Now, then, to let alone details, and generalize into one all the causes of our condition, this is the result: We have found welfare just so far as we have followed the democratic idea, and enacted justice into law. We have lost welfare just so far as we have followed the despotic idea, and made iniquity into a statute. So far as we have reaffirmed the ordinance of nature and reënacted the will of God, we have succeeded. So far as we have refused to do that, we have failed. Of old it was written, "Righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people." * * * * * And now a word of our dangers. There seems no danger from abroad; from any foreign State, unless we begin the quarrel; none from famine. The real danger, in one word, is this--That we shall try to enact injustice into a law, and with the force of the nation to make iniquity obeyed. See some of the special forms of injustice which threaten us, or are already here. I shall put them into the form of ideas. 1. One, common among politicians is, that the State is for a portion of the people, not the whole. Thus it has been declared that the Constitution of the United States did not recognize the three million slaves as citizens, or extend to them any right which it guarantees to other men. It would be a sad thing for the State to declare there was a single child in the whole land to whom it owed no protection. What, then, if it attempts to take three millions from under its shield? In obedience to this false idea, the counsel has been given, that we must abstain from all "Political agitation" of the most important matter before the people. We must leave that to our masters, for the State is for them, it is not for you and me. They must say whether we shall "agitate" and "discuss" these things or not. The politicians are our masters, and may lay their fingers on our lips when they will. 2. The next false idea is,--That government is chiefly for the protection of property. This has long been the idea on which some men legislated, but on the 19th day of this month, the distinguished Secretary of State, in a speech at New York, used these words: "The great object of government is the protection of property at home and respect and renown abroad." You see what the policy must be where the government is for the protection of the hat, and only takes care of the head so far as it serves to wear a hat. Here the man is the accident, and the dollar is the substance for which the man is to be protected. I think a notion very much like this prevails extensively in the great cities of America, North and South. I think the chief politicians of the two parties are agreed in this--That government is for the protection of property, and every thing else is subsidiary. With many persons politics are a part of their business; the state-house and the custom-house are only valued for their relation to trade. This idea is fatal to a good government.