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LICENTIOUSNESS.

Whatever may be the desire prompted by self-respect, we cannot be faithful to the history of our nation without acknowledging that the crimes of lust are alarmingly prevalent in the United States. We have no desire to avail ourselves of statistics to show the extent of prostitution in our great cities, nor would it be any relief to demonstrate the fearful and even deeper degradation of France or England. It is sufficient to know that the extent in the United States of this common ruin furnishes sad evidence that depravity has its home in the passions, in the very fountains of domestic and social life. We cannot, therefore, feel that we have fathomed our private and social corruptions when we have searched with painful thoroughness the abodes of public and shameless vice, or the secret retreats of blushing crime in houses of assignation. The marred visage, the trembling limbs, the excitable nerves, the prescriptions of physicians, and the disruption of domestic ties, tell how rapidly splendid hypocrisy is leading its victims to the doom of the shameless debauchee.

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To a kindred origin we must ascribe much of the levity with which, in large circles, the marriage-contract is regarded. The number of divorces, and the corrupt adjustment of law to the convenience of this form of social vice, are shameful evidences of the want of public virtue. We must, moreover, recognize the serpent in the dove's nest," and come to the understanding, that licentious abuse of marital rights, leading to the crimes of abortion and infanticide, crimes more befitting the savage or barbarous state than a land of Christian civilization, - are alarmingly frequent, threatening the most sacred obligations and highest hopes of our country. No man can write faithful history, and ignore these humiliating facts. We see the perils with which this tide of vice and woes threatens our beloved land, and unite with those who lift up the voice of warning. Let the mothers and

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daughters of America know their danger. Let the wisdom of domestic education, and a more refined conscience, assert their rights in our imperilled homes. Let the pulpit and the press be honest, searching, and prudent in endeavoring to correct the popular judgment. Indeed, philanthropists and reformers of every grade must go to the bottom of these vices and dangers, and take the remedies which the gospel affords. These alone are radical and of prevalent power.

SOCIALISM AND SPIRITISM.

America cannot claim any distinction in socialistic folly equal to that given to France by St. Simon and Charles Fourier, and to England by Robert Owen. But we must confess to the presence of this leaven of iniquity in our midst. Starting from the extremes of religious fanaticism on the one hand, and infidelity on the other, a few minds in America reached similar results, in the destruction, for themselves and their followers, of all the cardinal virtues. These men, of course, "drew away disciples after them," and led them out to experiment the dreams of diseased imaginations. One class of fanatics seized upon the idea of religious perfection, and became delirious with the excitements of animal fervor, which, to their conceptions, elevated them far above ordinary Christians, and freed them entirely from sin; then from the possibility of sin; then exalted them to the sphere of new revelations, which gave to their own imaginings the authority of the divine mind; and finally made them superior to law and human control, sanctifying their vilest passions, and rendering supremely right and meritorious in them all the vices which degrade and destroy society. Of course, these fanatical spirits had no use for the Bible: the vagaries of their own fevered brains were of higher authority. They could not well endure even the outward restraints of common decency; and they only wanted leaders of sufficient shrewdness to render this monomania available in schemes

of socialism which would reduce depravity to a system, and surround it with an air of comfort and outward elegance to make it seem a new order of civilization. Of course, multitudes of these deluded people would become too crazy to be gathered into a new community: some would wander from home, and become ranging mendicants, exciting ridicule and pity; others would be humanely arrested, and shut up in the mad-house; others would die from exhaustion or premature disease, or by their own hands, leaving but a comparatively small number to become the obedient subjects of some imperial fanatic, who can with perfect ease extort money, purchase lands, build houses, and embower himself amid the groves and flowers and luxuries of an Eastern harem. He has only to isolate himself and his degraded people sufficiently from the scrutiny of society to be beyond the reach of popular indignation and civil law, and expose enough of the outward beauties gathered around him by unlimited power to excite stupid wonder and admiration, and grant to his deluded proselytes sufficient license to make them contented with a paradise of sin; and, while he can master disease and avoid death, he can claim greatness and success.

It is not our purpose to dignify the examples of temporary triumph over the weakness of human nature by naming their heroes, or writing a directory to any establishment surviving the wrecks of those which have gone before. Socialism is mentioned, however, that its vices may be identified and avoided, and that we may not be accused of shrinking from due acknowledgment of the wrongs and dangers which spring up amid our free institutions.

To the mind of the great infidel experimenter, Robert Owen, it seemed naturally suggested that the fertile lands and democratic freedom of America would furnish a fair field in which to demonstrate his theory of "A New State of Society," "The Formation of Human Character," "The Rational System" of life, and "The New Moral World." Overwhelmed by the rising self-respect and indignation of the

English people, he emigrated to America. Thirty thousand acres of land, and residences for two thousand people, on the Wabash River, in the very heart of the Great West, would do for the beginning of New Harmony in Indiana. Here he would place his fulcrum for the overthrow of Christianity, and the destruction of all governments that interfered with the self-development of the natural man, and imposed restraints upon natural affinities of the human race. But his logical sequences refused to follow. Less than four years sufficed to show this New Harmony a very Bedlam of discord, to dash all his mad schemes to atoms, and send him back to England to repeat his experiments and failures at Orbiston in Lanarkshire, at Tytherly in Hampshire, and in the city of London. Invited to Mexico by the government, he made another grand effort and grand failure in the New World; and there this brilliant socialistic luminary burst and went out before the eyes of men.

These two forms of gregarious vices are enough to show that they may arise alike under a monarchy or a republic, and that steady Christian illumination will ultimately dissipate their darkness.

A form of fanaticism, differing in no essential practical principle or result from those we have described, and beginning here, with "spirit-rappings," has not yet fully spent its force. To Americans it hardly needs description or exposure. It is enough to mark it as allied to ancient forms of necromancy, demoniacal possessions, and sleight of hand, by which the unwary may be seduced for a time into the belief that unexplained connections between matter and mind, the manipulations of cunning hands, and the low, ungrammatical, senseless ravings of crazed brains, constitute a new system of revelation from the spirit-world, that must supersede the teachings of the Bible, and overthrow all established systems of religion, philosophy, and government. In historical reality, however, they only show, like all kindred forms of fanaticism, power to use ranting declamation, personal in

fluence, the press and the passions, to destroy all sense of religion and responsibility from the soul, break up the holiest family ties, and let loose upon society a set of wandering vagrants, whose very breath is moral pestilence, and whose haunts are the scenes of frenzied delirium and "the hot-beds of vice."

It is of no consequence to us as a nation, but simple matter of historic justice, to say, that, if our Republic was the scene of the latest outbreak of this old and foul superstition, our itinerant deceivers have found their largest number of votaries, and held their most profitable séances, under monarchical governments; which is sufficient to rebuke the attempts of some of their intelligent speakers and writers to charge the origin and support of fanatical vagaries upon republican institutions, and lead us to mourn a common exposure and a common disgrace.

MORMONISM

is another form of human folly and vice, which has helped to give "bad eminence" to our country. There is really nothing new in this movement of the fanatical spirit. Long before the days of Joseph Smith and his transparent fraud of "the plates," and the supernatural translations of their records, there had been multitudes of men who gave themselves out for inspired prophets, who assumed to command the obedience of deluded men and women, who made their own blasphemous ravings superior to the revelation of God, and took advantage of religious longings for the vilest purposes. Alas for the weakness of poor human nature! It is prepared by Satan to be the victim of cunning fraud and degrading passions. In whatever country depravity may find its centres for the time being, it furnishes only occa sion for common mortification and sorrow.

But the organized strength and political importance of this great fraud entitle it to a more extended notice. Joseph

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