And there are elements already in existence which furnish a luxuriant soil for a baleful crop of future evil.  But a few years ago three and a half millions of human beings were held in our country in a state of abject bondage, deprived of every vestige of freedom and every trace of manhood.  But why refer to slavery, it may be asked, since it has already become a thing of the past?  Slavery, to be sure, on the ground of political expediency, has been abolished.  For the time being, the ballots and bayonets of its opponents have outnumbered those of its partisans.  But has this changed the disposition by which it has heretofore been fostered?  Has it converted the South?  Have they been brought to look upon it as an evil which should be given up on account of its own intrinsic wrong?  We would that we could answer these questions in the affirmative.  But there are acts too patent to be denied, which show that the virus of this great iniquity still rankles in the body politic; that the system of slavery has been given up by the people of the South simply as a matter of necessity; that if they had the power they would re-instate it again though they should rend and ruin the Republic in their attempt; and hundreds of thousands in the North would sympathize with them in the movement, and second them in their efforts.  The disease is driven from the surface, but it is not cured.  It may be a source of serious trouble hereafter.

Political corruption is preparing the way for deeper sin.  It pervades all parties.  Look at the dishonest means resorted to to obtain office, the bribery, the deceptions, the ballot-stuffing.  Look at the stupendous revelations of municipal corruption just disclosed in New York city:  millions upon millions stolen directly and barefacedly rom the city treasury by its corrupt officials.  Look at the civil service of this government.  Speaking on this point, The Nation of Nov. 17, 1870, said:—­

“The newspapers are generally believed to exaggerate most of the abuses they denounce; but we say deliberately, that no denunciation of the civil service of the United States which has ever appeared in print has come up as a picture, of selfishness, greed, fraud, corruption, falsehood, and cruelty, to the accounts which are given privately by those who have seen the real workings of the machine.”

Enumeration is here unnecessary.  Enough crops out in every day’s history to show that moral principle, the only guarantee in a government like ours for justice and honesty, is sadly wanting.

And evil is also threatening from another quarter.  Creeping up from the darkness of the dark ages, a hideous monster is intently watching to seize the throat of liberty in our land.  It thrusts itself up into the noonday of the ninteenth century, not that it may be benefited by its light and freedom, but that it may suppress and obscure them.  The name of this monster is Popery; and it has fixed its