Hence I have long thought that there was usually a very unnecessary expenditure of sympathy on behalf of certain enslaved nations of Europe, as well as the African of this country. A nation, the masses of whom have arisen to the moral condition of freedom, will assert their political rights; and they will usually do it on practicable grounds. It is only at this point that they challenge public sympathy. For the mind was never before sufficiently free to make their situation an oppressive one, assuming that their rulers do not abuse their power. Before this period, their rights lay in being governed--not in governing. Political freedom would be as dangerous intrusted to them, as a razor would be in the hands of a child, and should, for the same general reasons, be withheld from them. But withheld by whom? asks the philosophy of Dr. Wayland. I answer, By those who have the intelligence to do it. Both the principle of benevolence and the law of reciprocity require this; and that intelligence which imposes this duty, can never fail to supply the means for the restraint of brute force. Of the truth of this general position no people appear to be more sensible than the aristocracy of Europe. De Tocqueville clearly asserts this on their behalf, when he states that the object of his tour through the United States arose from the necessity of becoming acquainted with the spirit and character of democracy, that a proper direction might be given to it in Europe. To direct it wisely might be done; but to crush it was utterly impossible. Now if this author be correct in supposing that the spirit of democracy is truly awake among the masses of European population, and that consequently they are asserting their right to freedom--not from the abuse of legitimate power, which calls for _reform_ merely, but from the power _itself_, which their improved moral and social condition has rendered no longer appropriate, and which, therefore, they now sensibly feel to be an oppression, calling for revolution--they are following the indications of nature, and there is no power in those nations that can shut the door of Providence against them. An obedient child will cheerfully submit to the reasonable though _stringent despotism_ exercised over him by his parent, and even look back upon it in after life with the highest pleasure. Nevertheless, on reaching his maturity, he will refuse to submit to it any longer, and even feel an attempt to force it upon him as an oppression too intolerable to be borne. So, by parity of reasoning, will the masses of these nations demand an entire abolition of the existing modes of government, and claim such as are adapted to their state of maturity. But, on the other hand, if the movements in question are the work of only a few master-spirits who have mistaken the actual condition of the masses, who have not yet risen to the moral condition of freedom, they will be found to be fighting against God.