PREFACE. A conviction that the permanence of our free institutions in this country, and the improvement of the condition of civil and religious society in other lands, depend upon the minds of men being more deeply imbued with those great elementary principles which lie at the foundation of all that is lovely and of good report among men, has led the author to address his fellow citizens on this subject. The American people seem to have settled down in a belief that our fathers have built our republic upon so solid a foundation, that no care on our part is necessary to preserve it. They appear to have forgotten that our government is only an experiment, to prove whether a nation, under any circumstances, can govern itself. itself. Frequent experiments of the kind had previously been made, but they had all, by their failure, furnised arguments for despots, that liberal institutions could not be sustained in our fallen world. Our revolutionary sires built their hopes of the success of their experiment on the virtue and intelligence of the American people. They knew that government was an institution of heaven, and that the elementary principles of all good government must be sought in the word of the Eternal. It is to call the minds of our citizens to the contemplation of these great principles, that this little volume has been prepared and published, and if it may, by the blessing of God, secure this object in any humble degree, the writer will feel that he has not labored in vain, nor spent his strength for naught. ITHACA, March, 1853. |