be, to the last gleam of hope, by all those who are, or strongly desire to be in the ascendency of wealth. As certain as the Church resisted the infancy of the Reformation by all manner of means, and the great Hero of warlike glory violently opposed the young English system, under the more mature force of which he fell, so will the vast and fully developed Money Power, oppose, with unprecedented vigor and subtile ingenuity, the growth of the Democratic spirit. The passion for wealth and the ardent love of Liberty, are antagonist powers worthy of each other. The one eminently brave, confident, and heedless of secondary obstacles; the other cowardly, cunning, and minutely systematic; it is evident there can never be compromise between them. They are thoroughly incompatible, and at the utmost extremes of variance. In no modern convulsion of society, have the appropriate differences of individual opinion extensively broken the minor conventional relations of social life. In the contest between the Catholic and Feudal principles; the Military and Ecclesiastical; the Commercial and Military, families and even whole nations very generally took part in mass, while individual peace was seldom disturbed, The forthcoming era, however, will manifest characteristics as profound and enlarged as are its contending passions. The conflict between individual interest and individual feeling, will probe society to its elementary foundations, and make trifles even of the closest ties of consanguinity. The world has, in all time, occasionally experienced brief periods of individual persecution and antipathy, which seemed to be prophetic indications of subsequent social dissolution; and here at home, within a few years past, there have been promiscuous threatenings, in high political struggles, to sever the ordinary business relations of society, and suspend its courtesies, in paramount obedience to a vague party spirit. But when the great antagonist hosts shall come to their new, true, and severally consolidated character, these yet flickering indications will become identified with the genius of the times. All species of associa9

VOL. IV. NO. I.

tion of man with fellow man, of opposite moral characters, will cease, through the ripened hatred of the one, and the pusillanimity of the other. As firm resolution easily passes into obstinacy, suffering, wretchedness, and starvation may become matters of pride times in the monastic age- and constant discord, public and domestic, give rise to continual broils, painful, destructive, bloody.

as some

The programme of the story is told; let the details be wisely left to time, or fancy accommodate them to the hopes or the fears of politicians. To one class of men, the worst that can be apprehended has no terrors; to the other class, the best that can be hoped for is appaling. If there yet be those who are indifferent or neutral, they will soon tremblingly fall in with the one, or manfully join the other. The worst features the revolution can possibly assume will be amply justified, and, indeed, accurately measured, by the immense mass of social evil to be overthrown; a mass that, as the spirit advances, will gradually develop its enormity, now dimmed by habit and prejudice. The final result is inevitable. Then why should we endeavor to put off that "evil day," which all ages and events have prophesied, or in any way resist the final cause of creation itself, in the successive and distinct demonstrations of general society? Evils, serious and dreadful, have attended the origin and course of every former social revolution. Nothing that can occur in the impending career of the democratic spirit, but will have had its antetype, or corresponding feature, in one or more of those which have preceded it. Even demagoguism— undue individual ascendency to which the democratic era seems particularly liable, has its parallel in the money system, and had in all that have gone before it.

Who is this, or that man, that he should be the wealthiest, or the bravest, or the holiest of all around him? Surely nothing but the indefatigable use of the tolerated means of the time no matter whether honest or dishonest - has ever effected personal ascen

dency; which, heretofore, has been quite as spurious as it will or can be in the early and imperfect part of the reign of Democracy. Instead of being of a specially exceptionable type, the coming variety of individual superiority will approximate gradually to the natural or heavenly gifts of men, until, in the end, stratagem and contingency may altogether vanish, and society come to be organized wholly upon the immutable and eternal laws of universal mind.

The prominent men of any one system of social organization have ever characteristically differed from the prominent men of the others; and each successive class has been utterly destitute of substantial claims. The feudal lords; the monks and prelates; the military generals, possessed an altogether adventitious supremacy over their contemporaries; and it is certainly quite as well that popular declaimers, or men of mere political tact, or, in extremity, even the pride of poverty, should sway, for a time, the minor evolutions of society, as that our merchants should be "the great men of the earth." On broad, philosophical principles, there is no ground for choice among the whole; but in view of the law of Progress, each successive species of ascendency is better than the former. The guide of thought and reason is rightfully in the convergence of events to the future, and not in their divergence from the past. The great inquiry of the human mind is, and ever has been, what does creation mean? or, to what result - magnificent and wonderful, beyond doubt are all things tending? The feelings of prophetic hope and prophetic fear, that have ever divided mankind under all systems of society, irresistibly testify, not only to the instability of the time being, but to a certain grand climacteric era, in the future, which shall simplify and explain the whole mystery of the past; shall satisfactorily solve the complex problem of evil, and usher in Reality through the ruins of Fiction. If then, there were yet to come a thousand of those moral kings, or reigning passions, like unto the few

which have been already, and are passing or passed away, the children of Hope would justly All-hail the coming one. But, there will be no more. It is a general feeling in all classes of men, that Democracy will not only fell and root up all the stately products of artificial cultivation, but plough deep the surface of the whole earth, to the final annihilation of even the germs of fiction. After having quelled resistance, and thereby, having its vindictiveness satiated, it will rapidly mellow down; and finally, leave society with a surface placid and unsophisticated, in comparison with any former period, and for the first time, since the primitive fall, fitted for the extraordinary novelty of "Peace on earth, good will towards men," and the eternal reign of the KING OF KINGS.

V.

ART. III. The Policy to be pursued hereafter by the Friends of the Constitution, and of Equal Rights.

CONTRARY to our wishes, but hardly contrary to our fears, we have now to record the signal success of the friends and supporters of William Henry Harrison. The whigs are now in the ascendency in the Union, and in a majority of the States. With the fourth of March next, commences a whig dynasty, to last at least four years. The people have so willed, and, whatever may be our individual convictions, hopes, or fears, we must submit.

Whether this result will be for the good of the country, or the evil, it is impossible as yet to decide. have not desired it.

the whig party, no electioneering, and ledged principles.

We We have had no fellowship with sympathy with their methods of no confidence in their acknowWe have deprecated their success as a serious calamity, similar in its nature to the subjugation of a free and independent people by a foreign power, and likely to be not less disastrous in its conse

quences.

We have honestly believed that the safety of our free institutions, the progress of liberty and social Equality, demanded the reëlection of Mr. Van Buren, and the success of his friends in the Union and the States. But a majority of the people, wisely or unwisely, have decided differently, and though we cannot, as yet, honor their decision, we must respect it as the law of the land till it be reversed.

But however much we may fear of the worst, we owe it to ourselves to say, that we by no means despair of the Republic. We are not among those, who have unbounded confidence in the actual virtue and intelligence of the people; and the recent elections have by no means tended to increase what little confidence we may have had; but we have great faith in the capacities of human nature, and we believe there is already enough of virtue and intelligence in our community, to arrest any dangerous tendency in the government, before it shall be too late. Moreover, we believe firmly in an overruling Providence; and the Providence, which has selected this as the chosen land of freedom, thus far watched over and protected us, and prepared us for the work assigned us in the progress of civilization, we cannot believe will abandon us before we have accomplished our mission. We confide with calmness in the God of our fathers, and trust that he will yet deliver us from the Philistines, and enable us to build the Temple of Freedom, which shall abide the ravages of time, and within which shall one day meet in peace, to pay their vows, the whole family of disenthralled and regenerated man.

Moreover, in analyzing with some care the elections which have resulted in favor of General Harrison, we still find ground for hope. The people in these elections have not, in their own estimation, decided against freedom and equality; nay, they have not decided against the doctrines or measures of the democratic party. They have not deserted, and we have as yet no reason to believe that they will desert, their ancient democratic faith. However it may have been