grinding competition which is so rapidly swelling the lists of criminals and paupers in our great cities. But, meanwhile, our common school systems, our Lyceum lectures and libraries, our newspapers and pamphlets, and especially the great Temperance Reform, have rendered an immense service in opening the intellectual and moral views of the farmers, and rural population of all classes. Our factories, too, have added to their intelligence and property, without, thus far, having injured their morals. On the whole, we think it may be safely affirmed, that the entire population of the non-slaveholding states is better fitted now for the exercise of universal suffrage, than it was when the Constitution was proclaimed. We are aware, that, in the opinion of many persons, the undeniable growth of our farming population in intelligence and external morality has been accompanied by a loss of reverence and loyalty which fully counteracts the gain. We are not, however, of this opinion. The loss of reverence complained of has been, we think, rather the growth of a spirit of analysis and inquiry, and a separation of hollow forms from those which still symbolize or express a sentiment, than a real loss of reverence for religion or virtue; and this is best proved by the fact of the moral reform everywhere visible throughout the country, in the greater sobriety, industry, and refinement of the people, and in the growing disposition to look into the moral and religious basis of our laws and social habits.
As for the slaveholding states, it may be true that they have suffered a general moral decline. We are by no means sure that such is the fact, however; but, in relation to questions of slavery, their legislation seems to indicate it. At the same time, we cannot at all agree with those who are disposed to trace all our national sins to the one foul blot of slavery; nor can we believe that our Constitution, in recognizing and permitting slavery, and providing for the restoration of fugitive slaves, has admitted a poison which can be cast out only by breaking up the whole organism. This seems to us a hopeless and a faithless doctrine, and is tantamount to an assertion that the Constitution not only has one great evil in it, but that it has little or no good in it. If it
