A constitution,--the organic-law,--in truth, all other law is, in some degree, a restraint on men. It makes an umpire of right,--of reason,--which, if not the same in degree in all of us, is the same in nature. Yet it must be, to some extent, a restraint on the desires or selfish passions of men. In fact, it is only carrying out the rule of doing to others what they should do to us, and tends not only to preserve, but advance society. If no constitution or law agreeing with it existed, men would be left to the sway of their own passions--nearly always selfish--and they being many and very different in different persons, sometimes, indeed, altogether opposite, and of various intensity,--would, by their indulgence, tend to confusion, to the deterioration of society, and to its ultimate dissolution. Now the people of the United States, without the least hesitation declare,--and they fully believe it--that we are the freest nation on earth. Other nations, doubtless, with equal sincerity say of themselves the same thing. In England where, as in other countries of the old world, there is a crowded population, raising to a high price everything eatable, the _operatives_, as they are called, find it difficult to sustain life. They work all the time they can, and, even after doing this, they sometimes perish for want of such food as a human being ought to eat. No one will say that affairs are well ordered here. Having no such state of things ourselves--for except in some of our large cities, no one starves to death--we think that to suffer one to die in this way is cruel and heartless. And we greatly upbraid them for it. But here we have slavery,--a vicious usage which European nations, excepting one, have long since laid aside. This they have done not only because it was productive of innumerable visible evils, but because it greatly and injuriously affected the character of all concerned in it, and in this way the character of the whole community,--making one part of it proud and imperious,--another suppliant and servile. They upbraid us with it, as being more inconsistent with the high principles we profess, than any act tolerated among them is or can be with the principles they profess. Then whilst we wonder that with so much wealth as England unquestionably has, she should suffer her operatives to die for something to eat, she wonders that slavery--the worst thing known among men--should be permitted to raise its head, not only as high as the many good and exalted things we possess, but above them, making them, when necessary, give way to it and even contribute to its support. Indeed, it appears to them like Satan appearing in company with the sons of God, to accuse and try one of his children.