to numbers, but formidable by their union, to hold the balance of
power, and to effect their purposes by practising on the wilful,
blind, wayward, and, we might almost add, fatal obstinacy of the
two great political parties of the country. Here, in our view, is
the danger that the nation has most to apprehend. The result is
as plain as it is lamentable. In effect, it throws the political
power of the entire Republic into the hands of the intriguer, the
demagogue, and the knave. Honest men are not practised on by such
combinations; but, with a fatality that would seem to be the very
sport of demons, there they stand, drawn up in formidable array,
in nearly equal lines of open and deriding hostility, leading
those who no longer conceive it necessary to even affect the
semblance of respect to many of the plainest and most important
of the principles of social integrity that have ever been
received among men.

Anyone familiar with the condition of Europe must know, that
under the pressure of society in that quarter of the world, and
toward which we are fast tending by a rapid accumulation of
numbers, the present institutions of America, exercised under the
prevalent opinions of the day, could not endure a twelvemonth.
That which is now seen in France rendering real political liberty
a mere stalking-horse for the furtherance of the projects of the
boldest adventurers, would inevitably be seen here; the bayonet
alone would be relied on for the preservation of the nearest and
dearest of human rights. There could and would be no other
security for the peace of society, and that circle of power
which, rising in the masses, ends in the sceptre of the single
despot, would once more be made as it might be in derision of all
our efforts to be free.