INSCRIPTION AND INTRODUCTION. TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, LL.D., THE SENIOR EX-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE PATRIARCH OF THE WHOLE NATION. Honored and dear Sir : WHEN I consented to comply with the request of my excellent friend, the author of this volume, to write an Introduction to his treatise, it seemed proper to cast it in the epistolary form, and in a familiar way, to inscribe it to some honored name, that might command the homage of the nation. And regarding the highest sense of fitness and propriety, we were not long in the selection. That any well-meant and well-done attempt to benefit mankind, would obtain your favor, we well knew ; and that many will read this volume for your sake, who might otherwise omit the duty, we thought more than probable: hence the liberty we take, with your own consent, to prefix your name to our publication. I call it ours-for no other reason than my obvious connection with it and cordial approbation of it; and certainly not to deprive the Reverend Mr. Lane of his due honors as the author and the producer of a work so learned, eloquent, and worthy, and at the same time so seasonable and so needed in our menaced community. I trust also, Honored Sir, that it will meet your own high approbation; and that before you leave us in your venerable age, you will recommend to your countrymen a full and honest consideration of its contents; nay, a prompt and principled compliance with its luminous and friendly inculcations. The time is coming when your opinions will be quoted with great deference, by the generations that are to come after us, in this great and incomparable republic. You are already regarded by the nation as an honored relic of the olden time, the by-gone age of the Revolution; and when you disappear from the light of the living, as there will be no other specimen of the sort remaining on the stage of time, so, for that reason, as well as for other and nobler ones, will a grateful and admiring posterity respect all you said, and wrote, and did, for the benefit of our common country, and, indeed, for the good of universal man, with a filial and high esteem-of which we may not now attempt to graduate the altitude or the influence. The time is coming, as I trust in God, when genuine piety to HIM, will demonstrate its nature by acts, and principles of philanthropy, and when it will be seen that true religion, like true philosophy, Gives Him his praise, and forfeits not her own. There is much pseudo-affection for man abroad in our age, that ought rather to be branded as lycanthropy than philanthropy; since its short-sightedness is so idiotic and unworthy the functions of a rational mind. What is genuine seeks the true interests of man, even at the hazard of displeasing him for a moment. Whatever may be the success of this work, and we hope in God for much from man, it will be our solace in any event that we have done right, and endeavored to benefit our fellow-creatures. When the non-descript prodigy of the WOODEN HORSE stood before the open gates of the wondering Trojans, it looked as innocent, and friendly, and desirable, on the whole, to them, as TOBACCO ever does to our Americans. They were deceived by appearances, and the advice of the silly and fashionable Thymates was followed, against the unpalatable warnings of Capys and Laocoon. The words of the latter remind us of the faithful appeals of our author; though he, I trust, will not so vainly tell the truth to his countrymen. Let us recall them Et procul; O miseri, quæ tanta insania, cives? Which we thus accommodate What madness this, with thundering voice he cries, |