These facts are presented as worthy of the consideration of all who study the social and political condition of the great and highly-favored people who flourished on this continent for so many centuries; and we imagine the student cannot fail to be impressed with the thought that they were at least a thousand years in advance of their fellow-men in the science of true government; and in their policy find a type of the most advanced and most liberal forms of government of the present age. That this should be so, will not surprise us when we consider that they were a branch of the house of Israel, a people who enjoyed more political liberty (until their own follies had cut them off therefrom) than any of the other nations of antiquity, and that to the law of Moses they had added the divine teachings of the everlasting gospel, which in themselves are a perfect law of liberty. Further, it is a noteworthy fact which stares us in the face from the beginning to the end of the Book of Mormon, that when the people departed from gospel principles, it was then and then only that they fell into bondage, of whatever nature that bondage might be. The political history of the Nephites may be consistently divided into five epochs: First.--When they were governed by kings. Second.--The republic, when they were ruled by judges and governors. Third.--A short period of anarchy when they were divided into numerous independent tribes. Fourth.--The Messianic dispensation, when they were controlled entirely by the higher law of the holy priesthood. Fifth.--The chaotic state of intestine war which preceded their final extinction as a nation and as a race.