and that, in consequence, he is an unsafe leader who grasps at some exalted good without making sure of the preliminary steps which alone can make such blessings durable--who would, at a single leap, place the nation far ahead in the race of improvement, without first subjecting it to that trial and discipline which are absolutely necessary to fit it for a new sphere. And the extreme disfavor with which such agitators are regarded by society is an evidence of the safeguard which our institutions contain within themselves, which, by moulding the minds of the people to a proper appreciation of the blessings of limited reform and of the inevitable and necessary stages and degrees of progress, as well as of the danger of too sudden and radical change, effectually counteract the evil influence of the unmethodical and empirical reformer. Our Government, in its form, can in no sense of the word be called a democracy, however much its workings may tend toward such a result in some far-distant future. It is founded in a recognition of the fact that however equal all men may be in their civil and political rights--however the humblest and most ignorant member of the community may be entitled to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,' all men are not equal either in intellectual endowments or personal acquirements, and consequently in their influence upon society, or equally fitted either to govern or to choose their rulers. Our ancestors recognized the fact that the people are not, in the democratic sense of the term, fitted to govern themselves. Hence they threw around their system a network of safeguards, and adopted and firmly established restraints to counteract this principle of democratic rule, without which our infant republic would soon have fallen to pieces by the force of its own internal convulsions. And time has proven the wisdom of their course, and we shall do well if we shall reflect long and deeply before we essay to remove the least of those restraints, remembering that when once the floodgate is opened to change, the eternal tide is set in motion, and a precedent established which will prove dangerous if it be not carefully restrained within the limits of the necessities of the times.