The Northern States were already so strong in Congress that they might have prevented Missouri from entering the Union that year without any pledge to emancipate her slaves. The sin of extending the area of bondage so far northwards was scarcely palliated by the other conditions of the compromise. The admission of Maine gave her citizens no privileges beyond what they had previously as citizens of Massachusetts; and the pledge that slavery should not again be extended north of latitude thirty-six, thirty, proved worthless. The North was so far from being united in 1820 that it was not even able to raise the tariff. New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio wished to exclude foreign competition in manufacturing; but the embargo was too recent for New England to forget the evils of restricting commerce. The Salem merchants petitioned for "free trade" "as the sure foundation of national prosperity"; and the solid men of Boston declared with Webster that "A system of bounties and protection" "would have a tendency to diminish the industry, impede the prosperity, and corrupt the morals of the people." II. The dark age of American literature had ended in 1760. Before that date there were few able books except about theology; and there were not many during the next sixty years except about politics. The works of Franklin, Jefferson, and other statesmen were more useful than brilliant. Sydney Smith was not far wrong in 1820, when he complained in the _Edinburgh Review_ that the Americans "have done absolutely nothing for the sciences, for art, for literature." He went on to ask, "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" His question was answered that same year by the publication in London of Irving's _Rip Van Winkle_ and _Legend of Sleepy Hoi-low_. Bryant's first volume of poems appeared next year, as did Cooper's popular novel, _The Spy_; and the _North American Review_ had begun half a dozen years before. But even in 1823, Channing could not claim that there really was any national literature, or much devotion of intellectual labour to great subjects. "Shall America," he asked, "be only an echo of what is thought and written in the aristocracies beyond the ocean?" This was published during the very year in which President Monroe declared that the people of the United States would look upon attempts of European monarchs "to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and liberty." Channing was much interested in the study of German philosophy; but he rested his "chief hopes of an improved literature," on "an improved religion." He maintained that no man could unfold his highest powers until he had risen above "the prevalent theology, which has come down to us from the Dark Ages," and which was then "arrayed against intellect, leagued with oppression, fettering inquiry, and incapable of being blended with the sacred dictates of reason and conscience."