as though it were a sort of final arbiter to which the conscience must always refer.

It is to be observed, also, that where interest inclines men to act contrary to their moral dictates, their first desire is to tamper with the conscience, and make it an unfaithful witness; or, what is worse, to enlist its testimony on the side of evil. Men are not sufficiently candid to confess a wicked purpose, nor sufficiently courageous to undertake a wicked action, so long as the conscience is free to rebuke and testify against them. Hence the desire to overrule this faculty, and to pervert and falsify its judgments. How shall this be done? The common resort is to a process of reasoning. This is necessary, because it is impossible, by a mere act of the will, to change the moral perceptions, or to' deaden the moral convictions. The conscience is compelled to judge according to representations, and to judge in this or that particular manner; and one has no more power to force it to determine that right is wrong than to force the eye to conclude that light is darkness. It only remains, therefore, to question the truth of the moral perceptions, and, by a process of reasoning, to pervert and confuse the moral faculty.

Now this is a universal practice. Nothing is more common than to hear men plead in defense of opinions and actions which are contrary to the plainest instincts of their moral nature. How natural it is to justify a course of conduct which any child even knows to be wrong! One shall always be able to palliate a crime, and to make a show of reason in self-defense. And although, as a consequence, the conscience does not at once throw down its authority, yet it loses integrity, and not only becomes less capable of accurate moral judgments, but often a witness in defense of evil.

In like manner, have not the moral instincts of the people been always trifled with by crafty priests and demagogues. In an unenlightened age, what arts were practiced upon the multitudes in the name of religion. How completely were they blinded and misguided by those whose duty it was to enlighten and guide them. They are made to believe anything, and do anything in behalf of that church and religion whose authority,

as the first great fallacy, they are taught not to question. Indeed, who knows not that it was the aim of the popish church to keep the people in ignorance, so as to have them more easily duped, and more subservient to churchly authority.

And what is the politician's art, but that of a cunning sophister to make the worse appear the better reason, and to take advantage of the popular ignorance. A shrewd politician is well aware of the moral instincts of the people; but he is equally aware of their incapacity to reason. Above all, he knows that they are little able to detect a flaw in argument, and that they hastily accept inconsequent conclusions. In a bad cause, therefore, all he has to do is, to blind the people and to twist them into conscientious action on the side of evil. For he knows that, as a correct conscience is an indispensable ally in a good cause, so a perverted conscience is as indispensable in a bad one, and that the people, to become a potent instrument of either good or evil, must be made to believe and act conscientiously. And, just so far as the demagogue has skill to deceive the people as to the nature of his cause, and to enlist their moral support, just so far will he be able to carry his point. Plato even lays it down that it is necessary to deceive the people for reasons of state; and who knows not that the Roman religion was, in a great measure, the device of lawgivers and legislators, wherewith the better to awe and restrain the multitude! Who remembers not those instances in which the plebeians, maddened by the insolence and injustice of the patrician orders, and ready to fly upon them in their rage, are only restrained from violence by being reminded of the vengeance of the gods! So much did the delusion of the people contribute to their own oppression.

But why recur to history? Do not these facts find abundant confirmation in our own times? Were not the people presented with excellent reasons for waging that unnatural war with Mexico? Has not the idea of a higher law been ridiculed without limit, and reasoned into an absurdity? Have not the preachers of manifest destiny found a plenty to carry that doctrine into practice? And above all, has not that most offensive and odious of institutions, slavery, been honeyed over, and pre

sented to the people in every conceivable form? Have they not been served with abundant lectures, speeches, judicial decisions, to prove that the negro is doomed to perpetual bondage; that he is an animal; that he has no higher destiny than to dig and delve; that he has no rights which white men are bound to respect; and that the institution is one of simple profit and loss, and quite foreign to religion or morals? And this for no earthly reason but to serve political ends.

And have not they, who are more immediately interested in the institution, been reasoned into the inconceivably monstrous lie, that it is divine, and that they do God's service to fight and die in its defense? Surely, reason never did set itself to oppose more directly the fundamental instincts of man's moral nature, and was never more successful to abuse and pervert them. All the arts of sophistry have been employed to misguide the people respecting a question of common morality, until the public conscience has been warped into every conceivable shape; and until those who affirm and defend the institution as an actual blessing appear to be more conscientious and earnest in their belief than those who account it a crime. And, without question, the war that is thrust upon us is to be the more bloody and fearful because the conscience of the Southern people has been enlisted in their cause. For that moral support which is ever the strongest ally in a good cause will, when enlisted on the side of evil, make a people as fierce and desperate in defense of a bad one.

How dangerous it is to trifle with that faculty which God has set to be our monitor and guide, in matters of right and wrong, and to be our defense on the side of justice! A man can do himself no greater injury than to call in question his instinctive moral convictions, and to try to reason himself into a wrong belief. As well might he doubt the intuitive perceptions of the reason, or the senses, as the correctness of his moral dictates. Nay, it does not appear but that it would be just as possible, and perhaps just as easy, for a man to reason himself into the belief that white is black, or that light is darkness, as to come to believe that right is wrong. True, such confusion is not actual, for it is inconsistent with worldly policy; but,

were men as much inclined to act contrary to the instincts of sense and reason as to the dictates of morality, and for all that appears, they might become incapable of correct perceptions of any kind, and well-nigh demented.

There are certain judgments, intellectual and moral, which a man can never question without doing violence to his nature. They are not to be proved or disproved, or reasoned upon at all. They are to be taken for granted, and acted upon at once; for only in this way can he be true to nature, whose operations are in obedience to unerring laws and instincts. And, as a moral and responsible being, it is a man's first duty to be true to conscience. Let him doubt everything else sooner than the truth of his moral dictates. Let him reason where reasoning is necessary; but let him never think to demonstrate the selfevident. Where God has made the way clear, let him not think to make it more apparent, much less to run in a different or contrary direction. Let him follow the guide within, which is to go in the natural path, and reach the right conclusion.

Where one has reasoned himself, or has been reasoned into moral confusion and blindness, he must reason his way out, or apply to others for help. As he entered the labyrinth so must he seek to find a way of escape; but having escaped, let him remember that the conscience is supreme in her own sphere; that she acts in her own way, and on her own authority; and that being a competent guide she needs no instructions or assistance.

ARTICLE IV. THE TEST-HOUR OF POPULAR LIBERTY AND REPUBLICAN GOVERNMENT.

SELDOM does it happen to a people to be at once an exponent and a factor in a great problem of human society-the index of sublime struggles and cumulative forces in the Past, the former of a new era of life and power in the Future. The stream of human history, often sluggish, sometimes eddying and seemingly retrograde, has also its rapids and its cataracts. These seem to break its continuity and waste its life; but the very tumult of the waters, as they rush among the rocks to find or force a channel, indicates the power and volume of the long-gathered flood; and it emerges from the turmoil and agony of a seeming death-struggle, only to roll on with a depth, a calmness, a majesty, that no barrier can arrest and no rock can ripple. And even in the chasm where the strife and thunder are the loudest, if we watch the nooning of the sky, we shall see the bow painted upon the brow of the seething torrent, the prophecy of the peace and majesty it shall win for itself by this very struggle, when it shall have forced its way over the rocks. We stand to-day beside one of these cataract plunges in human history. So suddenly have we come upon it from the green and sunny fields we were traversing, so fierce is the struggle of the waters, so frequent and successive are the rapids, and so invisible is the outlet, that we are bewildered by a spectacle we have not learned to comprehend. But the stream is flowing on. The earth has not opened to swallow it; the strife denotes not only the suddenness and force of obstacles, but the gathered momentum of the flood; and if for a time it seems to have been interrupted, and even turned back upon itself, the flood is but rising to roll over again upon its pent up mass till the whole shall sweep onward in a calm, full, unbroken tide.

But while a just philosophy anticipates and predicts this issue of our national struggle, it may not be disguised that