for a man who is a man,
and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you
cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault:
the population has been returned too large. How many _men_
are there to a square thousand miles in the country?
Hardly one. Does not America offer any inducement for men
to settle here? The American has dwindled into an Odd
Fellow--one who may be known by the development of his organ
of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and
cheerful self-reliance; whose first and chief concern, on
coming into the world, is to see that the almshouses are in
good repair; and, before yet he has lawfully donned the
virile garb, to collect a fund to the support of the widows
and orphans that may be; who, in short, ventures to live
only by the aid of the Mutual Insurance company, which has
promised to bury him decently.

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to
devote himself to the eradication of any, even to most
enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns
to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his
hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to
give it practically his support. If I devote myself to
other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at
least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's
shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his
contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated.
I have heard some of my townsmen say, "I should like to
have them order me out to help put down an insurrection
of the slaves, or to march to Mexico--see if I would go";
and yet these very men have each, directly by their
allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money,
furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who
refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse
to sustain the unjust government which makes the war;
is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards
and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that
degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but
not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment.
Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are
all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness.
After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from
immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary
to that life which we have made.

The broadest and most prevalent err