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Show 106 TilE LIBERTY DELL. is, in fact, na geologists inform us, but a comparatively thin crust floating on a molten, burning sea, which, solid as tho earth may seem, gives yet occasional proofs of fluidity in tho phenomena. of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. And so those social institutions, which the unreflecting multitude, the men of to-day, deem to be firmly fixed forever on the basis of natural necessity' yet rest but on a mobile body of opinion, which as it fluctuates this way or that, submerges tho old and elevates the new j changes, however, which do not bring tho end of tho world and restoration of chaos, aa ignorant rustics naturally apprehend when they feel the earth trembling beneath them, and as our no less ignorant men of business as naturally dread, when they behold the smoke and flame of some newly-bursting-forth moral volcano, -but only the commencement of newer and more beneficial orders of things. Looking but at appearances, at tho solid front and towering strength which the Slavcholding sy• Till': Al'f'JtOA.Cli!NQ ClUSIS. 107 tern presents, . the suggestion of any approaching downfall or disappearance of it might well seem chimericaL As tho torrents of avarice and passion have washed away' one after another, those thin deposits of free principles, which the ngitations of the revolution loft here and there on the black rocks of Slavery, the anticipation once so fo~dly entertained of a gradual and imperceptible improvement by which those flinty rocks, by tho mere atmosphere of democracy, were to be disintegrated into the rich soil of freedom, have almost entirely vanished; and, as one by one have disappeared from our eyes, every green spot on which some plant.s of liberty had hitherto fiourished, darker and darker, more desolate and dreary have the atony mountains of servitude stretched themselves out before us. And yet beneath tho depths of that stagnant OC<!an, which surrounds, but as if awestruck and subdued by tho frowning shadow of Slavery dares hard! ' y ll8 yet to murmur agninst it, an idea has |
