MORAL DECAY.

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am paid for it. I am for sale. Whoever pays my price can have me.

I am not the only public-spirited patriot of this kind in the United States. You can find hundreds of them in every place of public trust, from a petty postmaster up to the most dignified senator. They all love their country -for money.

Grab and grasp is the watchword of the day. Steal while you cap, for when you are dead, politically or physically, you cannot. A few addle pates talk about putting honest men in office; but it can't be done. We have got the power, for we have got the money; and the more money we get the more power we shall have. We have struck a mine, and we don't mean to let go our grip. Honest men can't cope with us, because they are not up to all the tricks of the professional politician. O, no! I tell you honesty is at a fearful discount. The people don't want it. They prefer being bled by knaves and rogues; and I, for one, am perfectly willing to let them have their way. Let them bleed if they like it.

Fellow-citizens, these are not my sentiments. They are not the outspoken words of any office-seeker. 0, ; but actions speak louder than words.

27. MORAL DECAY BRINGS NATIONAL

RUIN.

N the history of the past, in the relics and ruins

IN

around us, there are the solemn monuments of

nations once great that are now nothing.

The land

of the Pharaohs is in decay; its population is now

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MORAL DECAY.

diminishing, and the sand of the desert daily silting up the temples of her former magnificence; Rome is broken into fragments; Jerusalem's last sob is hushed.

Spain once had an empire on which the sun never set, because the moment he set on her possessions in the east, he rose on her possessions in the west. Spain lies now, in her hopeless struggle, like the blackened hull of a vessel that has been lightningstruck, rolling and heaving helplessly as the ocean wills. Genoa, Venice, Holland, once had an eastern traffic. Upon them the same law of decay has passed, and the weed rots on the side of palaces that are now the abode of paupers.

It may be that such a destiny is in store for our country. But one thing is certain that the decay of morals, in all these cases, preceded the decay of institutions. The inward ruin preceded the political. So long as there was inward strength of constitution, so long intestine commotions were thrown off easily to the surface; so long as the nation was united in itself, so long were the attacks of enemies thrown off like the waves from the rock. To borrow a Scripture metaphor, if there were heard in the political heavens of a devoted nation, or a devoted city, the shrill shriek of the judgment eagles plunging for their prey, it was not till moral corruption had reduced the body of the nation to a carcass. Where the body was the eagles were gathered together.

To avert national decay, then, the moral character must be guarded. The mighty heart of the nation. must be kept sound, so that its pulses, when once roused, will, like the ocean in its strength, sweep all

FREE SPEECH AND LIBERTY.

61

before it. So long as the moral tone is preserved, the sun of our glory will not set; there will come no national decay and death.

I

28. FREE SPEECH AND LIBERTY

APPEAL to no parchment to no charter - - for the right to call myself a freeman. I cannot defend my own liberty without laying down a principle which will throw a shield around every other man's liberty. My right to my freedom is the right of every other man to be free.

We do not admit for a moment that it is wrong for a man to contend for universal liberty. Then Lovejoy was not wrong. He was not defending the right of the slave alone; but in defending his right he was defending yours mine the right of every one here

-the right of man to possess himself. The Rights of Man! Are these words prohibited in this Republic? Ay, are men to die to be put to death for defending them? Yes; Lovejoy has fallen a martyr to the Rights of Man to human Liberty.

-

And is the cause of this great wrong— human bondage to be perpetuated? I tell you no, not in this or any other country. Any one who has looked at the march of events for the last eighteen hundred years must see that the fate of slavery, at war as it is with all the inalienable rights of man, is decreed. When the angels sang the song, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men," they sang the downfall of every kingdom of darkness, and the establishment of the kingdom of universal peace and

righteousness. The angel that then hovered over the world saw with rapture the new order of things ushered in brother reconciled to brother-wrong dying -oppression ceasing Freedom everywhere lifting up her banner; and when he looked down the stream of time, he saw the family of man coming together as brothers embracing each other all fetters broken

- all minds and hearts free: the last note of discord the last tear been wiped away

had died away · then he gave the shout which rang back from heaven's hosts, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

And is not that vision to be realized? Mark the course of events. See every form of tyranny dying, see everywhere the tree of liberty rising, and say if slavery is to be continued. It has been expelled from the whole Christian world, with one or two exceptions.

Let us

This work then will go on. All we need is the free exercise of the right for which Lovejoy died. speak strongly-let us speak boldly-let us bo undaunted and persevering. Nothing is so powerful as truth. If truth be but spoken, it must prevail. Bring against it what force you may, the civil arm, an armed soldiery, a mob, the press, the pulpit, — truth shall triumph over all; for like God, from whom it emanates, it is omnipotent.

29. CITIES.

HIS earth's earliest city was built by a murderer;

THIS

its foundations, I may say, were laid in blood.

Enoch was its name, Cain was its founder.

Those who, living far from the din and bustle of cities, read with a wonder that grows into horror the dark record of their courts and crimes; those who see in the blasting effect of their murky air on flower, and shrub, and tree, only an emblem of their withering influence on the fairest human virtues, they may fancy that the curse of the first murderer and their first founder hangs over earth's cities, dark, heavy, as their clouds of smoke. We can excuse them for thinking So. Great cities some have found to be great curses. Many a foot, that once lightly pressed the heather or brushed the dewy grass, has wearily trodden in darkness, and guilt, and sin, these city pavements.

Happy had it been for many that they had never exchanged the starry skies for the lamps of the town, nor had ever left their lonely glens or quiet hamlets for the throng and roar of our streets. Well for them that they had heard no rush but the river's, whose winter flood it had been safer to breast, no roar but the ocean's, whose stormiest waves it had been safer to ride, than to encounter the flood of city temptation which has wrecked their virtue and swept them into ruin.

Yet I bless God for cities. The world had not been what it is without them. They have been as lamps of light along the pathway of humanity and religion. Within them, Science has given birth to her noblest discoveries; behind their walls, Freedom has fought her noblest battles. They have stood on the surface of the earth, like great breakwaters rolling back or turning aside the swelling tide of oppression. Cities, indeed, have been the cradles of human liberty, the radiating active centres of reformations.