At the age, then, of sixty years, our blooming began to decline under the withering touch of ! Disappointed ambition; thirst for power, pride, corruption, party spirit, faction, patronage; perquisites, fame, tangling alliances; and spiritual wickedness in high places, struck hands, and revelled in midnight splendor. Trouble, vexation, perplexity and contention, mingled with hope, fear and murmuring, rumbled through the and agitated the whole as would an earthquake at the centre of the earth the world, heaving the sea beyond its bounds, and shaking the everlasting hills: So, in hopes of better times, while jealousy, hypocritical pretensions, and pompous ambition, were luxuriating on the ill-gotten spoils of the people, they rose in their majesty like a tornado, and swept through the land, till General [William Henry] Harrison appeared, as a star among the storm clouds, for better weather.

The calm came; and the language of that venerable patriot, in his inaugural address, while descanting upon the merits of the constitution and its framers, thus expressed himself. “There were in it, features which appeared not to be in harmony with their ideas of a simple representative democracy or republic. And knowing the tendency of power to increase itself, particularly when executed by a single individual, predictions were made that, at no very remote period, the government would terminate in virtual monarchy. It would not become me to say that the fears of these patriots have been already realized. But as I sincerely believe that the tendency of measures and of men’s opinions, for some years past, has been in that direction, it is, I conceive, strictly proper that I should take this occasion to repeat the assurances I have heretofore given, of my determination to arrest the progress of that tendency if it really exists, and restore the government to its pristine health and vigor.” This good man died before he had the opportunity of applying one balm to ease the pain of our groaning , and I am willing the should be the judge, whether General Harrison, in his exalted station, upon the eve of his entrance into the world of spirits, told the truth or not: with acting ’s three years of perplexity and pseudo whig democrat reign, to heal the breaches, or show the wounds, secundum artum, (according to art.) Subsequent events, all things considered, ’s downfall, Harrison’s exit, and ’s self-sufficient turn to the whole, go to shew, as a Chaldean might exclaim: Beram etai elauh beshmayauh gauhah rauzeen: (Certainly there is a God in heaven to reveal secrets;)

No honest man can doubt for a moment, but the glory of American liberty, is on the wane; and that calamity and confusion will sooner or later destroy the peace of the people. Speculators will urge a national bank as a savior of credit and comfort. A hireling pseudo priesthood will plausibly push abolition doctrines and doings, and “human rights,” into Congress and [i]nto every other place, where conquest smells of fame, or opposition swells to popularity.— Democracy, Whiggery, and Cliquery, will attract their elements and foment divisions among the people, to accomplish fancied schemes and accumulate power, while poverty driven to despair, like hunger forcing its way through a wall, will break through the statutes of men, to save life, and mend the breach in prison glooms.

A still higher grade, of what the “nobility of the nations” call “great men,” will dally with all rights in order to smuggle a fortune at “one fell swo[o]p;” mortgage , possess , and claim all the unsettled regions of the world for hunting and trapping: and should a humble honest man, red, black, or white, exhibit a better title, these gentry have only to clothe the judge with richer ermine, and spangle the lawyer’s fingers with finer rings, to have the judgment of his peers, and the honor of his lords, as a pattern of honesty, virtue and humanity, while the motto hangs on his nation’s escutcheon: “Every man has his price!”

Now, oh! people! turn unto the Lord and live; and reform this . Frustrate the designs of wicked men. Reduce Congress at least one half. Two Senators from a state and two members to a million of population, will do more business than the army that now occupy the halls of the National Legislature. Pay them two dollars and their board per diem; (except Sundays,) that is more than the farmer gets, and he lives honestly. Curtail the offices of government in pay, number and power, for the Philistine lords have shorn our of its goodly locks in the lap of Delilah.

Petition your state legislature to pardon every convict in their several penitentiaries: blessing them as they go, and saying to them in the name of the Lord, go thy way and sin no more. Advise your legislators when they make laws for larceny, burglary or any felony, to make the penalty applicable to work upon the roads, public works, or any place where the culprit can be taught more wisdom and more virtue; and become more enlightened. Rigor and seclusion will never do as much to reform the propensities of man, as reason and friendship. Murder only [p. 6]