result, which has already resulted in such wonderful achievements !" 9. Christians, is it not part of almost every prayer you offer, that God will soon open upon the world the millennial day? Are you acting in consistency with your prayers, by lending your influence to help forward this glorious cause of morai improvement, which must prevail ere the millennium shall fully come? Are you exerting any influence, directly or re motely, to retard this cause? Do you make the poison, or do you use it, or do you sell it? Never open your lips then to pray for the millennium. If the millennium should really come, it would ruin your business for ever! These observations from the Rev. W. B. Sprague, of Albany, will be likely to convince every unprejudiced mind that the suppression of intemperance must precede the approach of the millennium. When that happy period arrives there will be no intemperance,―no evil of any kind. Temperance societies took their origin among the American people, in the year 1826. During the intervening period, it has been found, that those great principles of self application which it was the chief object of our Savior to illustrate and recommend on earth, have power, not only to prevent men from becoming intemperate, but also, through the law of kindness, to reclaim drunkards themselves. Animated by the hope of doing good, such men as R. Hyde Walworth, Edward C. Delavan, Gerrit Smith, B. P. Johnson, Stephen Van Rensselaer, William B. Sprague, George R. Davis, Gen. A. W. Riley, James Harper, Theodore Frelinghuysen, Lewis Cass, William Slade, Justin Edwards, George N. Briggs, and Dr. Beecher, early espoused the noble cause of temperance, and their efforts to promote it, together with the exertions of their coadjutors have been crowned with great success. Light and knowledge have been spread far and wide," by holding meetings, forming societies, and publishing papers, devoted exclusively to the cause of temperance, a cause upon which, it is believed, "the smiles of angels, and of the God of angels rest." Foreign countries will yet, in imitation of our example, unfurl the temperance banner. Even now, Great Britain, Scotland, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, and Ireland, behold the light of this great reform, and millions of our fellow beings are preparing to walk in its morning effulgence. 40. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. Thomas Jefferson. 1. When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have. connected them with another, and to assume, among the pow ers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent re spect to the opinions of mankind, requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 2. We hold these truths to be self-evident:—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; 3. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. 4. Prudence, indeed, will dictate, that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 5. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursu ing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism; it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former system of government. 6. The history of the present king of Great Britain, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having, in direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. 7. He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. 8. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operations, till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. 9. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relin quish the right of representation in the legislature,—a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only. 10. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the repository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. 11. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people. 12. He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected: whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large, for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the danger of invasion from without and convulsions within. 13. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the laws for the naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither; and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. 14. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. 15. He has made judges dependant on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 16. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent here swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their sub stance. 17. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures. 18. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power. 19. He has combined with others, to subject us to a ju risdiction, foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation; 20. For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us; 21. For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment, for any murder they should commit on the inhabitants of these States; 22. For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; 23. For imposing taxes on us without our consent; 24. For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury; 25. For transporting us beyond the seas, to be tried for pretended offences; 26. For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies; 27. For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments; 28. For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us, in all cases whatsoever. 29. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us. 30. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. 31. He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries, to complete the work of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. 32. He has constrained our fellow citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. 33. He has excited domestic insurrections among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. 34. In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. 35. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. 36. Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of at tempts made by their legislature, to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. 37. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. 38. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity; and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connexions and correspondence. 39. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must therefore acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation; and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind,—enemies in war; in peace, friends. 40. We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these Unite Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independen States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connexion between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent States, they have ful power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, estab lish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which irdependent States may of right do. 41. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacer honor. The "Declaration of Independence" was unanimously adopted at Phii adelphia, by the representatives of the (then) "Thirteen United Colonies of America," in congress assembled, July 4th, 1776. In early life, Thomas Jefferson, by whom the Declaration was written, "swore eternal hatred to every form of tyranny over the mind of man.' "The eloquence of the Declaration, consists chiefly in its severe and sublime simplicity. It contains a bare recital of facts and self-evident truths. The subject to which it relates, and the circumstances under which it was adopted, were too serious for rhetoric. Any attempt at eloquence would have been altogether out of place. The occasion itself, forming as it does, the most im portant epoch in the history of nations, was full of eloquence. The paper is just what it ought to be, a declaration of the imprescriptible rights of man. Independence Hall" still remains. When at Philadelphia, a few years since, the writer visited the consecrated "Hall." Long may i stand; for, whenever American citizens, especially those who are the im |