is not. Free trade and free religion constitute the very essence of freedom. Wherever commerce has prospered, liberty has grown with her. It is a mistake to suppose, as many in this country seem to think, that agriculture is a better handmaid to liberty than commerce. Athens furnished the Despot of the East with luxuries, which he sought to have without purchase. Commerce caused Carthage to become a Republic-caused the abode of the African to become the home of wealth, and the mother of colonies. Geneva, Venice, and the free cities of Italy, furnished the world. with whatever their advance in civilization demanded. Switzerland, by her commerce and machinery, made her rough mountains the seat of wealth, and caused the ignorance and passion of other countries to minister to her advancement. The Hanseatic League and the Free Cities of Germany outstood the numberless dynasties which attempted to override them. elected kings of the Romans and the vicegerents of St. Peter yielded them precedence. The keys of Heaven, in the hands of the successors of St. Peter, were retained in their service, and the sceptres of earth were numbered in the train of her followers.

The

From the promulgation of Magna Charta commerce marked England as her own, and became a joyful co-worker in the cause of liberty. Shipmoney, the monopolies of wine, wool, &c., cost one king of England his throne, and another his life. In a rough, summary way, her citizens freed themselves from the bloated selfishness of the few. The oligarchist, while he stood complacently before his shrine, worshipping his sole divinity, itself-and, like the Pharisee of old, thanking his God that he was not as other men are, felt a strong hand upon his shoulder, and there was talk of prisons and confiscations. A wild and fearful looking for Judgment to come took the place of proud complacency. Self discovered that there were other selves in the world, and then talked feebly something about vested rights to monopolize, and divine rights to oppress. There were calm, stern men in those days, who, like the adder, would not listen to the voice of the charmer, but erected their crests in a very threatening way, and indicated, with a species of earnestness, which even the drinkers of rich wine could understand, that they would crawl no longer in the dust, nor lick the feet that trod upon them.

Fettering commerce, stamp acts, taxes on tea, and other means of protection, which sovereigns show their subjects, caused a republic to spring from the forests of the New World, as the warrior goddess of old sprung armed from the earth, whose duty was to contend with crowns and dynasties, and whose shadow looms large over the earth, throwing a gloom over crumbling thrones, and in the evening of their day, pointing towards the sun-rising of a glorious to-morrow.

This Republic in her infancy contended with two of the proudest nations on earth, because they obstructed her commerce and impressed her seamen. In her infancy she taught men, who also claimed a divine right to rob, that she did not understand Christian or Mahomedan religion that way. She sent an embassy to Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, which the dull brain of the Musselmen could comprehend, and swept corsairs from the Mediterranean, and caused the Pope of Rome to rejoice, and give thanks; and certain other persons, kings and others, fearing to be outdone, to start up, and whip the Musselmen too, after the democracy across the ocean had given them a series of lessons in morality.

Rome is not an exception to this rule. Her senate not only looked, in the language of Pyrrhus, like an assembly of kings-but absolutely was

an assembly of kings, who ruled their subjects with a high hand; with this advantage over simple kings, that the chances of power falling into weak hands were diminished in proportion to their numbers. They caused their subjects-called citizens-to go forth, century after century, to conquer for their aggrandizement-for the conquered lands were not divided among the people, nor were the proceeds generally thrown into the public treasury; but the conquered lands were appropriated to themselves by these kings of Rome. The Agrarian Law, which has been much misrepresented, if not misunderstood, by the speakers and writers of the party of combined selves against the masses, was not for an equal distribution of property, or even lands; but the object of the law was to divide a portion of the conquered lands among those who had striven for their acquisition, than which a more just principle has never been promulgated. But aristocratic self said, no! I take the honors and the lands-you the wounds and the disasters! Well might Rome be turbulent under such a system. Under a combination of hereditary kings, the usual results of kingcraft were produced-the rich were made richer, and the poor poorer. Force and the sword, aristocratic rule, decided all important controversies. Commerce was neglected, and the many were sacrificed to the few. The information derived from an interchange of commodities among the different nations, was not disseminated among them to any extent. The law of barter and exchange, the rules of trade which equalize, were never substituted among them for the law of force and the might of the possessor.

In these olden republics we see other instances of princely skill and priestly craft. Whenever the people were aroused to a consideration of their rights, and appeared determined to enforce them against the few, for whose benefit alone laws were passed, the blinding process was resorted to; the orators of prejudice no longer resorted to sophistry to sustain the selfish measures they were advocating, but, waiving the consideration of measures, they brought forward a man to dazzle the eyes of the people. The tyranny of the few was unseen, when an old hero, covered with wounds, was placed before it. In the contests for power in those republics, as in a later republic, the few elevated, as the ensign around which to gather their forces, a splendid sarcophagus, embellished with beautiful colors, and decorated with superb earvings, emblematical, as they said, of the past-the glorious reminiscences of the past-the buried glories of the past. Upon that sarcophagus they had painted, with Tyrian dies and Egyptian cunning, every detail in the life of the old hero whom they had selected, from his available laurels, as sufficiently powerful to gain a victory over principle-as sufficiently distinguished to cause the people, in their admiration of him, to forget themselves. Around the top of this emblem they had inscribed the mottoes :The past; the glorious past! Honor to the brave! Reward to the well-doer! and over that emblem, held up to dazzle the eyes of the people, they waved banners rent in battle. This emblem was all-powerful with a generous people. Power and supremacy were given to the mominee of the few. But when he was once placed in the seat of power, a change came over the spirit of their dream; this splendid sarcophagus was opened, and there stood, exposed to the view of the people, the dry bones and mummy of exclusive laws, monopoly, and the tyranny of the few. They breathed the breath of life into those dry bones; they brought that skeleton down from its pedestal, and sent it stalking through the land, withering everything with which it came in contact. Have the people of the United States ever witnessed such an emblem? But here, although the people may be lured astray for a sea

son, they cannot be blinded a sufficient length of time for the few to gain any material advantage. In our Republic, as in the Roman Republic, the few would give to the irresponsible, law-making power, which they frequently can manage to control-supremacy. They would abolish the Veto of our tribune of the people, the President. It interferes with their selfish views and sweeping acts; but "we, the people, do ordain and establish this constitution;" and we, the people, will maintain and defend it.

The time will come when political equality shall prevail among all, whatever the private characteristics of each individual may be; when they shall build houses, and inhabit them; when they shall not build and another inhabit; when they shall not plant and another eat; but before that time shall come," there must be the battle of the warrior, with a confused noise, and garments rolled in blood, and with burning and fuel of fire." In France, previous to the revolution of 1789, man felt that oppression-dark, heavy, immovable, crushing-had closed around him, and he settled down into despair; he felt that his destiny was despair. Like Prometheus, his rest and peace consisted in being bound to a bed of rock, there to submit to have his vitals torn out by the vultures of tyranny-tyranny, which usurped to itself the name of God, and called itself divine, while whispering continually in the ears of its victims-No hope, no hope, no hope! Mercy and justice had veiled themselves, and liberty was shrouded like the sheeted dead. A requiem went up through all France-not the discord of the wake, with feasting, intoxication and loud lamentation-not the mournful music of the coronach-not the rich peal of the organ, sounding sweetly in the ears of the heir, rejoicing over the removal of a self, a prior possessor-captivity from the depths of the dungeon uttered groans and curses; expiring genius, from garrets, breathed forth the sighs of departed hope; bribery and corruption, stalking in the house of justice, laughed and mocked; starvation, from hovels, with low, husky words and choking breath, whispered feebly-bread, bread. The wail of infants, dying by the hands of parents, unable to furnish them food, and the maledictions and revilings of their murderers, helped to swell the diapason of misery and crime-crime caused by the misery of the many, misery caused by the crime of the few. When the miracle was wrought, and the dead was raised, and liberty again stood forth, that a universal cry was raised "blood for blood," is not strange; that they should attempt to repay to their oppressors the wrongs of a thousand years; that they smote crowns with a hundred hands' is not strange; but it is strange that they did not extirpate the whole race of their oppressors; that they did not crush the serpent's eggs, and not wait for the hiss and rattle premonitory of their bite, before they put their feet upon them.

In this country we trust that we have no such bloody scenes to go through; but there is much to be accomplished by the silent power of the ballot-box. Progress is a cardinal principle of the democracy, and will be, until the time shall come when the great body of the people shall no longer be taxed to benefit a few; when the substance of the many that should go to the support of their families, and the education of their children, shall no longer be wrenched from them, to swell the countless millions in the coffers of manufacturers and cotton lords; until unjust laws shall be done away with; until this system of legislating for classes, of legislating for the few at the expense of the many, is entirely abolished; until the principle that the earth is made for the benefit of all, is recognised as a rule of action.

High tariff will be superseded by low tariff'; low tariff will be swept away

before the cry of no tariff, and the heart of the million will rejoice, that commerce shall be as free as thought.

Banks, and other engines of bloated and fictitious wealth, stockholders in which are allowed to convert one dollar in specie into two or more dollars in paper money, by the aid of no other Aladdin's lamp than a statute; banks, the very embodiment of legal unnatural inequality, shall be trodden under foot by the democracy; the very word monopoly shall be forgotten; what God hath made free man shall not bind. Free, free, free-all entitled to the same privileges-all subject to the same restraint. Colleges and universities, the standing pools of learning, mere store-houses of old armor, out of use and out of date, will be superseded by the universities of the people, wherein the youth shall be taught that which the man is to practice. The self-judging, the self-willing, the self-ruling process will take the place of blind obedience and honored custom, which receives as law, as gospel, the reveries of blinded hallucinated pedants, who never acted but were always acted upon. The reputation and fame that these institutions give their honors and degrees, will wither and shrivel in the fervid heat of truths, mightier than any that they hand down, like their own parchments, before a consuming fire. Value shall be placed on knowledge that is received, not invented, existing in the mind, not reasoned in it. The truth shall be recognized, that he who is akin to the Almighty is equal with every created thing. No robbery shall be allowed, no forgery of God Almighty's laws, no false pretences, that he who laid in the manger, gave you any divine rights, any rights to the labor of the poor, any right to tax others for your benefit, any right by fiction and law to increase your wealth two, three, four fold in the twinkling of an eye. Laws shall be passed for the greatest good of the greatest number. Enough air to breathe, enough water to drink, enough land to cultivate, are the natural rights of every man. His homestead, and enough land with it to support his family, shall not be subject to execution. By superior education, intelligence, industry; by cunning, by watching opportunities, by taking advantage of your careless adversary, you may seize upon the products of his labors; but an edict shall be promulgated—thus far shall ye go, and no farther. Ay, extortioner, thus far shail ye go; but ye shall not steal that which God gave a right to live, a right to the products of the earth-ye shall not substitute therefor a necessity to beg or starve.

Anpokaria the government of the people, or in the more general signification of the words, the power of the people, has made itself felt; that mighty power which, like a giant, ignorant of its own strength, has suffered itself for ages to be fettered with withes of straw, and bound and working in those withes, has seen, with an air of stupid wonder, its sweat caught as it dropped and hardened into diamonds, to shine upon the person of ignorance, conceit and pride, and muttered at the hard hand of Providence, as though Providence had not left them to right themselves-as though Providence had not given them a right to her last boon, the sweat of the brow and the products thereof.

This mighty power, which, like the waters of the great deep, has only to be put in motion to swallow up all that rides upon it, has, throughout Christendom, been troubled from its depths. Ominous sounds of its progress have been heard and feared. Barriers have been raised against the tide only to cause its waters to rise higher, and give velocity and power to the impending deluge. When the barriers are broken-when the power of the people is felt in the first ecstacy of their acquired strength, and with the mighty momentum of long years of wrong they sweep away, as with the

hand of Omnipotence, thrones, principalities and powers-greatness that was, becomes utter littleness before its might, mere drift-weed upon its waves. Visible, tangible powers are crushed or swallowed up in the depth, or thrown out, mere scum, upon the shore. Invisible powers, arbitrary, irresistible, which rule, despotically, the hearts of men-which control visible powers with the might of the spirit, the laws of etiquette and haut ton, the laws of honor, the laws of property, the laws of justice, so called, the bonds of affection, the behests of religion, are snapped asunder by the secret laws of our being, by the law of equality, hidden in all hearts, and manifest from the creation through the works that are made. The air, the sea, the rain, the sun, the wants, the enjoyments, the birth, the death, the last narrow house;―ay, and by the deeds that are done, and the thoughts that are inspired, is the law of political equality manifest. The serpent rod of Moses, empowered from on High, swallows up all the timber twigs and hazel wands of the would-be magicians and prophets of earth. Progress and ruin advance together, until the long pent-up energies of the people have free scope to spread themselves abroad, till they settle in quietness, and are at rest. Progress, which the possessors of the good things of earth call innovation, (as though it were innovation for the infant to throw off its swaddling clothes and assume the port and bearing of a man)-progress, the cardinal principle of the democracy, which is made by their adversaries a term of reproach, all history shows, will go on. It must be through continual strife, and it may be through blood. For progress is but a contest, a still going on in spite of the death chaunts, the impenetrable armor, and the resisting spirit of self. A contest which has been going on through earth's long day, and will still go on until evening-until the mighty purposes of creation are accomplished, and the many are entitled to pre-eminence over the few in the view of earth, as they are now entitled in the eye of heaven.

TRANSLATIONS FROM HORACE. ODE XX.

TO MECENAS.

VILE Sabine thou shalt drink, in modest cup,
A wine that I in Grecian jars closed up,
What day the theatre's assembled crowd

These greeted with applause so loud.

Mæcenas dear, pride of th' equestrian ranks,
That the parental river's hollow banks,
And Vatican's deep echoes, made the sound
With sympathetic glee rebound.

Thine the Cæcubian nectar, or the wine
Which Cales' presses yield--but ne'er the vine
Of rich Falerna or the Formian hills

Its treasures to my cup distils.