The are some countries in which you will not find a gallows. There are some minds in which you will not find a sentiment favorable to cruelty. Such minds can not be cruel while those sentiments remain; and, when a mind can not be cruel, cruelty can not be done by it. Hence, thou seest that what is the misfortune of one, is often the fault of many. Governments are what the governed make them. No human government can exist without the consent of the governed, or a majority thereof. It is the ignorance of mind, that submits to wrong, and wrong is the father of misery. It is the father of crime. Make wrong laws, and inculcate them among minds; let them take possession of the hearts of the people; and wrongs will germinate abundantly. The cruel creeds of minds, overshadowed with ignorance, have made cruel souls, and cruel souls have made cruel laws to correct the cruelty. This is the origin of evil. Go where ignorance of nature reigns, where the sympathies of a common brotherhood are not felt, nor encouraged by the voice of philosophy and reason, and there thou mayest find crime multiplied with itself. I have heard the mother teach the cruel lesson to her dear children. I have seen the child writhe over the recital. I have watched the progress of medicine forced into the heart of sympathy. I have seen its awful workings at the seat of virtue. I have seen its operations on the social affections. I have watched its icy chains, as they wound their cold links of cruelty around the expanding charities of the soul, and saw the death of progress, in the divinity of heaven. I saw the death wound where the cruel wrong remained. It remained through long years to tantalize its victim, and mock the aspirations of the soul. It wearied the mind with its wrong, never aiding it in the path of right, but often in the way of evil. It was cruel; and its cruelty is a shame on decency. It is a shame on humanity. It is a libel on nature, and a disgrace to civilization. The brute will not often wrong a brute where no good is attainable, and yet human folly and ignorance have smiled at the sacrifice. Under this system of education in cruel principles, governments have arisen and fell. The wrong has worn out the structure. The governed have governed themselves with their own wisdom. No wisdom higher than brutes enjoy, enters into the cruelty of many creeds and laws. What voice reaches the ear of the poor? What echo responds to the call of sympathy? Where are the luxuries of life garnered? Where the aid which a common sympathy requires? Alas! Where the equalities of nature’s laws respected? Not where indolence and wrong reside. The people submit; they acquiesce in their unrighteousness. They teach the unrighteousness from father to son, and receive the inheritance of their folly.