bination of spiritual and material elementary food; that, in plain words, which will yield the most perfect temporal happiness.

Hence we behold him forming plans and systems of conduct applicable to this end, always searching for that best adapted to the object. Various customs, modes of association, plans of ethics, religious creeds, and forms of government have been from time to time adopted by various nations and peoples, even from the time of the creation down to the present, and all aiming, or pretending to aim, at the great problem of human happiness. History gives to the present day a record of all these, and exhibits to us their several results. Strange and multifarious have they been-many of them, we are constrained to confess, seem to partake but little of what we call the spirituality or innate intelligence of our race; and what is still more strange, in the eyes of modern republicans, is the fact that some of the most absurd and grotesque exist to the present day, even in countries professing Christianity and civilization.

But under the influence of those enlightening principles which are within him, and with the tablets of antecedent ages before him, it were indeed singular if man, or at least a portion of the race, had not by this time succeeded in consummating a system of ethics adapted to the object for which he is striving-temporal happiness, and the most perfect development of his capacity for a more glorious state of existence hereafter. Every plan which the scope of human invention could devise seems to have been tested; but until quite recently the faculties of man have been so completely hemmed in and hedged round by a very old-fashioned idea of centralization in matters of government, that the control of public affairs has been held in the hands of a few, and, in some cases, that which we recognize as the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of a whole people, have been concentred, either directly or indirectly, in the person of a single individual. It is needless, at this day and in this country, to say that such systems were not calculated to realize the hopes of mankind. They resulted, of course, in the vilest schemes of ambition, the most unwarrantable dictation, and the alienation of all freedom from the people; the many were held as the slaves of the few, and the entire powers of the state were employed to keep them so.

At length, however, through the indomitable energy and courage of a handful of Colonials, and the godlike inspiration and virtue of GEORGE WASHINGTON, the spirit of the human character was permitted to exhibit itself, and the attributes and rights of man were effectually vindicated!

And this was not the result of a day's work, nor of a single battle, nor of a campaign. For seven long years those apostles of liberty toiled on through heat and cold, through poverty, privation, and death: the blood of their naked and lacerated feet rose up as a sacrifice from the snows of Valley Forge, and their panting souls went forth to heaven from the burning plains of Monmouth! England, the common and natural enemy of the revolutionists, not content with wielding her own gigantic and despotic power, called in the mercenary aid of her German allies, and bribing the aboriginal barbarians of the colonies, sent them like bloodhounds upon the suffering advocates of human rights. Nor age nor sex were spared: the domestic hearth was ravaged; homes, hamlets, towns, and cities were added in flames to the great holocaust, and murder and infanticide went hand in hand with despotism! Treason, too, did its worst. If suffering Hungary has had its Görgey, America had its Arnold, and in later years its Hull. Did these daunt the champions of liberty? No! The attempt to place the stronghold of freedom in the power of the foe, and the infamous surrender of an army at Detroit, though they stung the soul did not weaken the resolve, and those who remained still fought on in the good fight. Where were the heart and hand of national sympathy

and intervention then? Who stayed the Hessians in their bloody career, and who stood between the ruthless barbarian and the supplicating infant? Alas, none! When the brave and the good Lafayette left his native land, offering up his private fortune and his life in the holy cause of civil and religious emancipation, he was compelled to steal away like a thief in the night, lest his government should discover and intercept his plan; and when subsequently that government lent to the revolutionists a collateral aid, it was done to cripple and punish her rival, England, and not from sympathy for the American cause.

But I will not go into a historical detail with which every body is familiar. It is sufficient to say that a little patch of land lying on the western shores of the Atlantic ocean was the spot where this new experiment of self-government was to be tried. The men who undertook it had been practising some century and a half in the routine of colonial life, remote from the immediate contact of dictation. They had built schoolhouses and meeting-houses, and had thus gone on disseminating at the same time Christianity and intelligence; and if the men of their old stock can be accused of bigotry or superstition, (the mere relics of their former life,) we can say of them also that they brought with them out of Europe an element that could not exist under a despotism— the spirit of broad and manly independence. They planted it in the soil where they trod; they fused it with education and religion into the minds of their children, and thus transmitted it by successive generations down to the revolution which gave us nationality and freedom. They were men who had never felt, or rather who had never borne, the yoke of a tyrant.

With such materials a new system of government was formed, of most singular perfection and beauty. In it the spiritual and material requisites for man were most harmoniously blended, and under its benign influences it would seem that a portion at least of the human family had arrived at that completeness of temporal enjoyment adapted to the compound character of mortal-immortal. It was a system that stimulated the soul to activity; filled the mind with noble aspirations; developed the resources of the land, and the ingenuity and enterprise of the people who occupied it. It was the hand of a freeman which turned forth the fruits of the teeming soil; Art lifted her angelic features, like a bright child of the morning, and sent her beautiful creations over the land; Science threw back her elaborate mantle, seized upon the elements, drew the lightning from the clouds, and harnessed it as the messenger of man; Literature threw open her iron-bolted vaults, and poured out her exhaustless treasures to the mind; Commerce spread her wings, and, with the ensign of a free people at her peak, scoured the seas, and emptied her treasures and her luxuries into the lap of the nation. The descendants of the Pilgrims were independent, prosperous, powerful, and happy.

And all these blessings, having sprung from the indomitable energy, the wisdom and intelligence of our forefathers, have been nurtured into a perfect growth through the benign and invigorating influence of the glorious institutions which they gave to us, their descendants, when they also gave us a nation, and christened it "THE UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA."

Shall these institutions and this nation continue? or must they suffer the fate of republican governments that have gone before, and be blotted out? The elements of decay are even now at their vitals; the seeds of death are planted; the germs are up, and await only the blossoming and the fruit.

We have reared up a splendid structure, which has become the admiration of the world; we have thrown open its doors, and invited our whole race, with a hearty welcome, to come in and sit down with us and enjoy the feast within-a continual feast of

the soul, which is to them as a miracle and a mystery. We have erected a stupendous machine whose moral grandeur pierces like a dazzling glory to the remotest confines of human reason, and the peoples of the nations afar off are lost in wonder at the sublimity and perfection of its movements; yet they comprehend not the principles of its construction, nor the elements essential to the development of its graceful proportions. We have planted a garden, the fruits whereof are sweet to the soul and grateful to the senses; we have flung wide open the gates and Arcadian avenues leading thereto, that the stranger may enter freely in, and, unforbidden, partake of the delicious offering. He enters, and his heart bounds with a new pleasure; he tastes, and becomes delirious with joy; he eats, and is intoxicated with ecstasy. In a frenzy of delight, he essays to improve perfection: he binds the hands of the gardener, seizes upon the source of all his new-born joy, breaks down the tender branches, scatters the precious fruits in the mire, destroys the most thrifty shoots, blasts with unrelenting heel the opening buds, plants thorns and nettles where lilies have grown, and converts the recent paradise into a misshapen and chaotic mass. The fruit is destroyed, the tender vine is trodden in the ground, the flowers are killed in their fresh growth, and nothing is left of the heavenly scene save the soil, the roots, and the stems. Ah! we must take the fetters from the gardener's hands: he must return to his labors!

History deprecates what has been and is regarded as the inroads of the followers of Alaric and Genseric upon the monumental glory of ancient Rome. They are charged with the wanton destruction of the mere artistic ornate of the city, its statues, monuments, and frescoes. But what are these as compared with a vast system erected for the security of human liberty and human happiness? How shall we compare the destruction of a marble edifice or statue, a mere work of art, framed to please the eye, with the immolation of a system of government which develops the whole spiritual character of man, and fits him for a complete and untrammelled enjoyment of all his faculties, mental and physical-a charter of human rights and human freedom?

But it is denied by some historians that the Goths and Vandals were the real authors of those spoliations of art. They are attributed by some, and with good show of reason, to another class—a class of men who were themselves Romans, and who, taking advantage of the temporary occupation of the city by the barbarians, destroyed those things which were obnoxious to them. The statues, altars, and mythological temples of Rome had long been held as an abomination in the eyes of the Catholic priesthood of the city, and it has been inferred that they, and not the barbarians, caused their destruction.

If this supposition be true, by how easy a transition may we compare the act of the native Romans who destroyed their temples of art, with that of the native Americans who indirectly assist in the destruction of the institutions of their country. Although the American does not himself lay violent hands upon the dear-bought charter of his liberties, he at least looks on with passive sufferance, and, I may add, encourages with his smiles the work of desolation that goes on before him. If, then, his temples are destroyed, who is the actual destroyer? Is it he who, either through ignorance or design, flings the massive pillars to the ground? or he who, being charged with their protection, witnesses the desecration, nor lifts a hand in their defense?

We receive into our midst hundreds of thousands annually of the least enlightened minds of Europe. Now, if we did not lock up all the best avenues to industry which our country possesses, by sending to Europe for our dry-goods and iron, with the elements of which our whole land is teeming, the mere presence of these men, or at least the honest and industrious portion of them, would be perhaps a source of satisfaction rather than distrust; but as it is, their mere presence becomes a burthen, since, by unequal

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competition, they force our fellow-countrymen from the little employment which the wisdom of our legislators has left to them.

It is not, however, in a physical sense that I would now speak of them, but of their moral aspect and influence as developed through the political institutions of the country; and I think the oft-repeated boast, that the Yankees are "a wonderful people," may here be demonstrated beyond question. Not content with giving these poor benighted strangers a land to live in, with the full enjoyment of all the good things that flow from our open-handed laws and institutions-not content with making them our equals and partakers of the privileges of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness-not content with receiving them as our rivals in trade and competitors in fortune-not content with feeding their hunger, clothing their nakedness, sheltering them from oppression, and educating their youth, but with excessive liberality we set them at the new and strange employment of making and executing our laws, revising our constitutions, and controlling our judiciary. What but " a wonderful people" would do all this without wincing!

The exercise of the right of suffrage is, in its legitimate sense, an intellectual act; and the conferring of that right upon minds like these-minds incapable of understanding the purport or power of the ballot-seems little less than an act of madness or imbecility. Surely the man who knows not the meaning or intention of the suffrage power, and yet possessing the right to use it, may easily be made an instrument in the hands of the nefarious designer or the unprincipled demagogue; and by such a process the right of suffrage may be easily transformed from the shield of liberty to become the weapon of despotism. A man with a ballot in his hand, unconscious alike of the purpose of him who directs his vote and of the power of the vote itself, would as readily forge an iron collar for his own neck as do any thing else that he could not comprehend. Our laws in this respect are fraught with incalculable and fast-increasing danger.

The evidence of this truth is made apparent in various forms, yet having exercised a spirit of liberality, even though it be to a dangerous extent, it seems difficult to adopt a more conservative course-difficult, though not impossible; and to the searching mind it seems clearly evident that unless a more restrictive policy is pursued in the matter of granting the suffrage power to the stranger who comes amongst us, the time is not far distant when such radical changes will be made in our once perfect system as to place in imminent jeopardy, if not absolutely to subvert, its institutions. The wildest theorists of the Old World, when baffled in their suicidal attempts at home, are lured to our shores under the conviction that through the ballot-box in this free land they will be enabled to perfect their visionary schemes, and ere long build a crystal palace of Nothing to Do in an eldorado of Much to Get. Even in the chrysalis state, as aliens, they promulge new constructions of our Constitution adapted to their fanciful designs, and very coolly assert, through their published organs, the consoling fact, that American statesmen have failed to develop the democratic character of the organic law of their native land. I will trouble you to listen a moment while I read to you a short manifesto just published in the good old State of Virginia :—

PLATFORM OF THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC [GERMAN] SOCIETY OF WORKING men.

Both political parties of our land have proved their incapacity to develop and build up the true democratic principles of the Constitution. Their fate is inevitable—already the process of dissolution has commenced.

The party of the future, although at present small in numbers, has already begun to put forward, with settled convictions of success, a new political programme, and is about to enter the path of reform, guided by the belief that inaction in the affairs of a state leads to decay and destruction, while activity and zeal produce new formations of life-a guaranty for the welfare of all.

By the cooperation of all those who profess radicalism, we will be enabled to establish this new and popular platform, which our party will look upon as the basis of our political movements.

The [German] Working Men's Society in Richmond has therefore resolved to publish the following fundamental principles of reform:

A. Reform in the laws of the General Government, as well as in those of the States.

We DEMAND, 1. Universal suffrage. 2. The election of all officers by the people. 3. The abolition of the Presidency. 4. The abolition of Senates, so that the Legislature shall consist of only one branch. 5. The right of the people to recall their representatives (cashier them) at their pleasure. 6. The right of the people to change the constitution when they like. 7. All law-suits to be conducted without expense. 8. A department of the Government to be set up for the purpose of protecting immigration. 9. A reduced term for acquiring citizenship.

B. Reform in the foreign relations of the Government.

1. Abolition of all neutrality. 2. Intervention in favor of every people struggling for liberty. C. Reform in what relates to Religion.

1. A more perfect development of the principle of personal freedom and liberty of conscience; consequently, a. Abolition of laws for the observance of the Sabbath. b. Abolition of prayers in Congress. c. Abolition of oath upon the Bible. d. Repeal of all laws enacting a religious test before taking an office.

2. Taxation of church property. 3. A prohibition of all incorporations of church property in the name of ecclesiastics.

D. Reform in the Social conditions.

1. Abolition of landed monopoly. 2. Ad valorem taxation of property. 3. Amelioration of the condition of the working class. a. By lessening the time of work to eight hours for grown persons, and to five hours for children. b. By incorporation of mechanics' associations and protective societies. c. By granting a preference to mechanics before all other creditors. d. By establishing an asylum for superannuated mechanics without means at the public expense.

4. Education of poor children by the State. 5. Taking possession of the railroads by the State. 6. The promotion of education. a. By the introduction of free schools, with the power of forcing the parents to send their children to school, and prohibition of all clerical influence. b. By instruction in the German language. c. By establishing a German University.

7. The supporting of the slave emancipation exertions of Cassius M. Clay by Congressional laws. 8. Abolition of the Christian system of punishment, and introduction of the human amelioration system. 9. Abolition of capital punishment.

For the name of the Social Democratic Society,

Richmond, 5th Oct., 1851.

DR. C. HEINMETZ, President.
J. BIESER, Secretary.

These fellows, who have probably not much to lose, and, as they think, every thing to gain by agitation, thirst eternally for change, fondly believing that the time will come when they can ride into power or wealth on the blood-red waves of revolution, or at least vote themselves into a living without the tedious process of working for it. Bred to a hatred of their own governments, they acquire an almost instinctive hostility to all government. Taught to regard the rulers of their native lands as tyrants, they do not realize the possibility of a government of equal laws. All restraints, civil and religious, are to them alike irksome, and they regard all laws as oppressive, whether emanating from the edict of a despot or the openly-declared will of a free people. Their cry "progress!" social, political, and religious "reform," by which they seem to imply emancipation from all wholesome restraint, with every thing good, and nothing to pay!

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Are we justified-that is the word-are we justified in making lawgivers of men who possess so vague an idea of what constitutes rational liberty-men who, understanding them not, scorn our laws, our customs, and our religion? I say religion, for although the sacred element forms no part of our political organization, it is, and must ever be, the foundation of all pure government. Withhold from the new-comers, of this class of visionaries and disorganizers, the political power which our now too liberal laws