no disposition to depreciate their intelligence or the general correctness of their motives; but they are almost always the dupes of unprincipled demagogues. If the good sense, if the practical wisdom, if the moral honesty of the people could always be rendered available,-if the appeal could always be made to their reason instead of their passions, to their judg ments instead of their caprices, our estimate of their capacity for self-government would be as favorable as that professed by our democratic friends. But we must always bear in mind that man has fallen, that his nature has been corrupted, and that, collectively as well as individually, the people are prone to evil, and that continually. When they resist their inclinations, silence the clamor of their appetites and passions, and listen only to the voice of reason, which, though obscured by the fall, yet survives in every man, they in general take correct views and come to safe conclusions but they listen far more readily to appetite and passion, and follow with far greater facility the suggestions of corrupt desires than the sober lessons of reason. To do evil demands no violence to natural inclination; to practise virtue always demands an effort. This is true of every one of the people individually, and therefore must be true of the whole collectively. Hence it follows that the demagogues, though but small men themselves, have always more power with the people than have wise and virtuous statesmen, and all popular governments have a tendency to become the exponents of popular corruption instead of popular reason and virtue.

;

If then, we hope for our country, it is always with fear and trembling. The chances are against its attaining that destiny which seems to have been promised it. It is certain that we started with many advantages. We had a new and virgin soil, of vast extent and boundless fertility; we were far removed from the example and corruptions of the Old World; we had, as much as a people can have, the shaping of our destiny in our own hands; and yet we have already at least the germs of every vice and every evil to be deplored in old and worn-out nations. There is no denying

this. We have adopted the European system of industry, and with half a continent of unoccupied land, we experience the extreme of poverty. Poverty more than keeps pace with the increase of wealth; public and private morals are daily deteriorating; crime is on a rapid and startling increase; law has lost its sanctity, and loyalty is extinct. Population, indeed, augments, new territory is acquired, and our external prosperity receives no check. But, internally, we do not prosper. The heart is rotten, and the people will accept no remedy. Their minds and hearts are turned away from all that makes the true glory of a state, and they have neither the patience nor the cultivation requisite to their conversion. They who see this can do little towards correcting it, for their lessons can avail nothing unless they are considered; and who in these times will pause to consider? Fail to flatter the people, fail to encourage their tendencies, or to sympathize with them in their delusions, and, however much you may be commended by individuals, you will be pronounced unpopular, admission at court will be denied you, and your influence, though you speak with the eloquence of an angel, the love of a saint, and the wisdom of a sage, will be null. Your words will bring no echo but the derisive laugh of the, brainless and heartless demagogues who are urging the people on in a career of individual and national ruin.

The evil here is greater than most people, even intelligent and well-disposed people, suspect. Every people, consciously or unconsciously, struggles with all its power to realize the last consequences of the principles it adopts. If those principles are unsound, the whole tendency, the whole labor, of the nation is to its own destruction. But in a popular government, it is next to impossible to correct unsound principles before the ruin comes. It is only in two ways that the destructive consequences can be seen before they are practically developed, that is, either by the teachings of religion, or by philosophy. In a democracy, little reliance can be placed on the former. When the people are taught that they are sovereign, they will submit to no religious teaching that attempts to control them. Religion must be their subject, not their master,-serve, not govern them. Moreover, the people never do and can never be made to understand that religion ever does or ever can condemn any thing not directly opposed to her formal and express teachings. As long as they profess the creed and observe the prescribed

form of worship, they will never believe that any principles they adopt and follow in the temporal order are irreligious, or matters concerning which religion has any thing to say. The other method is not more effectual. The people are not philosophers. There are very few persons in any nation who can take up the national policy, reduce it to its principles, and show what, according to the ordinary course of history, are the logical consequences they necessarily involve. The great body of the people, even of the educated classes, cannot do it, cannot even understand it when it is done. The few may do it, may publish the result, and utter the solemn warning; but to what end? The people are blind to the one and deaf to the other; they go on their way, heedless of both. If they could be made to pause, if they could be made to listen, and to comprehend what is said, the evil could be averted; but in a democracy this is extremely difficult, if not absolutely impossible. All is lost upon them, for no man has or can have influence over them, but in his sympathy with them. Hence it is, that, when they have once adopted mischievous principles, it is in vain to attempt to induce them to abandon them. You can never make them see the unsoundness of those principles, or believe them dangerous, and all you will gain by the attempt will be your own unpopularity.

Here is a point which our modern democrats appear to us to overlook, or at least one to which they attach far less importance than it deserves. They all, as far as we have seen, without a single exception, proceed on the assumption, that man retains his primitive innocency, and human nature its primitive integrity. If this assumption were allowable, the purely democratic form of government would be a safe, and, perhaps, the best form of government. But, unhappily, this is not the fact. The philosopher no more than the Christian can deny that man has fallen. The evidences of the fall stare us in the face, let us go where or turn which way we will. We do not distrust the popular reason, even fallen as man is; and if the people would follow their reason, we should find no fault with the democratic theory. But the people, collectively as well as individually, follow inclination, appetite, passion, which have been corrupted by the fall, and not reason, which has remained comparatively uncorrupted. Here is the fact, and here is the difficulty. Carried away by their appetites and passions, they will not pause long enough to hear the voice of reason, or to

profit by the instructions of those who see their error, and the proper policy to be adopted. What they want is authority, which, itself enlightened and controlled by reason, shall hold them in check, and compel them, at times, to do violence to their own inclinations, and to act contrary to their own wills. This authority democracy cannot supply. Democracy can restrain individuals, whenever they violate the public sentiment; but it has no power to punish even individuals for crimes which the public sentiment does not condemn, far less has it power to restrain the people collectively; for then the restrainer and the restrained, the governor and the governed, become in every respect identical. In fact, the democratic government is expressly devised, not to restrain the people in their collective action or public conduct, but to relieve them of all restraint, and to give them free scope to do whatever they please, to follow without let or hindrance whatever is the dominant passion or sentiment for the time being.

Unhappily, it is hardly safe in this country for a man who regards his reputation to utter these plain and commonplace truths, which is an additional proof that they are truths, and important truths too. Within the last twentyfive years, it has become the fashion with a large portion of our community to regard our American institutions as purely democratic, and to denounce what is not democratic as anti-American. We say within the last twenty-five years; for, prior to that time, unless for a brief period under the old confederation, there was not and never had been in the country a party that even acknowledged itself to be purely democratic. The Republicans, as distinguished from the Federalists, though they may have had democratic tendencies, scorned the name of Democrat. To the charge brought against them by the Federalists of being Democrats, they were accustomed, even within our own memory, and we are not very old,-to reply with great indignation, "No, I am not a Democrat, I'm a Republican." In many parts of the country, they do not even now take the name of Democrat, but adhere to the name of Republican, which they bore in the time of Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. The name began to be used during the administration of John Quincy Adams, but became general only after the second election of Andrew Jackson. We owe the present popularity of democracy, in great measure, to the influx of English and Scotch radicals, at the head of whom were Frances

Wright, Robert Dale Owen, and Robert L. Jennings,-to the writings of Amos Kendall, William Leggett, and George Bancroft, to the administrations of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren,-and to the declamations, cant, and sentimentality of our abolitionists and philanthropists.

Prior to General Jackson's administration, the institutions of this country had never received, except from a few individuals, a democratic interpretation. General Jackson was a great man; the American people idolize his memory, and we have no wish to detract from his merits; but he was, in the higher sense of the word, no statesman. He was a man of heroic impulses, of a strong mind, and an iron will; but a man who had made no profound study of political science. No one doubts his integrity, or his devotion to what he believed for the best good of the republic; but like all strong-minded men, men of great natural parts and little science, he had a tendency to cut rather than untie the Gordian knot of statesmanship. He appears never to have understood that our government is a government sui generis, -not any one of the simple forms of government, but a peculiar combination of them all. Instead of seeking to preserve them all as nicely adjusted by the convention of 1787, he sought to simplify the machine, and he gave an undue prominence to the monarchical element on the one hand, and to the democratic element on the other. He did more,

perhaps, than any other president we have had for the external splendor of the republic; but we are obliged to add, more also for the destruction of the constitution and the corruption of public morals.

We speak not here for or against the measures supported or opposed by General Jackson's administration. In most of the measures of his administration, especially in regard to the United States Bank, we agreed with him, and have seen no reason to change our views. We are aware of no measure which he proposed that in itself tended to disturb the nicely adjusted balance of the constitution. The evil was done, not by the measures he proposed, but by the principles on which he acted and defended himself and his measures from the attacks of his enemies. He was, if we are not mistaken, the first of our presidents who confounded the will of the people, expressed through caucuses and newspapers, with the will of the people expressed through legal and constitutional forms, that is, who confounded the people as population with the people as the state; thus pre