constitutional forms. There is also another reason why the principle of the text ought to be especially regarded by the rulers of this country. So far as a nation can be considered and treated as a moral person, its character must be indicated by the acts of its rulers. Accordingly, we find that under every form of government, God has made nations responsible, as in the natural course of things they evidently must be, for what is done by their rulers. But if this is so in monarchical governments, where the agency of the people is so little connected with public acts, much more must it be so in one like ours. Here the rulers represent the people more immediately. They indicate in the eyes of the world, the moral condition of the people, and hence the peculiar responsibility of those who act under the oath of God in making and administering the laws of a representative government. If it can ever be required of God to vindicate his administration by the treatment of any people, it must be of one whose government is thus administered. I observe then that the principle of the text should be adopted by rulers, because it furnishes the only broad and safe basis of political action. The adoption of this principle I consider the first requisite of a wise, in opposition to a cunning and temporizing statesman. Statesmanship, as distinguished from that skilful combination of measures which has for its object personal advancement, consists very much in a perception of the connexion there is between the prosperity of states, and the accordance of their laws and social institutions with the laws of justice, and benevolence, and temperance, which are the laws of God. The laws of God are uniform. The general tendencies which he has inwrought into the system will take effect, and nothing, not shaped in accordance with these can stand. Now it is an attempt to evade the effect of these tendencies by expedients in particular instances and for the sake of particular ends, that has been called statesmanship; while he only is the true statesman who sees what these tendencies are, and shapes his laws and institutions in accordance with them. The mere politician, if I may so designate him, perceives the movements which take place in the different parts of society relatively to each other, and is complacently skilful in adjusting them to his purposes, but he fails to see that general movement by which the whole is drifted on together, and which is bearing society to a point where elements that he had not dreamed of will be called into action, and where his petty expedients will become in a moment, but as the barriers of sand which the child raises upon the beach, when the tide begins to rise.