to a purpose that has not a greater tendency to evil than to good. The simple publication of documents, perhaps, may form some exception to these abuses; but even they are so much filled with falsehoods, fallacies, audacious historical misstatements, exaggerations, and every other abuse, naturally connected with such struggles, that we are compelled to yield them our respect and credulity with large allowances for caution and truth. Were this the place, and did our limits permit, we would gladly pursue this subject; for so completely has the hurrah of popular sway looked down everything like real freedom in the discussion of such a topic as to render the voice of dissent almost unknown to us. But our purpose is merely to show what probable effects are to flow from the abuses of the institutions on the growth of the great commercial mart of which we are writing. {recourse to electors = the Electoral College} We certainly think that even the looseness of law, legislation, and justice, that is so widely spreading itself over the land, is not exactly unsuited to sustain the rapid settlement of a country. No doubt men accomplish more in the earlier stages of society when perfectly unfettered, than when brought under the control of those principles and regulations which alone can render society permanently secure or happy. In this sense even the abuses to which we have slightly alluded may be tolerated, which it would be impossible to endure when the class of the needy become formidable from its numbers, and they who had no other stake in society than their naked assistance, could combine to transfer the fruits of the labors of the more industrious and successful to themselves by a simple recurrence to the use of the ballot box. We do not say that such is to be the fate of this country, for the great results that seem to be dependent on its settlement raise a hope that the hand of Providence may yet guide us in safety through the period of delusion, and the reign of political fallacies, which is fast drawing around us. Evil is so much mixed with good in all the interests of life, that it would be bold to pretend to predict consequences of such magnitude in the history of any nation. But we feel persuaded that radical changes must speedily come, either from the powerful but invisible control of that Being who effects his own purposes in his own wise ways, or the time is much nearer than is ordinarily supposed when the very existence of the political institutions of this country are to be brought to the test of the severest practical experiment. The downward tendency can hardly proceed much further with the smallest necessary security to the rights of civilized men. When a legislative body can be brought solemnly to decide by its vote that because the principles of law leave them the control of the rules for the descent of property, therefore, whenever a landlord may happen to die, his tenant