We live in a country of vast geographical extent. A large portion of it is uninhabited. It is, however, rapidly filling up. Immigrants from every section of the civilized world are rapidly arriving in our eastern cities, and spreading to remote sections of our republic: men of every conceivable variety of taste, disposition, and opinion, both in politics and in religion. The fertility and abundance of our soil, and the variety of our staple articles of produce, have attracted universal activity and enterprise. To compare the civilized world to one vast city, our republic seems destined to become the great market or business-street of it. Here, all is bustle and activity. Nowhere on the face of the globe is so much energy of character displayed. No attentive observer can fail to perceive the tendency of all this to call off the mind from those moral and intellectual pursuits that so eminently fit men for the sober duties of life and the felicities of heaven. The public mind is already kept in a state of most unnatural excitement, stimulated in the highest degree to the pursuits of wealth and political distinction, to the almost entire neglect of every other interest. This is daily becoming the supreme attraction, to which the popular impulse yields as readily as the unfortunate ship obeys the resistless circles of the maelstrom. Thus far, it is true, we have succeeded to “lay that broad foundation of modern society which promises the noble superstructure of rational liberty. But regarding the tendencies of this restless people, looking at the growth of our own improvidence, and at the copious additions which overstocked and perishing Europe is daily sending us, in multiplied forms of ignorance and superstition, insomuch that in many respects in our Northern States our republican fabric is fast changing and passing away before our very eyes, who can exult in the certainty of success! Who will not despair, except so far as he may be sanguine that a tone and energy of moral effort is put forth, equal to that which achieved our national liberties! For if this be not done, in a day we may go down into hopeless bondage! The physical battle of our liberties has been fought and won, and we are fast rushing up to unparalleled eminence; but from this dizzy height, if we be not sustained by some conservative power, we shall go down in a moment to the degradation of slavery. For let it be remembered that whilst liberty may be achieved by the sword, it cannot be maintained by the sword. Enlightened principles and moral excellence alone can maintain the liberty that force achieves.”