incapable of rising above the existing condition, of over-leaping the barriers and escaping from the external circumstances that surrounded them. There were, doubtless, individual exceptions—some men who were deeply imbued with the grand idea promulgated by Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. There were many in the Middle States who had an imperfect but advancing conception of this glorious truth, and there was still a larger number, perhaps, who were groping in darkness with a vague but earnest desire to embrace it. But the dominant thought, the prevalent opinion, the general mental habit, was reflected by the representative men, the great Northern leaders, Hamilton, Adams, Otis, and their companions, who desired to found a government on the British model, which, though it should be a great improvement over the former, was to be based on the same foundation—for, to _their_ minds, their mental habits, there was no other, or, at all events, no other _safe_ basis for government. They were honest and patriotic men—men of gifted minds and large attainments—men sorely tried and tested by the hardships and sufferings of a seven years’ war, through which they walked with their lives in their hands, and the scaffold always frowning on them in the distance, and the purity of intentions, the unselfish and patriotic desires of such men, should never be questioned. They could not rise above the circumstances that surrounded them; they could not comprehend the grand idea of Mr. Jefferson; they saw before them only class distinctions, the rich and the poor, the educated few and the toiling many, and they desired to build the government on the _status quo_, and therefore demanded a strong government, that should always be able to restrain the multitude and keep them in subjection to their “rulers.” On the contrary, as has been stated, Virginia had cast off the mental habits of the Old World, the offspring had long since outgrown the traditions of their ancestors; the descendants of English cavaliers had changed entirely about in their opinions, and the children of those who held to the doctrine of “passive obedience” and “non-resistance” declared that “resistance to tyrants was obedience to God.” The cause or the causes of this wonderful transformation of opinion, this radical change in mental habitudes, which has made the descendants of the supporters of royalty the originators and special champions of democracy in America, have been already considered. The presence of the negro, the existence in their midst of a different race, was and is, and always must be, a test that shows us the insignificance and indeed nothingness of those artificial distinctions which elsewhere govern the world, and constitute the basis of the political as well as the social order.