delude, beguile, and swindle the world, you may secretly detect and forestall their plots, turn their capital to your own account, foil their schemes, and retaliate upon their frauds, without their knowing how it was done. When the financial crash of 1839 and '40 occurred, the best of the monopolies by embezzlements and frauds were minus more than one-half their capital, and got their stock reduced to meet this disaster; and all the rest were totally insolvent.

After the explosion of the United States Bank, there was found, crumpled up amongst the rubbish in a closet, as has been already stated, a sheet of common letter-paper, on which was entered in pencil mark the initials of some of the officers and their favorites, to whom more than $20,000,000 had been loaned, on hypothecation, by a committee of this board to sundry persons on their notes with collaterals of West Feliciana, Vicksburg, and other moonshine scrip; and the sequel showed that more than the whole capital, $35,000,000, by these and similar causes had been swept away.

It is doubtful if the debts of this bank will be paid, and it is now admitted that the stockholders will never get a dollar. Just in proportion to the magnitude of the objects of venal plunder, are the duplicity and art employed to attain them.

For years before the eruption referred to occurred, the pomp and power of this institution so mysteriously pervaded the public mind, that acts of disgusting adulation were lavished upon its officers, those opposed to it were persecuted, and expressions of doubt as to the integrity of its governors or the solvency of the bank would have exposed the publisher to the perils of being mobbed or lynched.

Even after the exposure of the truth, such were the morbid sympathy and sordid influences employed, that the publication of the evidence given upon the efforts made to bring them to justice, was wholly suppressed, and they all escaped through the rotten meshes of the law. Such is the marvelous and superficial delusion and the mysterious and successful accomplishments of fashionable and ostentatious rogues.

Mix not with them, except to find them out; to expose and prosecute them is waste of time, and dangerous.

Use them, to know and guard against their frauds, but put nothing in their power, for it will be embezzled or stolen.

The utility of all banks, insurance and savings companies is doubtful. The ostensible idea is that they accommodate the

poor with the use of the money of the rich, lighten the burden of individual losses by flood and fire out of the small contributions of the many, and providently keep and invest the earnings of the ignorant and helpless.

Nothing can be so plausible as these benevolent plans for equalizing the condition of man, and nothing so replete with deception, or so liable to be perverted to the purposes of duplicity and fraud.

The poor are generally deluded into extravagance by relying on moneyed facilities, instead of their own safe and patient savings.

Insuring is like faro; the fact is that the profits will exceed the loss, or the dealer and the banker would not sit down to their table.

Mutual insurance, without capital, rests upon the same speculation, or it would not be begun, and money savings shops presuppose the impudent sophism of the ignorance and stupidity of the depositors, which is as false on one side as it is cowardly and servile on the other, for there never was a human being who had industry to make a dollar that had not sagacity to save it as well as a corporation, who, however honest, out of its interests and profits will take good care to pay its rent and salaries.

So that the real advantages are not only doubtful, but so it is that they are always used for fraud and swindling; and all honest men, unless they are indubitably certain that they are under the management of those who are pure and discreet, should utterly refuse to touch their stock, and by every act of discountenance, discredit and repudiate them.

If respectable men will properly use and exert their influence, by frowning down these insolent and audacious usurpers of public opinion, they can themselves obtain and hold dominion over the popular will.

By these pious frauds, these private and lawful preparations for self-defence, these deadly weapons carefully concealed, with the eyes wide awake, but not too wide open, you may glide past these artful rogues, using them yourself, and not being used by them.

As I walked by myself, I talked to myself,

And myself it said unto me,

Beware of thyself, take care of thyself,
For nobody cares for thee.

CHAPTER XIX.

GOVERNMENTS.

Sources of despotic governments-Nobility-The multitude-Ambition— Montesquieu-Office - Free governments - The poor and rich — The sword-Cost of twenty years' war in Europe Of people to govern themselves-Liberty-Congress-Rome-Tribunes-Veto power - Revolution-People of the United States-Vigilance-Danger-Union-Fraternity-Apathy of the people- Excitement Inconsistency-Query, if monopolies in free governments do not defraud the people as much as privileged orders do in arbitrary governments-Can any form of government guard against private and public abuses ?-Veto power-Occasion for vigilance-Extracts, &c.

FAMILIARITY With guilt benumbs the conscience and encourages the heart to persevere in wickedness, but it can furnish no excuse or palliation for it; on the contrary, it requires the constant perpetration of other crimes to justify, conceal, and maintain the first sin.

One crime necessarily provokes, excites, and requires another, until the mind is wholly engrossed in shifts and subterfuges for the practice of fraud and violence.

The first unlawful grant of land, and creation of privilege by title or franchise, for the exclusive advantage of the few, at the expense of the rest of the people, was an act of unauthorized violence; and its continuance, under the penalties of insurrection and treason for resistance, is an aggravation, as it is an hourly repetition of the original fraud.

No people ever consented to these usurpations upon their rights no more than they have consented to be slaves.

They will no sooner surrender a part of their rights than they will voluntarily agree to part with them all.

Whenever this invasion has been perpetrated, it has been accomplished by the despotic power of the sword, and the people have been compelled to submit to it.

Whether this arbitrary force covers a part or the whole, the principle is the same. The military chieftain and the ruthless demagogue, who would rob the people of their rights, by or

daining special privileges, and seizing the public lands for themselves and their minions; and the ruffian who captures and sells his fellow-man into bondage, are alike guilty of robbery and treason. And the audacious miscreant who holds these hellish spoils by purchase or by succession stands upon the same degraded footing with the first cutthroat and kidnapper; one has been stimulated perhaps by ambition, ignorance, avarice, and lust of power-excuses too mean for the sordid dealer or the hereditary footpad.

There is no sanction of law or religion, wealth, rank, or power, that can mitigate these burning wrongs; and just in proportion to their duration will be the remorse and retribution of those who moisten their hands or stain their consciences with the sweat or the blood of their fellow-man.

It was this lust for dominion, injustice, and cruelty, which stimulated the revolt of Lucifer; and his doom will fall upon the heads of those who perpetrated his perfidious rebellion against the holy laws and equal rights of all God's crea

tures.

There is a downright absurdity in the toleration of despotic or aristocratic governments. All the arguments and theories in their favor are infamous deceptions and scandalous frauds. They are nowhere, or under any circumstances, required. The reason why they have been tolerated is that the honest people prefer their private pursuits to public affairs, and thereby give rogues an opportunity to usurp their rights. And when these usurpers obtain dominion, they plunge the people into ignorance and brutal servility, and keep them there by force.

BLIND CREDULITY OF THE MULTITUDE.

"The meaner sort are too credulous, and led with blind zeal, blind obedience, to prosecute and maintain whatsoever their sottish leaders shall propose; what they in pride and singularity, revenge, vain glory, ambition, spleen, for gain, shall rashly maintain and broach, their disciples make a matter of conscience, of hell and damnation, if they do it not; and will rather forsake wives, children, house, and home, lands, goods, fortunes, life itself, than omit or abjure the least title of it; and to advance the common cause, undergo any miseries, turn traitors, assassinate, pseudo-martyrs, with full assurance of reward in that other world-that they shall certainly merit by it, win heaven, be canonized for saints."-BURTON's Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 655.

Arbitrary governments cannot be preferred on the score of economy, justice, or morals; on the contrary, they have ever been distinguished for fraud, injustice, and prodigality: nor for internal security, or external protection; for assassinations and insurrections have most prevailed when the people have had the least to do with government.

Napoleon and Louis Philippe were constantly beset by conspiracies and rebellions.

In the French Revolution of 1848, the government had but twelve rounds of cartridge to defend the throne.

Whether this insurrection was a mob, or whether it was right or wrong, it boots not, for it would have been the same if a sudden descent by a foreign army had been made upon their capital.

If people will burn or tear down here, and there is no arm to stop them, it takes nothing from the argument, for it never was better with kings or emperors. They have always been more helpless in times of popular commotion than free governments.

Nor do these stringent governments elevate the condition of men by the diffusion of knowledge, reward of industry, and encouragement of genius; on the contrary, they deceive the ignorant, oppress and burthen the pursuits of labor, neglect learning, betray virtue, and sneer at and persecute honest industry, and moral and mental worth.

Their policy is to degrade man and his lawful pursuits. And the social and moral condition of men has always sunk and degenerated just in proportion as their power has prevailed.

Such rulers are distinguished for laziness, ignorance, prodigality, and injustice.

No prince or nobleman, of the thousands who have lived in this nineteenth century, has written a choice and sterling book, or invented an improvement in tactics, science, law, mechanics, chemistry, agriculture, or steam; or developed a new thought in poetry, music, or metaphysics.

They have held undisturbed dominion over the moral and physical energies of millions, without an effort to enlarge the sphere of their usefulness.

No work of philanthropy or amelioration; no dissolution of feudal fetters and monopoly of lands; no release of the poor vassals; no deliverance from the dark and iron bondage of