bad example, or temptation; these artifices are prompted by the same depraved spirit of evil that perpetrates sin.

Every one who has the mental power called Will, the faculty which prompts to do an act, has knowledge enough to know what he does; and, if he does a bad act, why does he do it but for the love of doing it; and why love to do it if his inherent propensity is not evil? Why is it that fools do no good acts, and that they are always doing bad acts, but that their natural inclinations are evil? They know what they do; it is from choice; they know it is wrong, and they do it wilfully.

The bent, the leaning, the preponderating impulses of the heart are for evil; the actions and lives of all bad men show this, and the acknowledgments and confessions of all honest men confirm it.

All the concealments, covert fraud, trick, disguise, chicane; all the open contempt and rebellion against right and law are only so many proofs and acknowledgments that sin is known by its perpetrators to be wrong; and that they do it wilfully, and with their eyes open.

A thorough understanding of these fundamental obstacles to the laws should be fearlessly examined, and their practical character promptly resisted.

The political and moral institutions of society cannot exist upon any other basis than virtue and honor; every dishonest use of the public authority, and all abuses of its peace and safety, are an open insurrection and rebellion against the people and their government.

Every one capable of choosing, and of willing to do an act, and of doing the act by his own free will, knows what he does. He acts under no necessity, but by his unrestrained liberty; for which he should be promptly and sufficiently punished. To excuse or screen him is just as bad as to justify him. He must be restrained or removed if he will not let others alone; or they go without redress, and he is encouraged to repeat his aggressions.

The preservation of individual rights and public security is as essential to their existence as the necessary means for the protection of life from fatal contacts; and there is the same urgent occasion to vindicate and defend the first as there is to shelter and protect the other.

It is a question of life and death, in which no apathy or sympathy can be reasonably or safely indulged.

It is just as reprehensible to stand by and suffer a mad dog to bite a child, without smiting the brute dead, as it is for society to permit thieves and murderers to rob and kill without prompt and unsparing extinguishment.

The rattlesnake and the wolf are no more dangerous to life than the burglar and murderer; neither should be excused or spared under any subterfuge or pretext whatever.

The one attacks man's life by a natural instinct for destruction, the other by a wilful desire for rapine and blood; the human brute is therefore less excusable than the dumb beast.

No occasion should be omitted for exposing these vile and pernicious propensities of the human heart; to contrast the imminent exposure and immeasurable responsibility of those who maintain the public weal; to show how the wicked and perverse inclinations of a portion of society disturb the public repose, and to detect and classify their leading and most obnoxious traits; to index the secret springs of their mental operations, and to show the utter impracticability of reaching their hearts by any of the ordinary means of reasoning, reproof, or admonition; to crush wrong by iron force, and to protect right against wilful aggression without stint or false mercy.

The wicked are becoming better educated, more crafty, and powerful; they combine more physical strength, intellectual force, with more sympathy from the masses, than they have ever before had. They should be narrowly watched, jealously tried, and extirpated without compunction.

There is no regal or military arm to curb their bent, and no efficient, judicial, or political authority, as the factions and parties now exist, to arrest or restrain their progress.

They spare no home, no name, nor sex, nor age, nor life; they lurk in midnight confederation, rob, burn, and murder ; they conflagrate and spill blood for love of rapine; juries, judges, and executives screen them from punishment; the halter should be their doom, and all honest men should combine to obliterate them and their foul confederates from the face of the earth.

The only remedy is for the honest and respectable members of society to cast off the ridiculous and unmeaning indifference they have heretofore exhibited about public affairs and criminal punishments; for every man to join some one of the political parties; go to the primary meetings; have them held in

the daytime, and away from taverns and rum-holes; keep out drunkards and office-hunters from every party; let no one have authority to nominate himself for office, and no man be allowed to vote, or elected or appointed to office who is not sober, competent, industrious, and responsible; and thus put under, and for ever keep down this rabble of depraved and abandoned scoundrels, who prey upon society by hypocrisy and political intrigue.

The present alarming and censurable apathy with the intelligent and responsible portions of society upon this momentous subject must be cast off, the plausible absurdities of cowardly and covert rogues in the guise of reformers, and the whole swarm of political gamesters, must be for ever banished, and the tone and dignity of public constraint must be restored to a wholesome and stringent standard of necessary and primitive rigor; or the present career of crime and violence will jeopard the pure and noble institutions of the only free country upon the face of the globe.

CHAPTER XII.

ARISTOCRACY.

Definition-Political-Nobility-Titles-Land-Moneyed corporations

Monopolies Industry-Employments-Honor-Examples--Sympathies -United States-Army-Navy-Vagabonds-Fungus DistinctionsPassions-Avarice-Pride-Oppression-Power-Kings-Mobs-Municipal law-Politics-Fashion -- Custom, &c.--Punishments--Demagogues--The rabble--Orders--Degrees--Merit-Causes of aristocracy -Women--Children-Domestic circles-Arbitrary laws of society-Municipal laws--Depravities-Rulers--Politicians--Shylocks-Fashion.

THE very general mismanagement of children; their idleness and indulged propensities at the only period of life in which habits of industry, self-government, and integrity can be formed, are, from the ignorance, carelessness, and vanity of parents, almost universal.

There is a foolish disposition with parents, who are called well to do in the world, to have their children schooled, dressed, and accommodated with pocket money, amusements and caprices, according to the undefined and ridiculous standards of fashion which they form, by a superficial reference to families above them, with whom they have no acquaintance, and with whose domestic arrangements they are totally ignorant.

The children of those in the humble spheres of life are permitted to range the streets day and night; are not taught to read or work, or furnished with any moral instructions.

Thus encouraged, as they grow up, they become coarse, rude, vulgar, and profane; hate labor; abuse respectable persons; soon learn to repudiate their debts; lie, swindle, cheat, defraud, and steal, and defy law and religion.

The natural depravity of the human heart is prone to all these vices; to prevent them from being engrafted upon the instincts of nature, requires the most careful discipline and training in youth.

Where these inherent hereditary propensities prevail, there is no moral remedy.

From these causes, and from these sources, an incredible number of persons, thus degenerated, are at maturity cast upon the world.

They practice and subsist on the credulity of society; are sheltered from its indignation by the crafty concealment of their real characters, and spared from the penalties of open perpetration by their inherent precautions and cowardice.

In the warm months, thousands of them are seen shooting in fens and hedges, bobbing upon the.flats, and streams, lounging in skiffs and shades, smoking, drinking, and guzzling in brutal apathy.

In the winter weeks, they loaf in taverns, oyster-cellars, billiard and gaming rooms, at corners, and on fire-plugs; and send their mothers, wives, and children to solicit charity and beg; while they pilfer, debauch, make fights, fires, riots, mobs; fill almshouses, prisons, and penitentiaries.

It is from this class of society, and those by nature bent on mischief, that the roots of aristocracy shoot off, in all its concealed and hidden windings.

These vile propensities of the human heart are irrespective of intellect; and, therefore, this portion of the community furnishes rank and file for all the pursuits of imposition, duplicity, abuse, and oppression.

These are the pernicious and dangerous sources from whence, in all countries, and in all ages, have sprung the pests and persecutors of man.

From the pilfering beggar to the imperial cut-throat; from the petty swindler to the highway robber; from the nostrum vender to the tilted pedagogue; and from the street brawler to the audacious pirate.

And just in proportion to their impunity, are the sufferings of all portions of men increased and multiplied.

Originally, the word aristocracy was used to signify the distinction between a despotic and a supposed better form of government, placed in the hands of an order of privileged persons. When this number was reduced to a few, the government was called an oligarchy; which implied a corrupted aristocracy.

But now the word aristocracy is used to express the name or feeling entertained for every species of imposition, and unlawful inequality; every act of wrong and injustice; everything cruel,