truths that are told are for them, and the lies. Therein the prevailing sentiment is getting into the form of thought. Politics represent the morals of the controlling class, the morals and manners of rich Peter and David on a large scale. Look at that index, you would sometimes think you were not in the Senate of a great nation, but in a board of brokers, angry and higgling about stocks. Once in the nation's loftiest hour, she rose inspired and said: "All men are born equal, each with unalienable rights; that is self-evident." Now she repents her of the vision and the saying. It does not appear in her literature, nor church, nor state. Instead of that, through this controlling class, the nation says: "All dollars are equal, however got; each has unalienable rights. Let no man question that!" This appears in literature and legislation, church and state. The morals of a nation, of its controlling class, always get summed up in its political action. That is the barometer of the moral weather. The voters are always fairly represented. * * * * * The wicked baron, bad of heart, and bloody of hand, has passed off with the ages which gave birth to such a brood, but the bad merchant still lives. He cheats in his trade; sometimes against the law, commonly with it. His truth is never wholly true, nor his lie wholly false. He overreaches the ignorant; makes hard bargains with men in their trouble, for he knows that a falling man will catch at red-hot iron. He takes the pound of flesh, though that bring away all the life-blood with it. He loves private contracts, digging through walls in secret. No interest is illegal if he can get it. He cheats the nation with false invoices, and swears lies at the custom-house; will not pay his taxes, but moves out of town on the last of April.[30] He oppresses the men who sail his ships, forcing them to be temperate, only that he may consume the value of their drink. He provides for them unsuitable bread and meat. He would not engage in the African slave-trade, for he might lose his ships and perhaps more; but he is always ready to engage in the American slave-trade, and calls you a "fanatic" if you tell him it is the worse of the two. He cares not whether he sells cotton or the man who wears it, if he only gets the money; cotton or negro, it is the same to him. He would not keep a drink-hole in Ann Street, only own and rent it. He will bring or make whole cargoes of the poison that deals "damnation round the land." He thinks it vulgar to carry rum about in a jug, respectable in a ship. He makes paupers, and leaves others to support them. Tell not him of the misery of the poor, he knows better; nor of our paltry way of dealing with public crime, he wants more jails and a speedier gallows. You see his character in letting his houses, his houses for the poor. He is a stone in the lame man's shoe. He is the poor man's devil. The Hebrew devil that so worried Job is gone; so is