And here I remark, that it is only incidentally that human government is necessary to man as a social being at all. Society was before government, and if man had retained his original state, it might, perhaps, have existed without it till the end of time. Man is constituted by his Creator a social being; he has faculties to the expansion and perfection of which society is requisite, but he has no faculties the necessities of which constitute him a political being. There must be politicians, just as there must be farmers, and merchants, and physicians, that they and others may enjoy social life; but social life is corrupted when politics enter largely into it. It is not sufficiently noticed, that it is through social institutions and habits far more than through political forms, that the happiness or misery of man is produced. It was not from the oppressions of the government, but from a corrupted social state, that the prophet of old wished to flee into the wilderness. It was because his people were all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men, because every brother would supplant, and every neighbor would walk with slanders. Such a state of things may exist under any form of political organization. It may exist under ours. Men may be loud in their praise of republican forms, and yet be false, and unkind, and litigious; they may be indolent, and profane, and sabbath breakers, and gamblers, and licentious, and intemperate. Yes, and there may be neighborhoods of such men, and the place where they assemble nightly, hard by a banner that creaks in the wind, may be the liveliest image of hell that this earth can present. I certainly know, and my hearers are fortunate if they do not know, neighborhoods in this land of liberty and equality, where the only use made of liberty is to render families and society wretched, and where the only equality, is an equality in vice and social degradation, which no man is permitted even to attempt to rise above without constant annoyance. Better, far better, is family affection, and kind neighborhood under a regal, or even a despotic government, than such liberty as this.