Government then is not an end, but a means. Society is the end, and government should be the agent of society, to benefit man in his social condition. The extent to which it can do this will depend on its form, and the power with which it is entrusted. Absolute power, which should be used for this purpose, is generally abused. Considering itself as having interests distinct from those of the people, it too often seeks to keep them in a state of degradation, and to appropriate to itself the largest possible share of those blessings which ought to be equally diffused. "Get out of my sunlight," said Diogenes to Alexander the Great: "Get out of my sunlight"--cease to obstruct the free circulation of blessings intended for all, might the people say under any arbitrary form of government ever yet administered. Still, such a government, when under the direction of wisdom and benevolence, has power to produce great social and moral revolutions for the good of mankind. Such a revolution was commenced by Peter the Great, and his measures, though necessary, were such as none but an absolute monarch could have adopted. Aside from christianity, the judicious exercise of such a power is the only hope of a people debased beyond a certain point. The King of Prussia can maintain a better and more efficient system of schools, than any republican government. He can provide qualified teachers, and can compel the children to attend. But when, as in this country, government is the direct agent of society, when it is so far controlled by the people as to secure the majority at least from oppression, being merely an expression of the will of that majority, it can have no power to produce moral and social reformations. Laws do not execute themselves, and in such a state of things they cannot be effectually executed if the violation of them is upheld by public sentiment. In such a case, when vices begin to creep in, and the tendency of things is downwards, we must have a force different from that of the government; we must have _moral_ power. Here religion comes in, and must come in, or "the beginning of the end" has come. The intellect must be enlightened, and the conscience quickened, and moral life infused into the mass; the good and the evil must commingle in free conflict, and public sentiment must be changed. When this is done, when patriotism, and philanthropy, and religion, have caused an ebb-tide in the flood of evil that was coming up over the land, then government may come in, not to carry forward a moral reformation by force, but to erect a barrier against the return of that tide. It can secure what these agents have gained. It can put a shield into the hands of society, with which it can, if it pleases, protect itself against that selfishness and malignity which always lurk in its borders, and which moral influence cannot reach. If, for example, polygamy were established among us as it is among the Turks, a government like ours