It is entirely obvious that a government, to secure the highest amount of happiness to its subjects, must be adapted to their social and moral condition. This adaptation, as before intimated, can only be effected by the ratios in which the antagonistic elements of _liberty and of slavery_ shall enter into the composition of the government. Now this is virtually the position, after all, of a no less distinguished abolitionist and literary man than Dr. Wayland, the author of your text. On the subject “_of the mode in which the objects of society are accomplished_,” after bringing to view the different forms of government--“wholly hereditary”--“partly hereditary”--“partly elective”--and “wholly elective”--he asks, “Which of these is the preferable form of government?” and adds, “The answer must be conditional. The best form of government for any people, _is the best that its present moral and social condition render practicable_. A people may be _so entirely surrendered to the influence of passion_, and so feebly _influenced by moral restraint_, that a government which relied on moral restraint could not exist for a day. In this case a subordinate and inferior principle yet remains--_the principle of fear_; and the only resort is to a government of force, or a military despotism.” Now what is all this but a statement of the great truth which we have already discussed, only in different terms, that a government over a people, in the moral and social condition described by Dr. Wayland, which relied upon “_moral restraint_,” that is, upon the principle of self-control, “_could not exist for a day_;” and that for such a people, “the only resort is to a government of force, or a military despotism”--that is, the _highest conceivable form or system of slavery_. Now this is said, by Dr. Wayland, after waging a relentless war against both the principle and practice of slavery! Is not this an instance in which a great and honest mind, having adopted certain false notions in antagonism with the system of slavery, wars against this system; whilst, at the same time, this system is underlaid, even in his own method of reasoning, by a vast mine of fundamental principles which, in spite of him, give it both being and activity? Why need one so learned as Dr. Wayland allow the truth to escape his notice, because in one connection it wears the livery of one form of words, and in another connection very properly assumes the livery of a different form of language?