The next duty to reparation for injury is silence upon the sin: there is contamination in the contemplation of every indulged sin, even when the indulgence is past. Such a sin as this should be to a nation what an act of shame is to an individual—a remembrance to be strenuously banished, lest it weaken the energy which should press forward to better things. This should be one of the secrets known to all—a circumstance plunged in significant oblivion, like that in which the historians of the Jews have striven to bury the event of the crucifixion. May the consequences in the two cases, however, be as widely different as penitent and impenitent shame! The wonder of succeeding ages at our guilt must be endured; but it will not, let us hope, be made a by-word of reproach against us for ever. When kindred nations shall have been induced to share our emancipation, rebuke and recrimination may cease; the dead will have buried their dead, and the silence of the grave will rest upon them. If we now do our duty fully to those whom we have injured, even they may, perhaps, spare us all future mention of their wrongs. Meantime, it is an unspeakable blessing that, ignorant and unjust as we may still be in the distribution of the wealth which Providence gives us, there is now no crying sin connected with the methods of its production; no national remorse need now silence our acknowledgments of the bounty by which the gratification of human wishes is destined to advance, according to a law of perpetual progression. ----------------------- PART II.