Although by no means of equal development, society in these eighteen free states is founded on the immutable principles of the natural rights of man. The laborer is a free man and a citizen. Social life is a democracy in which service to the community is the chief claim to preeminence. Education is the boon of every child, and the press and speech are free. The ballot in several Northern States is absolutely free to all men, and the current is setting in that direction in the remainder. In all these states the free worship of God is secured by fundamental law. The radical tendency among these 18,000,000 of people is towards the complete establishment of a Christian democracy. Already the superiority of this portion of the Republic in all the elements of civilization is undisputed. Its commercial and industrial enterprise is the controlling force of the country’s material prosperity. Its agriculture leads in the majority of crops that can be tilled on northern soil; and it has three crops, either of which can buy up the whole special productions of the southern states. It is the seat of popular education. Its literature and art, and general refinement of life, represent the Union to the world. The present census brings it into its great inheritance of overwhelming political power. Its religion is nearer the Sermon on the Mount than ever was reached by 18,000,000 of people before. It is headed towards the kingdom of God more decisively than any nation of ancient or modern times. But the north is by no means yet in the kingdom. Each of its radical ideas of free society is violated and perverted by a considerable portion of every commonwealth; some of its principles by entire states. Out of the competitions of free labor has sprung a fierce and selfish love of money which scorns honesty and tramples down man in its accursed lust for gold. Whole classes of men are cursed by this venal insanity which, culminating in the marble streets of the commercial metropolis, distills its venom to the remotest log cabin in the wilderness. Out of the opportunities of free social life has sprung a mushroom growth of vulgar social ambition, luxury and sensuality; which struggles to become the fashion on the pavement of the Atlantic city and in the “percussion” village of the west. The sacred freedom of printing and speech has been perverted to a satanic press and the open advocacy of every vagary of despotism and sin. Political freedom has been demoralized to the freedom of unlimited office seeking, the betrayal of human rights for individual success and fearful corruption in public affairs. And out of the noblest feature of our church, its liberty of worship, comes that pernicious strife for sectarian supremacy and worldly success which endangers the most liberal religious organizations.