Edwardsville spectator. [volume] (Edwardsville, Ill.) 1819-1826, 1821-08-14

the subordinate state is from its weak
ness incompetent to its own protection.
Is the greatest moral purpose Of civil
government the administration OF JUS
tice +? And if justice has been truly de-
fined the constant and perpetual will of
securing to every one his right, how abb
surd and impracticable is that form Of
polily, IN which the dispenser of justice
is in one quarter of the globe, and he to
whom justice is to be dispensed is IN
another; where "moons reyolve and
oceans roll between the order and Its eX-
ecution - where time and space must
be annihilated to secure to every one his
right. The tie of colonial subsection
may suit the relations between great
naval power, and the settlers of small
and remote Island in the incipient stages
OF society but was ii possible for British
intelligence to imagine, or British sense
Of Justice to desire, that through the
boundless ages OF time, the swarming
myriads of freemen, who were to civil
lie the wilderness and fill with human
life the solitudes of this immense CONT
nent, should receive the mandates Of
their earthly des,nes from council
chamber at St. James's, or bow foreve
in submission to the omnipotence of St.
Stephens Chapel? Are the essential
purposes of civil government, to admit
mister to the wants, and to fortify the in
irmities of solitary man? To unite the
sinews OF numberless arms, and combine
the councils of multitudes of minds, for
the promotion Of The well being of ali ?
The first moral element then OF this COM
position is sympathy between the mem
bers of which it consists; the second is
sympathy between the giver and the re-
ceiver Of the Law. The sympathies oil
men begin with the affections OF domes-
tic life. They are rooted in the natural
relations Of husband and wife, of parent
and child, of brother and sister; thence
they spread through the social and moral
propinquities Of the neighbor and friend,
to the broader and more complicated re-
lations ofcountryman and fellow citizen
terminating only with the circumference
OF the globe which we inhabit, in the CO.
extensive charities incident to the COM
mon nature of man. To each Of these
relations, different degrees Of sympathy
are allotted by the ordinances of maj ure.
The sympathies of domessi life are
not more sacred and obligatory, but clo-
scr and more powerful, than those OF
neishborhood and friendship. The tic
which binds us to our country, is not
more holy in the sight of God, but it is
more deeply seated in our nature, more
lender and endearing, than that looser
link which merely connects us with our
fellow mortal man.
1t is a common Government that con
stitutes our Country. But in THAT as
ISOLATION, all the sympathies of domestic
iifc and kindred blood, all the moral liga-
lures Of friendship and neighborhood,
are combined with that instructive and
mysterious connection between man and
physical nature, which binds the first
perceptions of childhood in a chain oil
sympathy with the last gasp of expiring
age, TO the spot Of our nativity, and the
natural objects by which it is surround
ed. These sympa,hies belong and are
indispensable to the relations ordained
by nature between the individual and his
country. They dwell in the memory
and are indelible in the hearts of the first
settlers of distant colony. These are
the feelings under which the Children of
Israel /" sat down by the rivers OF Baby
lon, and wept when they remembered
Zion" These are the sympathies un-
der which they hung their harps upon
the willows and instead Of songs of
mirlh, exclaimed, off forget thee, 0
Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning" But these sympathies can
never exist for country, which we have
never seen. They are transferred in the
breasts of the succeeding generations,
from the country of human institution, to
the country Of their birth; from the land
of which they have only heard, to the
land where their eyes first opened to the
day. The ties of neighborhood are bro
ken up, those of friendship can never be
formed, with ali intervening ocean; and
the natural ties of domestic life, the all
subduing sympathies of love, the indis-
soluble bonds of marriage, the heart
riyctcd kindness of consanguinily, gra-
dua.ly wither and perish in the lapse of
few generations. All the elements
which form the basis of that sympathy
between the individual and his country
are dissolved. Long before the Decla-
ration Of independence The great mass Of
the people of America and the people oil
Britain, had become total strangers to
each other.
The people of America were known