But a large part of this transient literature is very different in its character. Its authors have broken with the traditions of the past; they have new ideas, and plans for putting them in execution; they are full of hope; are national to the extreme, bragging and defiant. They put the majority before institutions; the rights of the majority before the privilege of a few; they represent the onward tendency and material prophecy of the nation. The new activity of the American mind here expresses its purpose and its prayer. Here is strength, hope, confidence, even audacity; all is American. But the great idea of the Absolute Right does not appear, all is more national than human; and in what concerns the nation, it is not justice, the point where all interests are balanced, and the welfare of each harmonizes with that of all, which is sought; but the "greatest good of the greatest number;" that is, only a privilege had at the cost of the smaller number. Here is little respect for universal humanity; little for the Eternal Laws of God which override all the traditions and contrivances of men; more reverence for a statute, or constitution, which is indeed the fundamental law of the political State, but is often only an attempt to compromise between the fleeting passions of the day and the Immutable Morality of God. Amid all the public documents of the nation and the several States, in the speeches and writings of favorite men, who represent and so control the public mind, for fifty years, there is little that "stirs the feelings infinite" within you; much to make us more American, not more manly. There is more head than heart; native intellect enough; culture that is competent, but little conscience, or real religion. How many newspapers, how many politicians in the land go at all beyond the whig idea of protecting the property now accumulated, or the democratic idea of ensuring the greatest material good of the greatest number? Where are we to look for the representative of justice, of the unalienable rights of all the people and all the nations? In the triple host of article-makers, speech-makers, lay and clerical, and makers of laws, you find but few who can be trusted to stand up for the unalienable rights of men; who will never write, speak, nor vote in the interests of a party, but always in the interest of mankind, and will represent the justice of God in the forum of the world.