many times across. See with what overwhelming yet steady energy we tunnel mountains, skirt fearful precipices, fly over rolling prairies, and drive on with a noise of thunder to the extreme boundaries of the broad continent. All this, too, the work of a small cycle of years. And our experiments with electricity-what amazing wonders have been wrought in the briefest breath of time! The world may well look on astonished, though it hardly fills us at home with the same emotion. We comprehend now the answer to the sublime question put to Job: "Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, 'Here we are!" And we feel that this is all but an experiment as yet, and so toil earnestly on after new victories, and the achievement of still grander ́successes. We are not yet content with this; we are content with nothing. Our action is fully up with our national motto, that watchword of the future-"Onward !"

We have conquered earth, air, water, and lightning successively. We have taught mankind how all things were at the first designed for their happiness and comfort, and that nothing was wanting but ingenuity and energy to unlock the hidden treasures of a globe. Our material greatness is not paralleled by that of any nation in existence. Wealth has flooded our coffers, and enabled us generously to offer a helping hand to the less fortunate ones of the world. Power has consequently increased, until we are acknowledged to be one of the great nations of Christendom-a nation on which are fixed the eager eyes of all mankind. And, to carry out the point still further, our population has increased in a ratio that seems really incomprehensible. The mind itself is hardly rapid enough to keep pace with the facts thus presented. It cannot be very long, at the present ratio of increase, before we shall have a population on our soil denser even than that which makes old China the standing wonder of the earth. And this crowded and busy people, alive to the vanquishment of time, space, and matter, must be the people from whose midst will go forth the manifold influences that are to subjugate all men and all things to their high sway. We do not contend that this new government will be in any way related to the tyrannies that have hith

erto cast nothing but gloomy shadows over the hearts of mankind; nor that it is to seize hold of men and compel them to obey, or even to believe; but that in such a government will reside the spirit and essence of freedom, more than any other element,—that it will bring all men eventually out of political darkness into a world of mental light, that it will succeed everywhere in establishing and vindicating individual manhood,—and that, with their native rights restored to them, men will at once feel new responsibilities, and assert their true claims to all that is high, and great, and holy in their nature.

This is plainly our mission. Is it not one of unsurpassed grandeur, both in itself and its results? Power for ages has gradually been moving westward, exactly through this geographical belt of the earth. Each successive step has been attended with still more important results. Every westward remove of this power has been marked with the burning of a still brighter light, and has left behind it a still more luminous track for mankind to gaze upon. It has now struck the Atlantic shore of North America, and, in a space of time almost incredible, has pushed its rapid way to the Pacific boundary. When it leaps that ocean, it gets back on its old ground again, and thus in its course the highest form of civilization has girdled the world.

Young and vigorous as America is, its youth and vigor are not to be wasted in dreams. Nor is there much fear, either, that such will be the case. Some timidly caution us against going "too fast," professing ignorance of where our destiny may lead us. That, however, seems plain enough to a mind possessed of true faith. Our course is clear; our mistakes are soon corrected by the aid of experience; our successes overwhelm the warnings of the hopeless, and bid us on.

We see, then, that the United States offer the field for the fair trial of this great experiment of man. The experiment is, to learn whether men are of more worth than things; and if autocracies, and monarchies, and all tyrannies, disguise them as you may,are not violent usurpations of the very laws of existence. Upon our fortunes rests the destiny of the world. Our success and our

example are making all peoples restive; our moral strength is more powerful than fleets, more dreaded by tyrants than unnumbered men in arms. We are to conquer, but not by the sword. We are to subjugate, but not by violence. All nations are to come under the sway of our principles, but never are they to pass under any yoke. All is to be freedom and light, and the eye is to see as clearly as at the noonday. Whatever is done, will be done in the direction of a single purpose: and that is, the emancipation of our race. We are not working for mere wealth; nor position; nor social consideration; but while laboring for all these, we are insensibly helping on the great cause, and solving the grand problem of a world's freedom.

America-not even yet thinly populated—is the battle-field where the contest is waged between the armies of freedom and tyranny. Every sign points to this imposing fact. Here the last great onset must be made by the phalanxes of darkness, bigotry, illiberality, and bondages of all descriptions; and, under God, if Americans are but true to themselves and their principles, here will occur a glorious victory for freedom and truth-a victory having the regeneration of man for its object, and the happiness of the universe for its result.

SECRET POLITICAL ASSOCIATIONS,

THEIR USE AND ABUSE

"A proper secrecy is the only mystery of able men: mystery is the only secrecy of weak and cunning ones."-CHESTERFIELD.

"A fool's mouth is his destruction."-SOLOMON.

A GREAT outery has, of late, been raised against the use of Secrecy in political organization and action. It seems to be taken for granted that a secret mode of operation is sufficient to condemn the operator and his work, with all honest men. The prevailing mode of discussing the question is so very shallow and insufficient, that we shall here attempt to put it in its proper light, by considering the principle of secrecy in human action, and secret practices in American politics.

Very little argument is needed to prove, in general, that Secrecy, n itself, is of an indifferent quality, neither right nor wrong; and that it is only the use or abuse of it which renders it good or bad. Christ himself expressly enjoined secrecy in the performance of good deeds, with a force which he could not express, except by the Oriental hyperbole of commanding that the left hand should not know the doings of the right. Neither such actions, nor the personal religious exercises of his disciples, were to be spoken of or known farther than was unavoidable. Such concealment was practised by the Great Master himself. Again; how many human beings would like to be deprived of the use of secrecy? What would become of the shrewd enterprises of business men, if they could not keep their secrets until they are ripe? How endurable would it be to men in general, to

know that all their memories and all their hopes-the faults they would fain forget, and the plans they would fain pursue-were to be seen and known of all men? As long as there are individual interests and human imperfections, so long must secrecy be an indispensable ingredient of human life. If the world were perfect-which would make it heaven-secrecy would be needless. Until then, it is not only proper and useful, but absolutely indispensable; although, like every thing else, it may be perverted to wrong uses.

Without further inquiry into a truth so abstract, and so unlikely to be denied, the proposition may now be laid down, that Reforms (real or pretended) directed against powerful existing interests, begin with Secrecy. Secrecy was the cradle of Christianity-the greatest Reform movement the world ever saw. Christ himself trusted in his Divinity; and knew that before his time no hands would be laid on him. Yet how often did he conceal himself from his enemies, once even by a direct exercise of miraculous power? And after his death, it is a fact as notorious as any in the whole range of history, that without a practice of concealment more elaborate and profound, perhaps, than any other ever known, the new-born faith would have been exterminated from the face of the earth, simply by the murder of every professor of it. For years and years together, every discoverable Christian had forthwith to choose between apostasy and death. The reason is clear. Christianity was held to be at enmity, first with the established religion of the Jews, the most ferocious and unrelenting of bigots, and afterwards with the Roman Imperial Power, the greatest existing interest on earth.* At the beginning, the weak young twig had to be hidden from the destruction with which all the powers of the earth menaced it. But as it grew up into a noble tree, it threw off its cloak of secrecy. It retains it, however, even to the present day, in countries under the domination of savage Paganisms, or scarcely less savage Romanism.

The lesser reform movements before the great Protestant Reforma

*De Quincy, Hist. and Crit. Essays, vol. ii. Secret Societies, p. 338.