Democracy! thy trumpet voice for liberty is ever ringing in our ears; but thy strange workings defame thee.  Thou art rampant in love of the “popular cause,” crushing of that which secures liberty to all; and, whilst thou art great at demolishing structures, building firm foundations seems beyond thee, for thereto thou forgetteth to lay the cornerstone well on the solid rock of principle.  And, too, we love thee when thou art moved and governed by justice; we hate thee when thou showest thyself a sycophant to make a mad mob serve a pestilential ambition.  Like a young giant thou graspest power; but, when in thy hands, it becomes a means of serving the baser ends of factious demagogues.  Hypocrite!  With breath of poison thou hast sung thy songs to liberty while making it a stepping-stone to injustice; nor hast thou ever ceased to wage a tyrant’s war against the rights of man.  Thou wearest false robes; thou blasphemest against heaven, that thy strength in wrong may be secure-yea, we fear thy end is fast coming badly, for thou art the bastard offspring of Republicanism so purely planted in our land.  Clamour and the lash are thy sceptres, and, like a viper seeking its prey, thou charmest with one and goadeth men’s souls with the other.  Having worked thy way through our simple narrative, show us what thou hast done.  A father hast thou driven within the humid wall of a prison, because he would repent and acknowledge his child.  Bolts and bars, in such cases, are democracy’s safeguards; but thou hast bound with heavy chains the being who would rise in the world, and go forth healing the sick and preaching God’s word.  Even hast thou turned the hearts of men into stone, and made them weep at the wrong thou gavest them power to inflict.  That bond which God gave to man, and charged him to keep sacred, thou hast sundered for the sake of gold,—­thereby levelling man with the brutes of the field.  Thou hast sent two beautiful children to linger in the wickedness of slavery,—­to die stained with its infamy!  Thou hast robbed many a fair one of her virtue, stolen many a charm; but thy foulest crime is, that thou drivest mothers and fathers from the land of their birth to seek shelter on foreign soil.  Would to God thou could’st see thyself as thou art,—­make thy teachings known in truth and justice,—­cease to mock thyself in the eyes of foreign tyrants, nor longer serve despots who would make thee the shield of their ill-gotten power!

Within those malarious prison walls, where fast decays a father who sought to save from slavery’s death the offspring he loved, will be found a poor, dejected negro, sitting at the bedside of the oppressed man, administering to his wants.  His friendship is true unto death,—­the oppressed man is his angel, he will serve him at the sacrifice of life and liberty.  He is your true republican, the friend of the oppressed!  Your lessons of democracy, so swelling, so boastfully arrayed for a world’s good, have no place in his soul,—­goodness alone directs his examples of republicanism.  But we must not be over venturous in calling democracy to account, lest we offend the gods of power and progress.  We will, to save ourselves, return to our narrative.