Gazette Of The United States

ORIGINAL COMMUNICATIONS.

"Government depends on opinion." It is happy for mankind, that in proportion as the people have been enlightened and civilized, their opinion has always been in favor of government.

Liberty, genuine equal liberty, has no other retreat now left, but in the arms of government—government founded on the principles of justice and right.

Liberty has been repeatedly tempted to take refuge in anarchy; but this has almost always, in the issue, bound her in the chains of despotism.

Under the Romans, Liberty tried Aristocracy—which artfully tripped her of all her charms, and left her nothing but a name.

In the time of their revolution she tried Democracy; but Cromwell stole the hearts of the people—he dubbed the Parliament-House a den of thieves, and accordingly turned the members out, and locked up the doors. Liberty has now taken up her residence in the United States, under our happy Republican Government—this we may pronounce is her last retreat. The people are in a state of probation; if we are wise to secure the privileges we enjoy, by supporting the fabric we have raised, Liberty will reside in this highly favored land, till the final consolidation of all government in the divine—but if we should be so unwise as to suffer the edifice to be defaced by the untempered daubings of pretended, but ignorant architects, we shall rue our folly when it will be too late.

There is in mankind an almost universal propensity to egotism—to this source we may trace the variety of systems which exist in religion, philosophy and politics; and if it went no further, it would be harmless—but from this also proceeds the spirit of intolerance and persecution—the loss of the liberty of speech, and the freedom of the press.

What property can a person be said to enjoy in his possessions, if he cannot retain them in security, or part with them at pleasure?

Of what advantage to the world, or to himself, is a person's mental stock, if he cannot impart his ideas with freedom?

There is a persecution of opinion extant at the present day, which is secretly undermining the first principles of civil liberty, and if continued, will preclude all moral and political improvement.

We frequently hear of "political heresies" now a days—let the standard of political orthodoxy be once reared, and you shall soon hear political anathemas thundering from political doctors.

"To think what they please, and to speak their minds," is the unalienable right of free Americans, for the just exercise of which they are amenable only to the laws—and he that opposes the cry of "mad dog" only, to sound argument, for the purpose of checking free disquisition, is a tyrant in grain.

Justice is the brightest luminary in the constellation of republican virtues—The influence of this divine principle leads the friends of genuine freedom to treat all mankind as members of one common family.