with adiaphora, “things indifferent;” and allows no more moral character to them than to a table or a broomstick, I trust no good man envies his optics.  May I not hope that you, Mr. Smylie, perceive a difference between despotism and an “indifferent thing.”  May I not hope, that you will, both as a Republican and a Christian, take the ground, that despotism has a moral character, and a bad one?  When our fathers prayed, and toiled, and bled, to obtain for themselves and their children the right of self-government, and to effect their liberation from a power, which, in the extent and rigor of its despotism, is no more to be compared to the Roman government, than the “little finger” to the “loins,” I doubt not, that they felt that despotism had a moral, and a very bad moral character.  And so would Prof.  Hodge have felt, had he stood by their side, instead of being one of their ungrateful sons.  I say ungrateful—­for, who more so, than he who publishes doctrines that disparage the holy cause in which they were embarked, and exhibits them, as contending for straws, rather than for principles?  Tell me, how long will this Republic endure after our people shall have imbibed the doctrine, that the nature of civil government is an indifferent thing:  and that the poet was right when he said,

  “For forms of government let fools contest?”

This, however, is but one of many doctrines of ruinous tendency to the cause of civil liberty, advanced by pro-slavery writers to sustain their system of oppression.

It would surely be superfluous to go into proofs, that the Roman government was vicious and wicked in its constitution and nature.  Nevertheless, the Apostle enjoined submission to it, and taught its subjects how to demean themselves under it.  Here, then, we have an instance, in which we cannot argue the sinlessness of a relation, from the fact of Apostolic injunctions on those standing in it.  Take another instance.  The Chaldeans went to a foreign land, and enslaved its people—­as members of your guilty partnership have done for some of the slaves you now own, and for the ancestors of others.  And God destroyed the Chaldeans expressly “for all their evil that they had done in Zion.”  But, wicked as they were, for having instituted this relation between themselves and the Jews, God, nevertheless, tells the Jews to submit to it.  He tells them, “Serve the King of Babylon.”  He even says, “seek the peace of the city, whither I have caused you to be carried away captives, and pray unto the Lord for it; for, in the peace thereof, shall ye have peace.”  Here then, we have another instance, in addition to that of the Roman despot and his subjects, in which the Holy Spirit prescribed regulations for wicked relations.  You will, at least, allow, that the relation established by the Chaldeans between themselves and the captive Jews, was wicked.  But, you will perhaps say, that this is not a relation coming within the contemplation