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nor too late to ask, Can you put the dearest interest of society at risk, without guilt, and without remorse?

It is vain to offer as an excuse that public men are not to be reproached for the evils that may happen to ensue 5 from their measures. This is very true, where they are unforeseen or inevitable. Those I have depicted are not unforeseen; they are so far from inevitable, we are going to bring them into being by our vote; we choose the consequences, and become as justly answerable for them as 10 for the measure that we know will produce them.

By rejecting the posts, we light the savage fires, we bind the victims. This day we undertake to render an account to the widows and orphans whom our decision will make; to the wretches that will be roasted at the stake; to our 15 country; and I do not deem it too serious to say, to con

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science and to God. We are answerable; and if duty be anything more than a word of imposture, if conscience be not a bugbear, we are preparing to make ourselves as wretched as our country.

There is no mistake in this case, there can be none; experience has already been the prophet of events, and the cries of our future victims have already reached us. The western inhabitants are not a silent and uncomplaining sacrifice. The voice of humanity issues from the shade of 25 the wilderness; it exclaims, that while one hand is held up to reject this treaty, the other grasps a tomahawk. It summons our imagination to the scenes that will open. It is no great effort of the imagination to conceive that events so near are already begun. I can fancy that I listen to 30 the yells of savage vengeance and the shrieks of torture; already they seem to sigh in the western wind; already they mingle with every echo from the mountains.

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LVIII. OVER THE RIVER.

MISS PRIEST.

OVER the river they beckon to me

Loved ones who 've crossed to the further side; The gleam of their snowy robes I see,

But their voices are drowned in the rushing tide. There's one with ringlets of sunny gold,

And eyes, the reflection of heaven's own blue;
He crossed in the twilight, gray and cold,

And the pale mist hid him from mortal view.
We saw not the angels who met him there;
The gates of the city we could not see;
Over the river, over the river,

My brother stands waiting to welcome me!

2 Over the river, the boatman pale

Carried another- the household pet;

Her brown curls waved in the gentle gale-
Darling Minnie! I see her yet.

She crossed on her bosom her dimpled hands,
And fearlessly entered the phantom bark;
We watched it glide from the silver sands,
And all our sunshine grew strangely dark.
We know she is safe on the further side,
Where all the ransomed and angels be;
Over the river, the mystic river,

My childhood's idol is waiting for me.

3 For none return from those quiet shores,
Who cross with the boatman cold and pale;
We hear the dip of the golden oars,

And catch a gleam of the snowy sail,

And lo! they have passed from our yearning heart;
They cross the stream, and are gone for aye;

We may not sunder the veil apart

That hides from our vision the gates of day;
We only know that their bark no more
May sail with us o'er life's stormy sea;
Yet somewhere, I know, on the unseen shore,
They watch, and beckon, and wait for me.

4 And I sit and think, when the sunset's gold Is flushing river, and hill, and shore,

I shall one day stand by the water cold,

And list for the sound of the boatman's oar;
I shall watch for a gleam of the flapping sail;
I shall hear the boat as it gains the strand;
I shall pass from sight, with the boatman pale,
To the better shore of the spirit-land;

I shall know the loved who have gone before,
And joyfully sweet will the meeting be,
When over the river, the peaceful river,
The Angel of Death shall carry me.

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(CHARLES FOLLEN was born at Romrod, in Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany, September 4, 1796, emigrated to this country in 1824, on account of the danger to which he was exposed from his liberal opinions, and died in January, 1840, a victim of that fearful tragedy,—the burning of the steamboat Lexington, in Long Island Sound. At the time of his death, he was pastor of a church in East LexIngton, Massachusetts, and he had previously been for some years Professor of the Language and Literature of Germany in the University at Cambridge. He was a man of admirable qualities of mind and character. His courage was of the highest temper, and graced by Christian gentleness and forbearance. He had a generous and wide-embracing philanthropy, and yet was never neglectful of the daily charities and kindnesses of life. The duties of his sacred calling he discharged with great fidelity. His sermons were of a high order, and his devotional exercises were most fervid and impressive.

Dr. Follen had also an excellent understanding and a thorough cultivation. While in Germany he had been a teacher of jurisprudence, and his lectures had attracted much attention. He had a taste and a capacity for metaphysical and

psychological investigations, and at the time of his death had made some progress in a work on the nature and functions of the soul. His English style is very remarkable. Not only is there no trace of foreign idiom in it, but his writings might be put into the hands of students of our language as models of accuracy, neatness, and precision.

Dr. Follen's works were published, after his death, by his widow, in five volumes: the first volume containing a memoir. They consist of sermons, lectures, and occasional discourses. The following extract is taken from one of his sermons.]

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HONESTY is often recommended to those who scem more especially to need the recommendation, by the common saying that honesty is the best policy." This maxim is to a certain extent true, and borne out by experience. 5 The dishonest man is continually undermining his own credit; and not only is credit the first requisite for obtaining the conveniences of life which can be bought or hired, but all our social blessings, arising from the confidence, esteem, and love of our fellow-men, depend essen10 tially on good faith. Our conscience and our reason fully approve of a state of things that should secure the enjoyment of property, of confidence, esteem, and affection, to him who alone deserves them.

But,

So far, then, the common saying, that honesty is the 15 best that is, the most profitable policy, has a good foundation, both in experience and in sound reason. like all the other current doctrines of expediency which commend virtue not for its own sake, - that is, on account of the happiness which is found in the exercise of virtue, that common saying, too, which makes honesty an instrument of policy, is untrue and mischievous in some of its most important bearings and consequences.

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In the first place, those who are in the habit of considering honesty the most profitable line of conduct, are apt 25 to look upon virtue, in general, as a matter of policy - to value it solely or chiefly in proportion to the price it will bring in the market. This habit of calculating the interest of virtue undermines the moral sensibility, and, by degrees, unfits the selfish calculator for that deep satisfac

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tion, arising from the simple consciousness of rectitude, which the truly honest man does not hesitate to purchase with the loss of all the advantages which the most successful policy could have secured.

But besides the immoral tendency of this economical view of virtue, it is not consistent with facts, with experience, that honesty is always the best, the most successful, policy. He is not always the most successful merchant who in no instance deviates from the strict principles of 10 honesty; but rather he whose general way of doing business is so fair and equitable, that he can, without much danger, avail himself of some favorable opportunity to make his fortune by a mode of proceeding which would have ruined his credit if he had been so impolitic as to 15 make this successful deviation from duty the general line of his conduct.

Again, he is not always the most prosperous lawyer who never undertakes the defence of a cause which his conscience condemns; but rather he who never undertakes a 20 cause so palpably unjust that it cannot be gained even by the most skilful and artful management; while the power of making a bad cause appear good, when discreetly employed, is apt to enhance, rather than degrade, his professional character.

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Again, he is not always the most influential politician who never deviates from the straight path of political justice; but rather he who goes upon the common principle that "all is fair in politics," provided he does not become guilty of any such dishonesty as will not be pardoned by BO his own party.

In the same way, he is not apt to be the most popular divine, who, regardless both of the praise and of the censure of men, declares the whole counsel of God, as it stands revealed to his own mind; but rather he who re

35 gards the signs of the times as much as the handwriting of God, modifying the plain honesty of apostolic preaching

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