at this day do not equal three hundred and fifty thousand, of which certainly not more than one thousand have any weight or voice in devising and conducting their policy,-have been able, for more than fifty years, to lead from eighteen to twenty millions of men whithersoever they will, and to establish over them a sovereignty which is yet to be proved not immovable and permanent?

This power of slave-holders has its origin,-as has been already inti. mated,—first, from a concentration of interests and fears in the body of slave-holders; second, from a total want of concentration of interests among the people of the Free States, combined with an entire want of all apprehensions of danger, owing to their unquestionable superiority in physical power. This, then, is the exact state of things in this Union. There are in it about three hundred thousand slave-holders, whose interests and fears are identical. There are in it at least from twenty to twenty-four millions of men in the Free States, who have no special identity of interest, and absolutely no fear whatsoever. This state of things is one of the sources from which the power slave-holders wield emanates. Their slaves are at once their pride and their weakness, the objects of their dependence and their fear. In 1811, John Randolph, who, with all his eccentricities, was the truest to his class and the most honorable of all slave-holders, and who saw with contempt the blustering bravadoes of many of his brethren, thus exposed their weakness and their terrors on the floor of Congress: "While you are talking of taking Canada, some of us are shuddering for our own safety at home. I speak from facts, when I say that the night-bell never tolls for fire, in Richmond, that the mother does not hug her infant more closely to her bosom. I have been witness of some alarms in the capital of Virginia."

How greatly the terror of their slave population has increased since the days of John Randolph, may be conceived from the following facts. Then the slave population but little exceeded one million; now it greatly exceeds three millions.

THE

THE WITCHCRAFT EXCITEMENT AND THE MATHERS.

[The History of Harvard University. 1840.]

HE particulars of that excitement scarcely fall within the sphere of this history. Some reference to it, however, is required by the fact that, as the belief in the agency of the invisible world began to lessen, and some of those who were the chief actors in the tragedy to feel the weight of public indignation pressing upon them, they, being members of the Corporation, brought this body into the field for the purpose of

giving countenance to that belief, and of sustaining this decaying faith. In March, 1694, a paper, purporting to be proposals made by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, prepared by both the Mathers, and signed by the whole board, was circulated throughout New England: inviting all men, and particularly the clergy, to observe and record "the illustrious discoveries of Divine Providence in the government of the world," and among others, "apparitions, possessions, enchantments, and all extraordinary things, wherein the existence and agency of the invisible world are more sensibly demonstrated.”

That both the Mathers had an efficient agency in producing and prolonging that excitement, there can be, at this day, no possible question. The conduct of Increase Mather in relation to it was marked with caution and political skill; but that of his son, Cotton Mather, was headlong, zealous, and fearless, both as to character and consequences. In its commencement and progress, his activity is everywhere conspicuous. The part he acted in that tragedy has left on his memory a stain, which time has deepened rather than removed. Belief in invisible agencies was adapted to a mind naturally active, imaginative, and ambitious. He had been early taught the power of the imagination in matters of religion, and by the precept and example of his father had been instructed in the language of excitement and alarm. No sooner was the field left open to him, by the absence in Europe of his father and colleague, than he entered upon it with an ardor natural to his youth, and congenial with his temperament. Regarded as the hope of the clergy, he aspired to be their champion, and for a short time became their idol. twenty-seven, he was raised to a seat, by the side of his Corporation of the College. A short time afterward, the General Court constituted him their preacher on Election day. He was courted and consulted by the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, Phips and Stoughton; both of whom were conscious that they were largely indebted to his influence for their respective appointments.

At the
At the age of
father, in the

Excited and emboldened by the elevated station he had obtained, in relation both to the Colony and the College, Cotton Mather seized, with a sagacity characteristic of zeal and ambition, on that popular belief in invisible agencies, which the general tenor of the preaching of that day had encouraged and made almost universal in New England. His discourses from the pulpit were passionate and exciting; and awakened perpetually into action this popular delusion. He employed himself sedulously in seeking out every case, which encouraged faith in supernatural agencies. Thus standing before his contemporaries in the light, he incurred the responsibility of being its chief cause and promoter. In the progress of the superstitious fear, when it amounted to frenzy, and could only be satisfied with blood, he neither blanched nor halted; but

attended the courts, watched the progress of invisible agency in the prisons, and joined the multitude in witnessing the executions. After "two hundred persons had been accused, one hundred and fifty imprisoned, nineteen hanged, one pressed to death, and twenty-eight condemned, onethird of whom were members of the churches, and more than half of good general conversation," he wrote a formal treatise, entitled "Wonders of the Invisible World," approving the proceedings of the courts, and exciting the multitude to a continuance in the belief, and the courts to a perseverance in their vindictiveness.

After the excitement had passed away, and shame had succeeded to passion, those who had guided or submitted to its course gave it the name of "popular delusion," or of "a visitation of Providence." But the delusion of the multitude is never general or violent, unless those who are their natural or assumed leaders countenance or encourage it. Nor ought human agents to be permitted to evade just responsibility, under pretence of supernatural suggestions and impulses. The guilt of the excesses and horrors, consequent on that excitement, rests, and ought to rest, heavily upon the leading divines and politicians of the Colony at that period; who had either the hardihood to uphold, or the cowardice not to withstand, the madness of the populace, of which they had been in no small degree the authors. Cotton Mather, however, with the singular infelicity of judgment which constituted an element of his character, while his contemporaries and coadjutors were drawing off from the delusion, and some of them, under the influence of shame and remorse, were confessing their sins and asking pardon of Heaven and their fellowcitizens, exhibited no uneasiness, no self-upbraidings. On the contrary, he continued to avow his belief, and thus connected his name and fame inseparably with that excitement, as its chief cause, agent, believer, and justifier.

William Cliffton.

BORN in Philadelphia, Penn., 1772. DIED there, 1799.

TO SLEEP.

[Poems, chiefly Occasional, by the late Mr. Cliffton. 1800.]

For me, I charge thee o'er my busy brain
Thy stupefying influence never fling;
Fancy is there, with all her lovely train,
And dreads the shadow of thy raven wing.

But when exhausted is my lingering breath,
And songs of joy, and every transport o'er,
One sleep I'll take, the last cold sleep of death,
To wake where thou can'st never plague me more.

SONG.

BOY, shut to the door, and bid trouble begone,

If sorrow approach, turn the key;

Our comfort this night from the glass shall be drawn,
And mirth our companion shall be.

Who would not with pleasure the moments prolong,
When tempted with Friendship, Love, Wine, and a Song?

What art thou, kind power, that softenest me so,
That kindlest this love-boding sigh,

That bid'st with affection my bosom o'erflow,
And send'st the fond tear to my eye?

I know thee! forever thy visit prolong,

Sweet spirit of Friendship, Love, Wine, and a Song.

See the joy-waking influence rapidly fly,
And spirit with spirit entwine,

The effulgence of rapture enamels each eye,
Each soul rides triumphant like mine,-

On a sea of good-humor floats gayly along,
Surrounded with Friendship, Love, Wine, and a Song.

And now to the regions of Fancy we soar,
Through scenes of enchantment we stray,
We revel in transports untasted before,
Or loiter with love on the way;

Resolved like good fellows the time to prolong

That cheers us with Friendship, Love, Wine, and a Song.

For Friendship, the solace of mortals below,

In the thicket of life loves a rose,

Good wine can content on misfortune bestow,
And a song's not amiss, I suppose.

Then fill, my good fellows, the moment prolong,

With a bumper to Friendship, Love, Wine, and a Song.

Archibald Alexander.

BORN in Rockbridge Co., Va., 1772. DIED at Princeton, N. J., 1851.

THE NECESSITY OF DIVINE REVELATION.

[Evidences. Edition of 1836.]

ANOTHER argument for the necessity of a divine revelation is, that

without it man must remain ignorant of his origin and his end, and utterly unable to account for the circumstances by which he is surrounded. He finds himself here upon the earth, and feels that he is borne along the stream of time with the rest of his generation, towards a dark gulf before him, which he perceives he can by no means escape. But when he inquires respecting the origin of the human race, when he seeks a solution of the enigma of his sinful, suffering, and mortal existence, he finds no one among the living or the dead, from whom he can. obtain the least satisfactory information. All the traditions and histories of men are full of fables; and if they contain some rays of truth, they are so mingled with error that no man can distinguish the one from the other. Leave out of view the history contained in the Bible, and all that we can learn from others casts not a solitary ray of light on the points under consideration.

We have no means of tracing up our race to its origin, and the deist can give no rational account of the wickedness of men and their sufferings and death. The darkness and uncertainty resting on these subjects have led many, who rejected the authority of the Bible, to adopt most absurd and atheistical hypotheses respecting the origin of man. Some have professed to believe that the earth and its inhabitants have existed from all eternity; which is too absurd to require refutation. Others have amused themselves and their readers with the idea, that originally mankind were merely a species of monkey or baboon, and that by degrees they laid aside their brutal appearance and manners, and certain inhuman appendages, and having in process of time invented language and the arts most necessary to provide for the clothing and shelter of the body, they gradually rose higher and higher in the scale of improvement, until they arrived at that pitch of refinement and civilization, which has been attained by the most polished nations. These, it is true, are rather atheistical than deistical hypotheses; but they serve to show how little light reason can shed on this subject, and how much we need a divine revelation. For the deist can form no theory which can satisfy our reasonable desires. He can give no good reason for the moral condition and mortality of our race. He may say that it is the law of nature; but this is merely to declare the fact, not to account for it.