358 THE YO UNG AMERICAN.

same sort. Trade is an instrument in the hands oi that friendly Power which works for us in our own despite. “Te design it thus and thus; it turns out otherwise and far better. This beneficent tenden- cy, omnipotent without violence, exists and works. Every line of history inspires a confidence that we shall not go far wrong ; that things mend. That is the moral of all we learn, that it warrants Hope, the prolific mother of reforms. Our part is plainly not to throw ourselves across the track, to block improvement and sit till we are stone, but to watch the uprise of successive mornings and to conspire with the new works of new days. Government has been a fossil; it should be a plant. I conceive that the office of statute law should be to express and not to impede the mind of mankind. New thoughts, new things. Trade was one instrument, but Trade is also but for a time, and must give way to some- what broader and better, whose signs are already dawning in the sky.

3. I pass to speak of the signs of that which is the sequel of trade.

In consequence of the revolution in the state of society wrought by trade, Government in our times is beginning to wear a clumsy and cumbrous ap- pearance. “Te have already seen our way t0 shorter methods. The time is full of good signs. some of them shall ripen to fruit. All this bene-