great excellence as individuals, when they have become united with others in some corporate capacity, to lose, or to act as if they had lost, their nice sense of honour and integrity; and hence they will often lend their names and their influence to certain measures as members of an incorporation, which they would highly reprobate as private men. The injustice and dishonour of the acts, they cannot deny; "but what are these among so many;" as if the guilt of any wrong doing were as susceptible of being mathematically divided among the authors, as are its pecuniary profits or loss; and, without deeming it proper to quote particular cases of delinquency, yet there is much reason to fear that these remarks are capable of a very extensive application.

It argues a strange perversion of truth, and great obliquity of moral discernment, and yet this merging of personal responsibility in a corporate is a lamentable fact with which the history of both the past and the present has made us too familiar. Thus the act of violence and blood-shedding, which suspends an individual murderer upon the gallows, becomes a deed of glory, and is applauded, when perpetrated by a nation when hundreds of thousands are left mangled and weltering in their blood upon the field of battle, and whole hecatombs are the victims instead of a single one. "I am called a robber because I have only one small vessel. You are styled a conqueror because you command fleets and armies. For one man to set the government of his country at defiance and lift his hand in rebellion is treason, and the misguided creature will share in the elevation of Haman. But we have seen the same thing in our day done by a state; the decision of the highest court of the nation treated with contempt, the government brow-beaten, and bearded, and insulted, with perfect impunity; and instead of relenting upon any after reflection, or being called to account, it has been rather regarded as high-minded and chivalrous, something worthy of a lofty spirit, and indicative of an independence of character, which all in similar circumstances are hereby invited to imitate.

Thus, as one has shrewdly remarked, "treason is never successful." For whenever the authors are enabled to prevail and to triumph over the state, their crime loses its original attributes, and is called by another name. Such practically, has been the sentiment of states and nations, and sorry we are to add, that quite too often do we see the same Machiavellian morality developed more or less in common

life. When even honourable and Christian men become combined under the protecting seal of a body corporate, too often do they seem to lose their sensibility, and what is worse, their conscience.

But the temptations of the times in this respect too, are strong to men in their private capacity; and many are wont to take occasion from the prevailing sympathy for those who are truly embarrassed, to procure that indulgence for themselves which they neither need nor deserve. While others fail to comply with their engagements from necessity, these do the same thing from choice. They have the means of doing it in hand, but they fear they may want them in future, or they wish to use them for advantageous speculation upon the distresses of others. Thus, their love of gain predominates over their sense of right, and they withhold what is due, and which they could easily pay, because they can do it with impunity, under cover of " the present distress." The grace which is shown to the distressed in reality, they challenge for themselves, since they are able to conceal their own solvency so effectually that none can discover how little right they have to ask indulgence.

The disciples of Christ then are admonished by "the times," to aim at maintaining a good conscience, by the strictest integrity in their dealings with one another, and with society at large. Nor is it to be doubted, that much of the prevailing distress would be abated, and much more prevented, would every member of society do as well in this respect as he can-would comply with those sound commercial maxims of Solomon: "Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. Say not unto thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and to-morrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee."

But another duty which would seem to be peculiarly needful for the times, is that we endeavour to be cheerful.

A duty more easily prescribed than obeyed. There is a time, moreover, of such peculiar and uncontrolable distress, that the cheerful look is only hypocritical, and gives a lie to the corroding sadness of the heart. There are griefs, by which the soul is so afflicted sometimes, that all attempts at consolation only seem to mock its anguish, and we are made to desist by the sage reflection of Solomon, that "as he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart."

"There is a grief that cannot feel,

There is a wound that will not heal."

There is an anguish of soul which nothing but time, and the special grace of God, can mitigate, and which is deaf to the voice of human consolation; and for every such sufferer there is balm only in Gilead, and a physician no where else but there. And how far we are capable of successfully concealing our grief under the pressure of our earthly trials, and when disappointed, afflicted, and alarmed, to command that cheerfulness of countenance which is the natural index of a "merry heart," we do not assert. It involves a question in physical science as well as in morals which at present is better waived than agitated. Yet that much may be done, by faithful and unremitting effort, none will deny who have made the experiment. While, therefore, we should guard against that thoughtlessness and levity which are unseemly at any time, and which betray a vacant mind, as well as an unfeeling heart; let us also watch with equal assiduity against despondency and gloom.

If there is much to make us sad in these times of distress, there is much more, if properly appreciated, to make us cheerful. We have mercies unnumbered, personal and relative, domestic, civil, and religious, which need not be detailed, but which demand the warmest thanksgiving. Think of other nations-think of Russia, of Spain, of Ireland, South America, and France-and who is not thankful that he belongs to none of them? Above all, think of seven hundred millions now groping in Pagan darkness; and have we no cause to be cheerful!

The portentous cloud now lowering over us-like that which led Israel through the desert-has an illumined side, as well as a dark one. Even an intelligent heathen has written for our monition, that "there is no real life but a cheerful life." And a wiser than this heathen,-that a cheerful, or "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine." So far then, as

we can mingle in society, and meet our friends and neighbours with a cheerful look, and an encouraging word-we shall do much to allay the present distress. If the gloom of a melancholy face is infectious; so is the smile of a joyous and cheerful one, not less easily imparted to others. "As iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend."

As the requisite help, for a duty so confessedly arduous, we must regard the present distress as providential, or, as having been permitted to occur with some special design.

In what acceptation a divine supervision is recognised, has been already explained. Not in any such sense, of course, that it would be just to ascribe our distress to the immediate agency of God; nor in any such sense as to exculpate the instruments, so far as in conduct or motive they are worthy of blame: but that we look beyond these subordinate causes, to that retributive government, which has selected this channel for dispensing its judgment on account of our sins; and that has admonished us of the nature of our transgression, by the very character of our chastisement. As the most high rebuked the iniquity of Ashdod, by casting down and dismembering their Dagon; so has God touched the idol of our nation and made it to tremble.

That very thing which we have loved most, and followed hardest after, has become our chief tormentor; the same fountain that has sent forth such copious streams of sweet water, is now sending the bitter. Our great facilities for gain, and our temporary success, became the lure to extravagance in expenditure; and we were forming habits of luxury, as inconsistent with republican simplicity, as they were prejudicial to our morals, and offensive to God. The effect of such a species of prosperity was precisely what it has ever been, without the special help of God to counteract it. It was the same as upon Corinth and Rome and Jerusalem. It was a proportionate increase of crime in all those destructive forms in which it wrought the ruin of them. Where the grace of God abounded in giving us temporal success, the sins of the people abounded the more. Nor is there a chapter in our national annals so replete with "lamentations, and mourning, and woe," as that which comprises the period commencing with this so called prosperity. It will stand, if we do not greatly misjudge, as the epoch of a revival of national crime.

Where, in all our history, do we see so densely chronicled a series of so much undisguised, wide-extended knavery and swindling of so much deadly violence, and assassination,of so many mobs and riotous assemblings-so much taking of the law out of the hands of the regular ministers of justice? Where has there been so much of political juggling: and of the sacrifice of personal honour, and principle, and conscience, at the shrine of a party? So much flagrant violation of rights

-religious, social, and civil? So many awful conflagrations by the agency of incendiaries?

But we forbear-though much more might be added, for what has been enumerated is but the beginning of our sorrows. But the assertion is made from deliberate examination, and the strongest persuasion that the coincidence is real. Our increase in crime has kept pace with our advancement in wealth.

But

Our indigenous evil doers are sufficiently numerous. our country has been made the Botany Bay, and the Poor House of other nations, who have been sending the canaille of their streets-hospitals and prisons-till the number of imported thieves, highway robbers, counterfeiters, and murderers, is terrific. We lately met a person high in office in one of our large cities, who expressed his apprehensions from this source in the most emphatic manner. His post of observation is one from which he has the best opportunity of knowing the truth: and "we are all," said he, "in imminent danger. We are every one exposed, like Mobile and other places, to be burned at midnight, to be robbed in this awful manner of our property, if not our life, by the agency of felons, no small part of whom are of foreign birth, and who for the chance of a few shillings of plunder, will consume half the city."

This respectable witness does not testify alone: "Any one who attends our criminal courts," says another intelligent observer, "cannot fail to be impressed with the fact, that the number of native American citizens accused of depredations upon property is comparatively limited. Of the foreigners who commit crimes in our cities, the English are the most accomplished and scientific. Most of the burglaries and extensive night larcenies of stores, &c. are effected by them; many of whom are exiles on account of crimes at home.

"But the mass of petty depredations committed upon property among us, within the last few years, has been perpetrated by Germans. For, while the voluntary German emigrants, who have adopted this country, are among our best citizens, there have been recent emigrations hither of a very different character. Ignorant, besotted, destitute, they wander about the streets of our cities, begging, pilfering, and even forcing their way into the houses of our citizens, and extending their depredations to offences of a bolder charac